Blogging Trainings: seo for blogger

Showing posts with label seo for blogger. Show all posts

When You have to Tag External Links as nofollow?

Understanding Google’s algorithm for PageRank is really essential in order to rank higher on search engine results. I have already explained that PageRank is not much importantcompared to Alexa Rank. But if you wish to compete well on SERPS then understanding its algo is very important. The entire infrastructure or foundation of Google is mainly based on backlinks. The more backlinks your site have the more its significance increases in the eyes of Google. It is very important to keep a balance between incoming links and outgoing links. Your incoming links are the backbone of your blogs success. Incoming links are links that come from other websites to your blog. When people like your content they will mention you on their site by giving a credit link or attribution link and the more backlinks you receive the more you grow in sense of authority and trust in internet.

What are Internal and External Links?

Internal links are links pointing to any page within your site. For example If I link an old post I am actually increasing the number of my internal links. Always keep internal links as DoFollow

Never make the mistake of adding a nofollow link to any of your internal page. Increase the number of inbound links as much as you can so that search robots may enjoy crawling and indexing your pages.

External Links are links that point to other sites from you site. In other words when you link to any site on the web you are actually increasing the number of your outbound or external links. Keep external links minimum. Link other webs only when necessary.

When should you add a nofollow or dofollow Tag to external Link?

If you have observed my PageRank dropped from PR 4.0 to PR 3.0 on first Google Update but just yesterday Alhamdulillah I got back my PR. I can not claim that it took place because of the changes I made but I can assure you the steps I learnt and applied will benefit MBT in future. Its true to say that you learn from your mistakes and I have learnt a lot from some of the mistakes that I made and this is one reason why I am sharing this post today.

I was linking all major websites like Facebook and Google services blindly because somewhere I had read that linking major social networks will improve your blog’s relevance and its respect and trust will increase in the eyes of search robots because linking big sites shows that you are writing on something worth sharing and Google always makes sure to promote blogs that provide quality tutorials by discussing products availed by major web services.. But whatever I read earlier was all wrong! because I have personally experienced the pros and cons now. How? Lets first understand what exactly is PageRank and what increases or decreases its value.

PageRank:

In layman terms when more and more sites link to you the more your PageRank increases. PR algorithm or in other words the entire Google infrastructure is based on promoting sites that are recommended (backlinked) by other websites with good reputation. Therefore if a site has PR0 it means, that site is not well trusted and does not publish content that can entertain Google users. But if a site or blog has PR > 1 then it means, that site has now some importance in the eyes of search robots. Robots enjoy crawling PR ranked sites several times per day. MBT is Alhamdulillah crawled every single second by Search Spiders. The moment we publish a post the next moment it appears on Google search listings. This is because the more PR you have the faster your site gets crawled.

In short more backlinks you have, the better your site gets crawled and the faster your traffic grows. Furthermore you will succeed in attracting sponsors too. That’s what PR is all about.

Got PR? Now how to flow the PR Juice wisely?

After your blog receives a PR increase it does not mean that you should party out and yell and scream out of excitement rather you should know that now you need to be more careful in maintaining the PR. It takes months to build it and few days to loose the PR. PR Increases only when your incoming links grow. When more and more site link to you, your PageRank improves. Whenever you link to an internal page (Page Within your site) or an external page (Other websites) you are basically sharing the PR juice with those pages. If you keep on linking external pages blindly then on next PR update you will experience a PR drop because you shared your bottle of juice with others therefore your share of juice decreased. So what to do then? Follow up

Read more on PR Juice & Linking internal pages here…

Which links should you tag as nofollow?

To make sure that your homepage may not loose the PR, simply add a nofollow tag to links that point to external sites. When robots crawl your content they look for links on your page and if you have tagged a link as nofollow then robots will crawl it as normal text and they will not bother looking at where the link is taking them. This prevents the PR flow to those sites tagged as nofollow. Always link mega sites and social networks as nofollow but never add a nofollow tag to any internal page. Some examples include:

Facebook Profiles, Pages, Developers page etc
Google Services such as Gmail, Google+, Adsense, Feedburner, Blogger, YouTube etc.
Mozilla and Chrome and other browser add-on pages
Microsoft, Yahoo, Google
Torrent links, rapidshare links, megashare links etc etc.
Demo, Download and Iframed Pages
and Thousand others…

To learn how to add a nofollow tag to a link please read this post:

How To Tag Links as Nofollow?

