Create Pages in Blogger

Monday 1 Feb 2010 by Tammara Nelson | 4 Comments
Filed under: Blogger Tags: ,

Finally, it's arrived! The ability to create pages in Blogger is now available in your Blogger in Draft dashboard! If you're not sure what the difference is with a Page vs a Post, this will give you a general idea, and you'll have pages made in no time with your Blogger blog!

Okay, you already know what posts are, and if you haven't used pages in any other blogging platform, here's the scoop. Pages are not published in-line with posts, but instead are accessed from a widget or link leading to the url. Pages are used for things such as an About page, a Contact Form, perhaps a separate page of Links, photos, etc. Whatever you need it for! Blogger provides you with the opportunity to create 10 pages in your blog, but you'll need to be in your Blogger in Draft dashboard to access that capability. Here's a screen shot from my Blogger in Draft dashboard.

Blogger Pages Feature

Blogger in Draft Pages

Once you create a page, you then use the widgets feature (gadgets) to choose where you want a custom page to appear on your blog, and then publish it where you wish! As an example, you may wish to display a page from your sidebar, beneath the header image, or in the footer. Whichever you choose, it's nice that Blogger has finally provided the ability to publish pages in addition to good old posts! Way to go Blogger! You're getting closer to offering some of the basics that WordPress provides. :)

Blogger Pages Gadgets

Blogger Pages Gadgets


RSS Feeds 101 and Google Reader

Friday 29 Jan 2010 by Tammara Nelson | No Comments
Filed under: Blog Master Tools, Google Tags: ,

Confused about RSS feeds, what they are, and how to use them? Subscribing to RSS feeds can save you time and energy, so you are notified of updates rather than you having to go search for the updates on your favorite sites and blogs. However, like me I found the whole RSS feeding frenzy thing to be confusing, and I'm sure some of you have as well. I came across this RSS feed video, which I thought was one of the best for making it easy to understand RSS feeds. Plus it also explains the basics of using Google Reader to read the feeds you subscribe to.

I'm sure you'll find this RSS feed video helpful if you want to learn the basics in an easy-to-understand way! After you finish viewing the information, this is where you can tour Google Reader,  if you prefer to use their reader for your RSS feeds. Speaking of RSS feeds.... Have you signed up to receive LinkandBlog RSS feeds?


Redirect Blogspot to Blogger Custom Domain

Thursday 28 Jan 2010 by Tammara Nelson | No Comments
Filed under: Blogger Tags: , , ,

Do you need to redirect your blog from Blogspot to Blogger using your custom domain? With some things pertaining to urls, I know just enough to be dangerous, and thought I would share with you what I goofed on last week. I'm referring to one of my blogs, which I already had established on my own domain, using the Blogger platform.

All was well until I tried to get creative and create a page using Google Pages, to use on my Blogger custom domain. To make a long story short, while attempting to create a url for a custom page I broke my blogger custom domain, which resulted in a 404 error. Oh, oh! Without thinking, I went into panic mode for fear that I wouldn't get my blog back, so I went on over to the Blogger forum and posted, hoping someone would come to my rescue quickly!

Fortunately, help was on it's way from a kind blogger who told me how to fix the mess I got myself into! The remedy was quite painless, and easy, and if I had only gone back into my Blogger dashboard I probably could have figured it out before I posted in the Blogger forum. But, you may know what it's like when you panic! You don't "think"! Well, at least I don't - lol.

If you need to do a redirect from Blogspot to your custom Blogger domain, it's easy and painless. Or, like me if you accidentally broke your Blogger site, you can revert back to the Blogspot url and then back again to your custom domain to hopefully fix a broken site, if you're getting a 404 error. Special thanks to Chuck for kindly providing the tip to simply revert back to Blogspot, and then reset my redirect back to my custom domain to fix my 404 error. Thanks Chuck! :)

Here's more information on how to redirect Blogspot to Blogger on your custom domain. Happy blogging!


