If you have a blog on your own domain using the Blogger platform and wish to submit a XML sitemap in your Google Webmaster dashboard, it’s not difficult to do. In one of my earlier posts I provided the code for submitting your sitemap, and today I’ve updated the post to provide you with the ability to submit a larger XML sitemap for Blogger.
Got blog on Blogger? And, you are using a custom domain; or in other words you have your own domain name registered, and that’s the url where your blog is. Did you set up your sitemap? Yes, you can create a sitemap for your blog on the Blogger platform, on your custom domain. It’s easy to do, so let’s get started!
Google Webmaster Sitemap
4. Once you open the “Sitemaps” link you then select the, “Submit a Sitemap” button.
5. In the url box, add the url shown below in the field following your custom domain, without spaces.
feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated
Your url should end up looking like this, without spaces:
http://www.yourcustomdomain.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated
As soon as you complete the feed url, Google will create your sitemap. You’re done! Don’t be startled if you only have the most recent 26 blog posts in your sitemap. That seems to be the standard for the Blogger custom domain platform sitemap. However, keep in mind that Google also doesn’t index every url submitted in a sitemap. This is normal, so again don’t be alarmed if you don’t see every url indexed when looking at your sitemap results in your Google dashboard.
If someone knows a seo-friendly hack to cause Google to generate a sitemap with more than 26 urls for the Blogger platform, let us know! UPDATED EDIT: Here’s how to submit larger sitemaps for your blog on Blogger.
If you haven’t already done so, use the code above for your first sitemap. Now go back to your sitemap settings (in Google Webmaster dashboard) for the blog you wish to add a larger sitemap for.
Select to “Add a Sitemap” to add additional sitemaps for larger blogs. Here’s the secret codes you need. For a blog with more than 25 urls, but less than 100, you would create your second sitemap like this:
http://yourblogurl/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=100
To add more than 100 urls, but less than 200, then add yet another sitemap using this code:
http://yourblogurl/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=101&max-results=200
Got even more than 200 posts? Simply continue to add more sitemaps by changing the “101&max-results=200″ accordingly.
There you have it! The easy way to quickly generate a sitemap for your custom domain using the Blogger platform! Once your additional sitemaps have been added in Blogger, and the Googlebot has completed the crawl, you’ll see something like this in your Google Webmaster dashboard:
Once your blog urls exceed the next sitemap level, you’ll begin to see more “indexed url’s”, however again as mentioned above, Google will not show all of your urls indexed for each sitemap you submit. It’s just the way it is, so don’t fret – lol. Special thanks to ampercent, where I found the additional codes for submitting the larger xml sitemaps for blogs with more than 25 urls. 
We all share the same human emotion known as impatience, and it’s fueled by the push-button society in which we live. For some bloggers, impatience has become their worst enemy with their approach to link exchange and link baiting, which has led them to participate in mini link farms for link exchange.
With the Google’s page rank updates just around the corner, there are many who have used damaging link exchange strategies in their attempt to create large quantities of incoming links quickly. Patience is a virtue when it comes to building links to our blogs, but many have given in to impatience. What are these mini link farms for link exchange that I’m referring to?
First off, let’s look at some clarification as to what a link farm is, and how the following examples are indeed link farms. This particular source I found with an article on How Not to Get Banned by Google, described a link farm well:
Link Farms, or Free-for-all links pages exist solely to help listed sites gain higher search engine rankings.
Some are referred to as viral links (not to be confused with the healthy type of viral linking). The format of one type I’ve seen creates links by using a series of asterisks, but unfortunately to begin with those could be viewed by Google as hidden text and links.
Other link strategies I’m referring to, which fall into the link farm category are the ones where you are instructed to copy and paste a massive list of blog urls into a blog post, or as mentioned above, create links from a character such as an asterisk. Most likely you’ve seen them, and hopefully you haven’t participated in any of them. So, how did those mini link farms come about, which have influenced so many bloggers to copy and paste hundreds of links within a blog post, in hopes to exchanging links with the masses?
I have my own theory, and you can call me crazy if you wish, but here goes. The blogosphere has grown immensely, and some webmasters are perhaps not so pleased with all the competition that has risen around them. What if one of those bloggers or webmasters convinced some bloggers to participate in link farms for link exchange to run them out of the index? What if they then were successful at leading thousands of blogs to slaughter by leading them to believe the copy and paste strategy of links within a blog post was good, when instead it is a link farm? Perhaps by doing so they figured it was a good way to eliminate a large amount of competition by knocking them down the Google index – or seeing them removed from the index altogether? Hmm, I may be way off on my theory, but it’s worth the time to type this paragraph.