So which links should be tagged as dofollow?

In real terminology there is nothing such as dofollow Tag When you leave a link in its original form without adding a nofollow tag then it means that the link is dofollow. The spiders will crawl the link, index it and will count it as an external link thereby sharing your PR juice with that external page that you have linked. So which should be kept as normal? The answer is: All Internal Links/Inbound Links and niche links.

Internal links will help spiders crawl your pages more deeply and they will get indexed often. When you link to a previous relevant post, the spider will go and check where the link is taking him thus re-indexing the previous post. This improves your search listings.

Niche links can be can not be dofollow. Always give a link to a friend’s blog or to a blog that shares the same content as you do. Of course you are linking to him because you liked his content and you wish to share his content with your readers. This is also a polite thing and more importantly when that person finds that you have linked to him then may be someday he would link to you too as a thanksgiving. Most people make network friends this way.

Now lets see how Google supports whatever I shared today:

I hope this little post may help most of you in better understanding in-page and off-page link building. If you have any question you are most welcomed to post your query. Hope you utilize and maintain your PageRanks well because after all that is one proof of your hard work. Good day friends. :>

These contents were taken from myblogger tricks

Increase traffic in your blogger blog or in your website very fast

Today I will show you how to Increase traffic in your blogger blog or in your website very fast.The main aim for making the blog on blogger is to getting traffic on the blog and there are many ways to get the traffic on your site. Its very easy you have to keep updating your blog and do some work onsocial media and linking and you will get your traffic after the time passed.

Here i am showing you some major techniques which allows you get maximum traffic to your blogger blog. You just have to do some little work on it.

There are many sources that you can increase the visitors to your site but here i am showing you the ways that not only enhance your traffic but also cause to increase your site visibility on search engines. here they are,

Facebook page and group posting
Yahoo answers and groups
Tumblr, twitter and other social media post
Guest post on your related niche sites
Google adword traffic
High traffic blog comments
forum posting on high PR
Google plus traffic
Press releases, news and classified submit

Now just in final case your are qualify for all of that ways i mentions above you will not only get traffic from it but also increase your site ranking overall in search engines.

Facebook Page and Group Post:

As everybody know the importance of like on Facebook and its traffic, You must make an official page of your site on facebook, Add it on your site to like your website page, Go and search facebook groups join the groups which has more then 20,000 members and post your website on it. This way you will get many visitors to your site for free.

(If you direct post your facbook fan page url, you will get maximum likes to your site)

Yahoo Answers and Groups:

Yahoo answers and groups are also best place to get traffic to your website you can enhance your site links and visitors by using this method, You must post your site where its relevant to it. Like if your site is all about fashion then you have to link it to fashion topic question or groups in yahoo, It will also increase site performance.

Twitter Tumblr and other social network:

You should also make some profiles on twitter, tumblr and other social networks like Xanga, Linkedin. Delicious, Pintrest and many more. On that point you will also get little but traffic but its increase your site ranking in Google search engine and you will got many powerful visitors to your site. If the social points not bring the visitors then it really cause to make you better in search eyes.

Guest Post on Related Websites:

That's the most powerful way to get instant traffic to your website if you find some related to your niche sites simple contact them and ask that you have some good articles and want to publish on there website, If you article is good and enough you got approved, Now simple in article foot add little description about your site and article writer, That's it when someone read's it they surely get involved in your site while clicking on the link that you leave on the footer of article.

