I was writing content on some SEO topics when I stumbled upon ShoutMeLoud. I started reading many of the posts here and really got into it. I remember reading over 20 posts in a single day!
What Is My Story Behind The Title?
It was exactly that day that I read all those posts that I decided to give this blogging thing a try.
And on that same day, out of nowhere, I received a text on LinkedIn. To my surprise, it was a formal text from the HR department of a popular tech blog.
To give a little history here… I have been into tech blogging for a long time, and I have been writing articles for many blogs as a ghostwriter. I got this offer based on the articles I had shared on LinkedIn, and they even offered me a 30k/month salary!
The only condition was I had to move to Delhi immediately to join their team.
The Dilemma
Now, this was an amazing offer for me, as I was being paid for what I loved doing and had been doing all these years (and as of now, without much reward or recognition).
This offer was too good to be true; being part of a popular tech blog would not only give me a good salary, it would also give me a good platform to share my work.
It was a great deal, right?
A perfect break for a young blogger who was writing articles published in others’ names with nominal charges per article.
So why I am currently still struggling to pay my domain fees and internet charges every month?
The answer is simple:
I denied the offer.
Was it right to do this? I don’t know, and I don’t want to know.
I know what you are thinking:
“That was naive and impulsive.”
To be honest with you, I thought the same.
I even regretted denying the offer for some time.
However, in the back of my mind, something kept reminding me:
I have to follow my desire of doing something on my own.
How I Ended Up As a Blogger
I have always loved writing, and technology was something that I have been interested in since my school days.
The only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to wake up every morning excited and thrilled about doing something new. I never liked having a boss and doing things their way. I always wanted to do things the way I wanted. That has always been exciting to me.
And here came God’s voice (in the form of Harsh’s blog posts)…
As I said earlier, I had read 20 posts that day, and I had even done extensive research on Harsh. This made me forget about my freelance career and look forward to creating my own canvas to pen my thoughts. I finally had a direction that I wanted to head.
I told myself:
“If Harsh can do it, I can do it, too.”
This gave birth to my blog – YourOwnConsumer.com – and even though it’s still relatively new, I have high hopes for it and truly believe it will work out well.
Why Should You Make The Move Soon
I started reading a lot of blogs, and I came across many bloggers like Harsh who had taken the initial risk and eventually made a name for themselves. Just imagine if Sachin Tendulkar (Cricketer) was working in an MNC, would anyone know who he was? I believe that we all have a Sachin or Harsh in ourselves.
Unless we take that first step and try our best to follow our desires, we will never know what we could have done. It just takes a single resignation or a single “no more” to start following along this path.
Isn’t it easy?
Well, no. To be honest, nothing is easy.
But the next time you wake up in the morning, ask yourself, “Am I excited to go work today?” You will get the answer loud and clear in your head.
We all have some desires hidden and piled under deadlines and boss’s orders.
You might say, “We have responsibilities and need money to support ourselves.” Well, I might have no answer to that. But I would ask a simple question in return:
“Can you live with the knowledge of what you could have done if you only tried your entire life”?
Life is too short to have repents.
Before it’s too late to try, give it a shot. Sign that resignation letter you had typed months back but never dared to mail in. Tell your boss that you’ve had enough.
I am not saying it is the easiest way. In fact, it is really tough. But it has to be tough; that’s why most people do not dare take this route.
However, I can guarantee you that you will be happier living each day of your life the way you want. You might not have the same pay check at the end of the month, but you will have a life you love.
https://giphy.com/gifs/rjkJD1v80CjYs/
Do not wait until life burdens you with responsibilities; it’s easier to take a risk at a young age rather than regretting not doing it sooner while you grow old.
How To Make It Count
If you love doing something and can dedicate your life to it honestly, success will follow you.
“Beta kabil bano, kamiyabi jhaak maar ke piche ayegi.” (In Hindi language)
This is a famous quote from a movie called 3 Idiots. It means:
“Chase excellence, success will come eventually.”
If you are good at something, try to work on your skills and be the best version of yourself.
We learn every day, and every day is a challenge. You must be polishing your skills each day. It is a tough road out there and you need to face hurdles and failures. These things shouldn’t scare you from taking the risk, as there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Always remember that we remember the ones who dared, and not the ones who were scared.
Get Up And Go!!!
Are you still reading my post and thinking to yourself you want to give it a shot?
Well! Get up and make the move before it is too late!
Second chances are for movies, not life.
Take the chance, make the move, and dare to take the risk.
I’m waiting to hear your success story in the comments below!
By now, it’s been clearly proved that Instagram isn’t something of a wet squib. It has exploded on the social media scene like a big bomb, and gone on to become one of the fastest growing social networks. All kinds of product-based businesses and influencers from...
No website can avoid running into the occasional glitch and problem, and when you consider how vastly complicated many social media websites are, it’s not surprising that their users encounter lots of different errors and difficulties at various times. There are so...
What Is Instagram Live? Social media websites are always looking for new tools and features to appeal to their users, and Instagram is certainly no exception to that rule. Instagram Live panders to the trend of immediacy, and also creates a sense of urgency to be...
Why You Might Need To Report A Problem Instagram is amongst the most popular of social media websites, and enjoys enormous amounts of traffic and users everyday. It has several different facets and functions available to its users, so it’s no surprise that sometimes...
Why Use Hashtags? Hashtags are one of the biggest trends on the internet right now. They’re a very useful tool which allows people to collate related data, connecting it across different channels and cutting through some of the noise generated by social media’s...
Social media is becoming increasingly popular, and Instagram is amongst the top ones, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t run into issues occasionally. These can occur on the browser, the app, or both, but no matter what, they often lead to frustration and time wasted...