Best Blogger SEO Quick Tip for Title Tags

Sunday 17 Jan 2010 by Tammara Nelson | 2 Comments
Filed under: Blogger Tags: , ,

Got blog on Blogger? Does your volume of traffic remain at the same level regardless of how many posts you add? Have you fixed your Blogger template code to allow your blog post title tags to do the best job for you? This is an absolute necessity in order to get the search engines to key in on your title tag keywords. Otherwise, the search engines will always place your blog title before your blog post titles when they crawl your site, which is not a good thing because that's also how all your blog posts will be indexed! You work hard to come up with the best titles to attract the search engines, but without this SEO fix those blog post titles won't do you any good!

Okay, if you're confused, as they say a picture is worth a thousand words, and I found a great blog post to share with you so you can see what you need to do, and get the secret template codes to do it! But, before you begin, and to play it safe, make a backup copy of your template from your Blogger dashboard. If you've done your backup copy you're ready to begin. Here's the best Blogger SEO tip you need!

It will take several days for the search engines to recognize the change, but you should see an increase in your traffic soon. To earmark when you made this change, if you use Google Analytics, then place an annotation in your Analytics dashboard to reflect when you fixed your template. Please note that you may not yet have the tab in your Google Analytics dashboard to do annotations. It's a new feature, so it may be a while before it reaches your dashboard. For now, at least mark your calendar as to when you made the SEO fix so you will see exactly how the change has improved your blog traffic!

Happy blogging! :)


Using Google Alerts to Increase Traffic

Saturday 16 Jan 2010 by Tammara Nelson | 2 Comments
Filed under: Keyword Strategies Tags: ,

Got blog? Need more traffic to your blog? Like me, most likely you could use more traffic! Here's a quick tip on getting more traffic by making use of a basic free tool combined with your comments added to other blogs.

  1. Head on over to Google Alerts and make use of their free tool, shown in the image below.
  2. Type in your keyword phrase or term into the text field near the top.
  3. Select the type of search (should be "blog" search if your goal is to comment on freshly published blog posts, but you can do other searches as well).
  4. Select the frequency for the search, which can be as frequent as, "Up to the Minute"!
  5. Enter your email address to receive the notifications from Google.
  6. From the results of your keyword search, head on over to the blog results where you can then leave a comment, which will hopefully be linked to your blog url.
  7. Sit back and watch your traffic increase over time from your added efforts each day you use this strategy!

By signing up for specific keyword alerts, you have a greater opportunity to be the first to comment on some blogs that may have just published a fresh post about your blog topic. In that many blog templates have the first comments stored top to bottom, your comment will be the first one their readers will view! This of course, could result in more traffic to your blog, and that's a good thing! Happy blogging! :)
google-alerts5


Make Money with Blogger and Amazon Associates

Friday 8 Jan 2010 by Tammara Nelson | No Comments
Filed under: Blogger, Make Money Blogging Tags: , ,

Got blog in Blogger? Did you notice in your dashboard you can now monetize your Blogger blog with your Amazon associates account, or register to add the Amazon associate ads in your Blogger blog? Prior to December 2009 you were of course able to publish Amazon associates advertisements on your Blogger blogs, but the task is now integrated into your Blogger dashboard, which makes it much easier.

Simply go into your Blogger dashboard and select the blog you want to monetize with Amazon. The option is in the same area that you're familiar with if you're publishing Adsense on your blogs. Here's a screen shot to get you started, and you can read about the additional details on Blogger Buzz.

Blogger with Amazon


Blog TV Your Way to the Top

Thursday 7 Jan 2010 by Tammara Nelson | No Comments
Filed under: Blogosphere News Tags:

Have you checked out the site Blog tv? Looks like they're going to give both YouTube and sites like MySpace a very competitive run. On Blog tv you can create your very own people page, and add your videos. Looks snazzier than YouTube, and appears to be a hangout for bloggers and the like. So go check out Blog tv, where you can have your own television style scheduled broadcasting!


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