Suppose your site is all about seo tips then the big site which accept the guest post is moz.com/blogyou just have to signup on it and provide the valuable content on it, Remember your article not only should be unique but also provide the unique idea on it. At this time of posting its Alexa rank is 256

Google Adword Traffic:

There is also another way to get the target traffic to your website, you just have to add a campaign toGoogle adword which is pay method to do, you have to pay per click on your site to get traffic, this is fully target traffic, you need to put the keywords and some description to add the profile, minimum you can get 0.02$ per click to your aid.

Blog comments:

At this time even blog comments comes into the spam category in google eyes, but still you can get better traffic from it, Some high pr blogs and high level alexa traffic rank sites you can get better traffic for you. Sites like moz.com/blog, techchrunch, mashable, and other major sites still bring some better visitors to your website. Just try to get it. Must leave relevant comment to get faster approval.

Forum Posting:

Forums are also better way to get targated traffic to your site, if you are good internet searcher you can try to find top alexa rank forums where the traffic should be huge, can also incrase your site traffic. I would like to show some sites like skyscrapercity.com, forums.seochat.com, forums.digitalpoint.comare most common and well know websites. you can try to get post your site link in thread reply.

Press Release News Classifieds:

You should try to get post on press release sites like prlog.com, pr.com, and sbwire.com these are the most powerful sites or you have to search in google for top press release websites and then post you information on it.

You can also bring some serious visitors from classifieds websites, you should post some classifieds on ebuyclassifieds.com craiglist.org and gumtree.com and some other high traffic websites. With this way you can also get the better traffic to your website.

If you want your traffic in your website or blog very fast then contact me +92323-7591466.

Keep looking my website bloggingtrainings.blogspot.com

Most of bloggers use this word to convince readers to subscribe : subscribe !!

A week and a half ago I had a sudden realization. Subscriptions generally cost money. Think about that for a second. It’s jarring, especially if you’ve spent the past few months or even years incessantly asking your readers to subscribe.

Word Association

The percentage of readers who misunderstand what you mean when you ask them to subscribe is largely dependent on your niche. Readers who know what RSS is probably aren’t confused by the terminology, but most web users have no clue about RSS.

I’ve found that a good measure of reader savviness is a blog’s split between RSS and e-mail subscribers – the higher the percentage of RSS subscribers, the more savvy the readership. I write a blog about entry-level jobs for new college graduates. Despite what you might think of the younger generation, the vast majority of my site’s visitors are not familiar with RSS. 55% of my subscribers get my daily posts through e-mail.

From what I’ve heard from other bloggers this is well above average, and I believe that my percentage of e-mail subscribers would be even higher had less savvy readers not been scared off because they thought “subscribing” would cost them money. These are the readers who think of magazines when they hear “subscribe.”

They think of paying to get something.

Great Theory! Now Back It Up

I use Google Analytics’ outbound click tracking on my blog so that I can analyze the subscription behavior of my readers. This method misses RSS subscriptions from the address bar, but the people who subscribe in that way are probably the most savvy readers and are basically irrelevant to this case study.

Most of my subscribers use one of the two large buttons on my site. The buttons used to include the text “Subscribe by E-mail” and “Subscribe by RSS” along with appropriate graphics. After I had my epiphany, I switched the text to “Get Jobs by E-mail” and “Get Jobs by RSS.”

I instantly saw results.

The above graph shows the trend in clicks to my RSS feed and e-mail subscription buttons for the 8 days prior to the change and the 8 days after the change. My subscription rate has increased 254% since I made the change, and 66% of the new subscribers are e-mail subscribers.

This is in line with my hypothesis that the people who misunderstand the word “subscribe” are the same people who will choose e-mail over RSS. Although they may not be web savvy, these readers are extremely valuable. It is essential in all copywriting that you avoid unclear jargon, even if it’s not jargon to you.

Words Make All the Difference

OK, so I haven’t proven that my readers actually associated the word “subscribe” with paying money. The only way to prove that is by surveying readers.

But I believe I have shown that very small changes in word choice based on well-thought-out theories can have a significant influence on the actions that you urge your readers to take. Whether or not my theory on the connotations associated with the word “subscribe” is accurate is irrelevant. It’s results that matter, and changing one word on my blog has given me outstanding results.