If you, like most people, find yourself checking your phone compulsively for updates, new pictures, posts to favourite, and are generally a social media addict, you may find that you do run into the occasional frustrating glitch, even with your favourite programmes....
If you use Facebook, you know that Messenger is a great way to communicate with friends or family, business associates, and others to send files and photos, videos, links, and other content. It’s a convenient way to share information with specific contacts without...
If i ask you about the rising trend in the world of technology what comes to your mind? Instagram, isn’t it? As a result of its Facebook purchase, Instagram has been developing day by day. The application first came to be known with the photo sharing feature and in...
Moving to HTTPS is indeed a big technical SEO change. At times, people make mistakes here & start losing their SEO traffic.
However, one can quickly avoid this if they are following all the right steps before & after moving their site from HTTP to HTTPS.
There are a few tools that let us check for proper SSL implementation, but they are not geared toward SEO. These tools usually check for canonical & SSL certificate implementation, which is not enough when you are doing an SEO audit after moving your site to HTTPS.
So, what’s the solution?
SEMrush, which is the most popular SEO tool, recently added an HTTPS implementation audit feature in their site SEO audit feautre. As some of you may know, SEMrush is the most comprehensive HTTPS SEO audit tool I have ever come across.
In this guide, I will share how you can use this tool to check if there’s anything wrong with your HTTPS implementation.
If you have migrated your site from HTTP to HTTPS recently and have noticed a drop in traffic, or if you are planning to move your site to HTTPS sometime in the future (which you should), this is the tool that you should be using.
SEMrush is a paid tool, however, you can use the link below to sign up for a 14-day free trial (you can simply cancel the subscription before 14 days is up).
Click on Add New Project & give your project a name (see the below screenshot for the reference).
Click on Save & then click on the “Site Audit” option.
This part is pretty easy & straight forward.
Depending upon your site’s size, select the number of pages you want to be crawled.
SEMrush crawlers will start crawling your site & within a few minutes, you will have your report ready.
Along with any HTTPS issues, SEMrush will show all other SEO issues present on your site.
In my case, it took about 5 minutes to crawl 400+ pages.
Now, open up the generated report & on the next page, click on the HTTPS Implementation tab to find all existing HTTPS implementation errors on your site.
In this case, all reports are OK apart from one subdomain HSTS issue (which is not major).
An Example Of An HTTPS Implementation Error:
Let’s look at ShoutMeLoud, a big site where there are a few HTTPS SEO issues.
This is a screenshot from the ShoutMeLoud.com HTTPS audit report:
Here I have discovered a few site-wide links which are still HTTP.
Fixing this issue helped me lower down the number of redirections & will help search engine bots to crawl the site more effectively.
Discovering non-secure pages:
This issue is triggered if the SEMrush Bot detects an HTTP page with a <input type=”password”> field. Using a <input type=”password”> field on your HTTP page is harmful to user security, as there is a high risk that user login credentials can be stolen. To protect users’ sensitive information from being compromised, Google Chrome will start informing users about the dangers of submitting their passwords on HTTP pages by labeling such pages as “non-secure” starting January 2017. This could have a negative impact on your bounce rate, as users will most likely feel uncomfortable and leave your page as quickly as possible.
If you have effectively implemented an SSL certificate & are serving all of your pages properly, this result should show zero non-secure pages.
However, in my case, I have 2 sub-domains which I have yet to move to HTTPS.
Depending upon the complexity of your or your client’s website architecture, this tool can help you discover severe SEO issues which are not easy to discover manually.
Most of you who have used my earlier guides on HTTP to HTTPS migration will either have no issues or very minor ones
However, it would be very unwise for anyone to be over confident & not use another tool to ensure the HTTP to HTTPS migration is problem-free.
Since SEMrush offers a 14-day free trial, it’s a good starting point for anyone to test out their HTTPS implementation.
Go ahead & do a complete SEO audit using the above tutorial.
Let us know what kind of HTTPS implementation issues you have found using this tool. Also, if you are stuck somewhere while fixing the issue, let me know in the comments section below and I will help you along.
By now, it’s been clearly proved that Instagram isn’t something of a wet squib. It has exploded on the social media scene like a big bomb, and gone on to become one of the fastest growing social networks. All kinds of product-based businesses and influencers from...
No website can avoid running into the occasional glitch and problem, and when you consider how vastly complicated many social media websites are, it’s not surprising that their users encounter lots of different errors and difficulties at various times. There are so...
What Is Instagram Live? Social media websites are always looking for new tools and features to appeal to their users, and Instagram is certainly no exception to that rule. Instagram Live panders to the trend of immediacy, and also creates a sense of urgency to be...
Why You Might Need To Report A Problem Instagram is amongst the most popular of social media websites, and enjoys enormous amounts of traffic and users everyday. It has several different facets and functions available to its users, so it’s no surprise that sometimes...
Why Use Hashtags? Hashtags are one of the biggest trends on the internet right now. They’re a very useful tool which allows people to collate related data, connecting it across different channels and cutting through some of the noise generated by social media’s...
Social media is becoming increasingly popular, and Instagram is amongst the top ones, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t run into issues occasionally. These can occur on the browser, the app, or both, but no matter what, they often lead to frustration and time wasted...
If you, like most people, find yourself checking your phone compulsively for updates, new pictures, posts to favourite, and are generally a social media addict, you may find that you do run into the occasional frustrating glitch, even with your favourite programmes....
If you use Facebook, you know that Messenger is a great way to communicate with friends or family, business associates, and others to send files and photos, videos, links, and other content. It’s a convenient way to share information with specific contacts without...
If i ask you about the rising trend in the world of technology what comes to your mind? Instagram, isn’t it? As a result of its Facebook purchase, Instagram has been developing day by day. The application first came to be known with the photo sharing feature and in...