Tips to increase your blog's traffic by targeting Non-English users

Most of us have our blogs in English.That's the right language choice as English is the most popular business language in the world.
BUT WAIT!!
Have you thought of people/audience/users who actually prefer to surf the web in their own language as they are not that comfortable with english.Top examples are users in China,Russia and Japan.And mind you, thats a market big enough to be explored for your products /services.Let's see what you can do to achieve it.

1.You can reach this wider audience of Non-English speaking internet users by providing them a page in their own language. To accomplish this, visit http://translate.google.com/translate_tools

to get Google Translation Service for your website/blog.
Google gives you a reliable translation service to translate and present your page quickly.This service can be implemented on a website by simply putting in a code snippet provided by Google or in the form of a widget.Recently Google launched a new addition to this service which prompts a non-english user to translate the page to her native language.

Google Chrome browser supports this service automatically.

2. Submit your blog to major Non-english directories and search engines.Though Google is the most used search engine it is still not the favorite among non-english users.In China, Baidu search engine is ahead of Google while Russians rely on Yandex search engine more.Submitting your site to these search engines will give you a foothold in these countries and bring you increased traffic from these places.

A. How to submit your site to Baidu?

Submit your website or blog to baidu (Gives a translated page)


OR visit

http://www.baidu.com/search/url_submit.html (Chinese language page.Use Google Translation to translate)

Simply write your URL, Enter the captcha code and click the Add button to let Baidu index your site.

B. How to submit your site to Yandex ?

  

                                     visit this link   http://webmaster.yandex.ru/site/add.xml

Recently Yandex has made it mandatory to register before you can submit your site.Registration is a simple two step process. After registration you will be required to confirm that you have site management rights by pasting a meta tag in your page template.Once you have done that, click on check button and you will see a success message if everything goes well.

3. Visit this page to see more country specific search engines and submit to as many as you wish.You only stand to gain from this excercise.

When you try to submit your URL to these sites particularly Non-english ones you will need to translate non english pages to english.It can be easily done using translate services and plugins.Google Chrome automatically detects the language and prompts you to translate.Otherwise,translate pages using  using Firefox Add on or IE plugin for Internet explorer.

Be happy that now you have made your page accessible to a large Non- English speaking audience.If you have some ideas please share them in comments.

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How to See Live Twitter posts or 'tweets' on a specific topic using Google

Even if you are an avid twitter user you can not follow each and every tweet about a particular topic in tweet space.For example, if you want to know what people are tweeting about tiger woods or newly launched iPad, logging in twitter will give you tweets from only the people whom you follow.If somebody somewhere posted something very interesting about iPad and tweeted about it, you certainly will loose that info if you are not folowing that particular person or site.
Here is a better way to get latest tweets about a particular topic of your interest as they appear on twitter using your favorite search engine Google.

Lets say you want to know about latest tech sensation iPad. You open Google and type

 "iPad site:www.twitter.com" 

without the quotes.Google will show you some results which are not so impresive.
Now click on "Show options" and then click on "Updates" and voila!!

You will get a live stream of tweeets about iPad giving you interesting information and links.

You can search about any topic and get streaming relevant tweets about it in a very sleek way.Same method can be used to find updates about a topic on orkut,buzz,or any other micro blogging site.So, from now on, enjoy live streams about your favorite topics in one go!!!

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5 Visual Search Engines you may not have heard about !!

All of us are pretty familiar with the simple austere look of Google and Yahoo search engines.Microsoft Bing is more colorful but result pages remain sober. Now take a look at the below mentioned five search engines to find how differently they present information.They are all Visual Search Engines as they present information in a visually appealing picture rich fashion. It may be in the form of maps or in form of a sliding picture show or a 3D graphical view.These search engines also show us the way in which we may be searching information in future.

Note: All these search engines require Java and Flash supported browsers and all are quite heavy,so a fast internet connection is recommended to view them.

1. Redz

Redz presents you with a sliding thumbshot gallery where you can scroll through the results with main result thumbshot shown on top with description underneath.

2. Search-Cube

Search-cube offers you a 3D cube with images of webpages pasted on all sides.Cube can be flipped and page description is shown in a side panel on mouse hover.Cool animation makes it an interesting exercise.

3. Ujiko

Ujiko is a device shaped search engine where middle screen shows you the webpage image with descriptions in the side bars.All functions are presented as buttons and there is a lot of that machine-guy feel using this engine.Try it to see the fun yourself!!

4. Middlespot

Middlespot shows you results arranged in a grid where you can choose results in the grid and it shows up in a larger thumbnail.You can do a lot of tweaking to change your experience.

5. Tianamo

Tianamo is a 3D graphic renderer search which is in beta phase. Its resource intensive and shows you a neat 3D graph with peaks representing the importance of webpages. See it to get a hang of it.It's really geeky!!

All these Visual Search Engines give you results in a new way but right now you will find them just amusing.Also, though some of them are powered by Google search, effectiveness of results is one thing that these engines have to pay real attention to. Meanwhile, enjoy the information in an aesthetic way to sooth your senses in this age of info overload.

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