When readers visit my site, I now invite them to “Get Jobs by E-mail.” Brian encourages readers to get “E-mail Updates,” and he did this way before I submitted this article to him.

We have great collection of Best tricks and tutorials, Bloggingtrainings.blogpsot.com is a Blog Providing with Blogger widgets, help, blogger tips, blogger tricks, hacks, Blogger Gadgets,Plugins and Blogger resources with great skills and templates.practical SEO Tips and all things Blogging,is about Blog tricks & tips, Traffic generation, Backlinks, Search engine optimization, Web designing, E money, Social media, Facebook tricks,Blogging Discussion, Tips & Tricks,logging tips, tricks, how-tos, news, tools and resources, bloggingtrainings.blogspot presented in easy to understand tutorials.Keep visiting us if any links is not working or you want sme more help, then keep looging at bloggingtrainings.blogspot.com.or contact us 0323-7591466.

Most of us use Blogger.com to start their free blog which may be for making money or sharing your knowledge, voice through blogging. But if your blog is not Search Engine Friendly than you can not archive your goal. For this purpose you need to make your blog fully Search Engine Optimized and add meta tag to blogger so that people searching their keywords will easily knows your site. Just follow following simple steps to add meta tag to blogger.

Step 1:

Go to Blogger Dashboard > Design > Edit Html and search for <head>

Step 2:

Delete Every Thing From <head> to <b:skin><![CDATA[

Step 3:

Place following code just after <head>

<b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "index"'>
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> - <data:blog.title/></title>
</b:if>
<meta content='Your Blog Description here!' name='description'/>
<meta content='Your Keywords here!' name='keywords'/>
<meta content='Author Name here!' name='Author'/>
<meta content='Author Email Address here!' name='Email'/>
<meta content='document' name='resource-type'/>
<meta content='all' name='audience'/>
<meta content='general' name='rating'/>
<meta content='all' name='robots'/>
<meta content='index, follow' name='robots'/>
<meta content='id' name='language'/>
<meta content='id' name='geo.country'/>
<meta content='global' name='distribution'/>
<meta content='1 days' name='revisit-after'/>
<meta content='Indonesia' name='geo.placename'/>

Replace:-

To add your own description, title, keywords. Please replace all above words with your desire words! as shown below.

Blog Description : Write your blog description
Blog Keywords : Write the keywords of your blog
Blog Author : Write the author’s name(Your name)
Email Address : Write your Email address

Step 4:

Click on Save Template.

your blog is full Search Engine Friendly.

If you face any problem. Just Drop your comment. I will be able to help you about blogger Search engine optimization.

If you are searching for free .edu website to build b backLink, I invite you to read this article (How To Get Free EDU BackLinks) and get A list of free .edu backlink providing sites to increase your rank.

Why .edu BackLinks?

.EDU Backlinks are incoming links to a blog or website from .edu sites or blog that whav e power to increase your ranking in google and alexa.
backlinks from other then .edu site have also power but the power of .edu site will break all simple site and boost your ranking. Usually, edu sites are colleges or universities and they only link to valid resources and google trust them ,so if you get back links from this site that’s mean your site is doing good.

How To Get Free EDU BackLinks For your Blogger blog?
there is a tricky way that you can find a edu sites by searching in Google with these terms. Just copy the below lines and paste it in Google Search Engine, then start opening from No-1 and start buliding backLinks to get higher ranking.

site:.edu
site:.edu “blog”
site:.edu “log in / create account”

bloggingtrainings.blogspot.com.
How To Get Free EDU BackLinks?

1.) Just Open The Following Links.

2.) Register Or Comment On These.

3.) Fill Your Correct Information With Your Site/Blog Link.

4.) Visit You Link On Second Day And Ping It.

5.) Your Site/Blog Is Ready To Rock.

bloggingtrainings.blogspot.com.