If you’re reading this, I’m hoping for the sake of your blog that you decide to only participate in building links with a natural approach, and preferably within relevant content. Yes, the natural approach is sloooooower than the copy and paste mini link farms, but the natural approach is good for your site because it’s within content, and you won’t be screaming the link exchange blues in the long run. And, if you’ve participated in those link farms it’s unfortunately impossible to take back all those links from the farms that bred them, so the ill affects could be long term.
Sure, you may have actually seen an improvement in your page rank since participating in the link farms, but Google has filters set up to catch up to that in the long run. If they determine a person has received links by spamming the index, then the page rank gained for a short while will not be worth it! One only has to study the patent Google established for their page ranking system to realize that eventually they will catch up to those who have their blog url’s copy and pasted into the mini link farm blog posts published all over the blogosphere.
In that I choose to build my links from natural methods within relevant content, there are days when I get frustrated with the painfully slow process it seems to be. This is especially true when I look at a blog at say a PR 4 that has participated in what I consider to be mini link farms; with the copy and pasting of massive links within one blog post as mentioned above — yet here I am at a PR 3 utilizing only the natural approach. As they say though, “Slow and steady will win the race!” so my reward will come in due time.
This all boils down to another reason why I look forward to building many more members for Link & Blog Challenge — so we all have a steady and consistent routine to the natural organic link building strategy with a large variety of members who wish to link within relevant content.
If you’ve been looking for links in all the wrong places, and need to change your tune come find out what we’re all about in our blogging community. Although the natural approach is slower, it is better, and at least there you would find that blog link exchange can be as fun as a game!
Developing link popularity still seems to be a mystery to many bloggers, yet it really isn’t that difficult to understand when one realizes that links exchanged within sidebars carry very little weight, and add very little value to a blog.
Many bloggers are still running around on the Internet in hopes to exchange links within their sidebar, and they are overlooking the fact that since they have a blog they have a more superior way to gain links. I’m sure this is due to the fact that many are simply still unaware that linking within relevant content is far more valuable to a blogger. Time goes by quickly, and most of us need to spend it where we gain the most value in return, and that is true with the time we spend developing our link popularity.
One way to express the difference would be to ask a blogger this question, “If there were two bills laying on the ground at your feet, one is a twenty and the other is a one dollar bill, and it is a windy day, which bill are you going to grab first?” It’s no different with developing our link popularity!
Time is flying by so we should be investing our time into developing our link popularity as quickly as we can, but in the manner that will provide the most value to our blogs. That’s the foundation in which Link & Blog Challenge is built upon and it also provides a blogger with fresh inspiration at the same time.
The basis for understanding the foundation in which blogs have the advantage over other websites with building their link popularity within relevant content is revealed to us right off Google’s site in their webmaster center! Google states,
Keep in mind that our algorithms can distinguish natural links from unnatural links. Natural links to your site develop as part of the dynamic nature of the web when other sites find your content valuable, and think it would be helpful for their visitors. Unnatural links to your site are placed there specifically to make your site look more popular to search engines.
Did you catch that? Google is looking to reward sites whose content provides value to a visitor, which also means Google themselves will pay close attention to your links within content! It does NOT say “when other sites find your sidebar links valuable”, but instead it says, “when other sites find your CONTENT valuable”! Blogs are content rich, and your primary focus for building links should be within your content.
I think this next statement about sums it up when thinking in terms of developing your links, “Nowadays search engines reward sweat-of-the-brow work on content that bait natural links given by choice.” which is stated on Google’s official webmaster blog!If you would like an easy way to establish link popularity from links pointing to your site within relevant content daily, in other words through the natural way, that is my goal to help bloggers establish and the reason I began Link and Blog Challenge!
Since we are all interested in building good SEO (search engine optimization) for our blogs, I decided to provide you with some great links for SEO tools. I will add links to this post in the future for our reference. Here’s how you can easily find this post in the future to refer back to it:
Locate the Category titled: “Blog Master Tools” and you will then be able to locate this list. Please let me know too if you have some suggestions on sites to add to this list! For starters, here’s the beginning of our SEO Tools link list!
Google Analytics
A terrific tool with many eye openers about your site. My only disappointment with this service is the fact that they do not provide enough details in regards to the referer when the visitor came to your site from an organic search result, and even if it was from a search in Google! 
Google Blog Search
Read about Googles Blog Search service
Google Blog Search Ping
To add your blogs to the Google Blog search index, you’ll want to use their ping service
Google Rankings
Note: You will need to contact Google to obtain your API key to use this tool