Some Mix Collection Of .edu:
http://bcnm-dev.berkeley.edu/wp-login.php?action=register - PR9

http://tecto.gps.caltech.edu/forum/register.php - PR6

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?action=register - PR6

http://web.utk.edu/~dst/guestbook/index.php - PR5

http://forums.saa.edu/register.php - PR1
http://celebrating125years.stedwards.edu/connect/guestbook - PR3

Some Free .edu Forums:
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi
http://tecto.gps.caltech.edu/forum/register.php
http://forums.saa.edu/register.php
http://www.uta.edu/studentorgs/cgsa/forum/register.php
http://clubs.db.erau.edu/dbslavic/forum-phpbb2/profile.php?mode=register&sid=dad0f304df1b2a94f20321fc0bb0e7ea

Some Free .edu Blogs:
http://www.washington.edu/externalaffairs/uwmarketing/toolkits/best-practices/
http://blog.case.edu/webdev/categories
http://blsciblogs.baruch.cuny.edu/cwkramkissoon/internet-blog-1/
http://blog.students.london.edu/2009/02/internet-marketing/

Some Free .edu Sign Up Websites:
http://www.academia.edu/
http://www.educause.edu/ 

Live Writer Blogging software,offline blogging

We can do blogging offline with this software. With growing technology like Windows Live Writer blogging is no more limited to your dashboard. You can write, save and publish posts right from your computer without signing in your blogger account. Blogger HTML editor lacks many features when it comes to writing a good looking post. On contrary windows live writer is a software built by Microsoft Corporation which contains every feature that Blogger lacks.

I hate blogging without Windows Live Writer! I am sure many bloggers would agree with me on this point.

Some of the things you can’t do with Blogger HTML editor are,

You can not write HTML code just the way it looks in blogger editor because the code is interpreted as a command and blogger editor converts it to how it may look in a browser.
You can’t resize an image to whatever size you like because you are provided with only three options i.e Small, Medium and Large size.
The font type and font size is limited.
You can not undo what you have done (Going backward).
You can’t align images to the left or right of your intro paragraph.
You can not add effects to your images, like shadow effect, rounded corners, emboss, blur etc.
You can not post an image in its original size
You can not insert tables in your posts because no table option exists
You can not open a link in a new window unless you edit the HTML
You can not add a world map to your posts
And much more……………

You can not do all above in a compose mode unless you add or change the HTML code in your HTML editor. But editing HTML would seem difficult for a newbie whilst pretty easy for a professional. Since most people like me have limited knowledge about editing HTML, blogger editor is of little use to all of us. Luckily! Windows Live Writer comes to our rescue. It can to do what ever blogger editor can not. It contains every feature a blogger is looking for. One of the best things I like about it is that it saves a copy of your blog interface/theme and when you write posts, it will be just like writing a post straight into your blog. See the image below to understand what I mean to say,

Moreover your images can be displayed in two different ways look below,
image thumbnail in windows live writer

Selecting the photo album option will display your images in a scattered style (with a view album link below your scattered images),
Scattered album with windows live writer

Scattered album with windows live writer

So go and download it right now by clicking the link below.
DOWNLOAD WINDOWS LIVE WRITER NOW!
To download the Latest version directly from windows live site then click here
TROUBLESHOOT:
If you get an error saying that “your windows installer is out dated” then run the following setup (below) before windows live setup (above)
Download Latest Windows installer here

Which is best WordPress or Blogger?

which blogging platform to choose to start your blogging career? The major blogging hosting platforms are no doubt Blogger and WordPress. Now to judge which one is better I have written a detailed comparison chart below that will be of great help in making a smart decision.

Note:- I am not an employee of either Blogger or WordPress. The below chart is solely my personal research.

FEATURES	BLOGGER	WORDPRESS	WHO WON?
Template Customization	Offers Free Layout/Style Sheet Customization	No style sheet customization. Payment required	Blogger
Tutorials/Help	Innumerable Tutorials on Blogger Tricks	Hardly some	Blogger
Number of un-official Themes	Innumerable Designers Creating Free Templates each day	Few Designers Involved in offering free templates	Blogger
Coding Used	Uses user friendly scripting and coding i.e HTML, XML, CSS	Uses advance scripting like php that few can understand	Blogger
Dashboard Interface	Highly user friendly. Easy to navigate.	Complicated Interface with hectic navigation	Blogger
Default Template Collection	Limited Collection Of Default templates mostly un-professional	Over 70+ high quality Templates	WordPress
Template/Theme Replacement	Default Template can be replaced by a more free professional template	No template change allowed	Blogger
Widgets	Innumerable Official and Un official Widgets available	Limited Official widgets available. Rarely few un- official gadgets available.	Blogger
Comments	No commenting editing. Moderation allowed. No Spam protection. No user friendly comment form	Comments can be edited and moderated. Spam protection available. User friendly comment form	WordPress
SEO, Optimization	Though Owned by Google, no favoritism. Manual optimization is required	Owned by a private party. Meta Tags Plugins used. Easy To optimize	Both
Blog Privacy	You can limit access to your blog to 100 Authors and 100 readers. All must be Google account holders.	You can limit access to your blog to 35 Wordpress account holders. Posts can be password protected or Private.	Blogger
Comment restriction	You can restrict comments to Google account holders, Open ID users or Any one (includes Anonymous)	Comments can not be restricted. Anyone can comment	Blogger
Blog Import	Only from one BlogSpot blog to another	A Blog can be imported from another WordPress blog or from Blogger, Yahoo! 360, LiveJournal and Movable Type and TypePad	WordPress
Posts and Comment Notification	Authors and subscribers can be notified of latest posts and comments via Email	Same here	Both
Comment Verification	Asks users to verify if they are humans using a 4-6 digit code	Does not asks for any verification. More spam effected	Blogger
Video Storage Limit	Unlimited with Google Video and an upload limit of 16GB	Just 3GB. More space on upgrade.	Blogger
Image storage limit	1 Gigabyte With Picasa Web Albums	3 Gigabytes. More space can be gained through upgrade. You can also upload.ppt, .doc, .odt and.pdf files	WordPress
File type Storage	Only allows image uploading	Allows upload of files like .ppt, pdf .doc and .odt files. More file types can be uploaded on upgrading.	WordPress
Blog Stats	Does not have any default stats system. But allows third party tracking scripts.	Has a default visitor stats system that shows statistics for two days only and does not provide detailed stats reports. Does not allow third party tracking scripts.	Blogger
Blog co-partners	100 Google account holders can be added as Administrators or Authors	35 WordPress account holders can be added as Administrators, Editors, Authors or Contributors.	Blogger
Advertisements	Displays no advertisement of its own on your blog.	Displays discreet AdSense advertisements on your blog for small percentage of the page views	Blogger
Posts By Email	Has a Mail-to-Blogger feature which turns any email account into a blog-posting application	Posts can be published using emails	Both
Post Feed On Mobile Phones	Supported	Not Supported	Blogger

Conclusion

When choosing a blogging service three things are most important than anything else which are,

Template Editing
Huge Image Storage Capacity
Huge Video Storage Capacity

Believe it or not Blogger has all these three features and is undoubtedly a blessing to millions of teenagers and people from other classes who can’t afford to pay online. The Template editing feature of Blogger is one of its best feature. Within a year of blogging a guy like me who didn’t even know what CSS, HTML, XML meant, is now playing with codes day and night. Blogger made my life meaningful and interesting and will surely be a blessing to you too. Blogger is surely the best free Blogging Service available in Blogosphere if equipped with a good web hosting service.

Which one do you think is the best?

Send FREE SMS With Gmail To Any Mobile In Any Country?

Amaizing trick : Short Messaging Service is great! It is fast, it is cheap, and it is convenient! Not to mention verypopular especially among the youth. It lets you connect with your friends and family no matter where in the world you are. A few years ago, Google launched its SMS chat service via Gmail. But then it withdrew the service and took it back to its lab. This service was relaunched some time back, but was limited to very few countries, like U.S. etc. Well here's a good news! Google has, very recently, introduced updates to the service. Gmail SMS messaging is now available across a lot more countries, including Asian countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, India etc. You can now send texts to a lot of networks in many countries,absolutely free!

So what's the big deal?

This is a very useful service. If you use a prepaid mobile network, and if you are out of credit (like I usually am :P), you can send texts for free to people who are texting you! And even if you have some credit, but don't want to spend it uselessly, you can just log in to your Gmail account, and easily type and send a message to any of your contacts. I have started using this service for when I can't locate my cell phone, or am feeling to lazy to type a long text on the small, cramped qwerty keyboard. I prefer typing with a proper keyboard. Sit back and relax, and let your friends do the annoying typing on cell phones :). About this service, Google says;

How to send texts?

Sending SMS is simple. You of course need to have a Gmail account for sending SMS.

Step 1 : Adding a new contact

Sign in to your Gmail account, and open up the Chat pop up menu from the bottom left if it already isn't there. Click on the little arrow, and Add a new contact.

You will asked to enter an email to invite a contact. Note that if you want to chat a friend that is already your contact, then you can skip ahead to the next step.

Step 2 : Adding mobile number

Now, hover on a contact of yours, and click on the Send SMS button as shown below.

Note : If you haven't sent that contact an SMS before, of if you haven't added their number, then instead of the Send SMS button, there will be a Chat button at the exact same position. Click on this button and you will see a small pop-up at the bottom right of your screen, as shown below.

Click on the Continue this chat over SMS button. This will only appear if you haven't added their number, or haven't sent them an SMS before. Otherwise, you will be able to enter your SMS in this pop up. Once you click the continue button, you will be prompted to choose a country and mobile. This is the contact's mobile number. Add a number and then save.

Step 3 : Chat away!

Once you have entered the mobile number, a pop-up will again appear at the bottom right exactly where the previous one did. This is your chat box. You are now ready to go! Type a message in the text field , hit Enter, and sit back and wait for your friend's reply!

SMS credits

This is a smart way Google has found to encourage the use of this service. Initially, you are given fifty credits, which means you can send out 50 messages. For every one message sent, one credit is deducted. But for every message received, say when someone replies to your Gmail text, you get 5 credits. So tell your friends to stop being miserly, and start replying to texts :). You can not, however, exceed the 50 credit limit, no matter how many replies you get.

What if you lose all the credits? Well, you will receive one credit after 24 hours. A smart way to increase your credits would be to send a text to your own mobile phone, and then replying to it any number of times to refill your credits!

What are the charges?

Google does not charge anything for this service. However, since this is a new service to most countries, some carriers might charge you for it. Usually, you won't be charged for sending SMS through Gmail. The receiver might be charged a small amount if he chooses to reply to that message. Otherwise, standard messaging rates apply. Read more aboutSMS Charges at the Google Chat Support page.

Supported operators

The reason that this service is so exciting for us is that, it wasn't available for our country before. Not only for us, but for most of our readership as well, this is a big news. The inclusion of this region shows that Google is working to expand its services, which is a good thing. Previously, in the U.S, this service was limited to a few operators. Now, all U.S operators are supported. And the influence has expanded outside the U.S as well. Now, more than 50 countries are included, with hundreds of supported operators. And this influence is expanding fast! For Pakistan, Ufone and Mobilink, the major mobile operators in this area, are supported. In India, Reliance, MTS, Aircel, and other major networks are supported.

Here is a complete list of the Supported Mobile Operators. If your country is listed, but not your carrier, don't despair! Now that so many countries have been included, supporting carriers is not that big an issue. It's only a matter of time before more operators are included by Google. Just wait and see. If your country isn't listed, Google promises to include more countries very soon. So keep your fingers crossed :)

What do you think?

This definitely is a big breakthrough, especially for Asian countries. Check out this service and let us know about your experiences. And if you find any problems, let us know so that we can discuss the problem and look for solutions. Happy text-chatting :)

http://www.google.com/mail/help/intl/en_il/sms.html

http://www.technologytell.com/gadgets/42704/google-brings-back-sms-texting-to-gmail/

http://support.google.com/chat/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=106015