How to install new templates without losing widgets

It's frustrating to install a new template on your blog if you lose all your widgets. Here's how to avoid this problem and keep your old widgets on the blog when you install new templates. Don't worry, there's no coding involve. You just have to know where to copy and paste codes in your old template into your new template file.

1. Save your current template first
This is a must. Save the old one first just in case something screws up and you need to get back to the old template.

2. Use a text editor
Don't do any coding in the Blogger Editor; it's too easy to mess things up. Get a text editor to do any code tweaking on your computer. If you have no idea what to use, just use Notepad++. Download the latest Notepad++ Installer.exe file. It's free and it makes it easier for you to do your coding.

3. Open up the old and new template XML files in the text editor
Open them up because you'll need to copy some codes in the old template and paste them in the new template files. These codes that you'll copy and paste are basically the codes for your widgets. You don't have to understand what's going on inside the code; you just have to know where it is and what widget it is for.

4. Find out where the codes are located
Look at the image below. See the tag? Click on the image to make it larger. All the codes above this tag are mostly CSS, the type of code that controls the appearance (colors, fonts) of your blog. You don't need to copy/paste anything in this section.

The codes below the tag is the main XML code for your blog. Basically, it's the part that controls the layout (where the sidebars, widgets, headers are) and controls the data flow from Blogger into your blog. This is where all the codes for the widgets you want to save are located.

All your widgets are coded within the tag ... . All the tags must be located within the ... tag. The structure looks something like this:

The above is a sample code on how a widget code looks like in a template XML file. The main location of the widget is identified with the div id label. In this case, div id=sidebar-wrapper. Below the div id is the b:section tag. All widgets must be located within this b:section tag. You don't need to worry if you don't understand much about the div or b:section thingy. The important tag you have to know is the b:widget tag. Note that you can put as many widgets as you want inside the b:section tags.

Here's an actual example of a widget tag embedded inside a b:section tag. The location is sidebar-wrapper, meaning that the widget is placed inside one of the sidebars in the blog. The widget is an image widget, as you can see it being labeled id='Image1'.

 The most important thing to note is that the widget code starts with the tag and closed with the tag. This is the single most important thing you have to know when copying/pasting later on.Remember also that the widget is placed after the tag and closed with the tag.

Here's another example. The widget is a Linklist widget. You don't have to know the codes inside the widget tag because you won't have to change anything in there.

 

5. Copy and paste the widgets into new template file
Identify all the widgets you want to keep in your blog after template installation. Locate their codes in the old template file. Remember, these are the codes within the tags and must be close properly with . Copy the codes for a widget that you want to keep and paste them in the new template file, within the tags at the location of your choice. Make sure the b:widget and b:section tags are closed properly.

If you don't know the div id location you want to paste them in, just put them in any div id, but must be inside a b:section tag. It'll then show up as a widget in the Layout > Page Elements page (as in the image below) and you can then drag and drop the widgets to any new location.

6. Upload the new template as your new blog layoutOnce you've pasted all the widgets you want into your new template, upload the new template into your blog using the upload button shown below.


7. If not sure, test this technique on a test blog firstIf you're not sure whether it'll work out okay, try it first in a test blog. Create a test blog with a few junk posts (lorem ipsum), create some widgets, and then try changing into new templates using the technique above. See if you can make it work.

Info : http://www.ourblogtemplates.comOurblogtemplates.com

Posted on 02:51 / 0 comments / Read More

Customized Meta Tags SEO for Blogger

In this article, you'll learn how to add meta tags Blogger blog. It's not as simple as a Wordpress blog that can be aggregated into a single package of SEO plugins, but bloggers does not support plugins. Meta tags and title tags make, description, etc., very important and have essential functions. You can add custom meta tags and title tags using Web tools. Using custom these tags, it will boost your Keyword status and Search engine top rankings. Below are the manually custom Meta Tags and you can edit following useful HTML code to the header section <head>

 

In view of the above home page code now you want to make HTML Meta tags code for you Blogger post, you have to make  new code every time when you create a new post see the following code.

 Replace the "http" text with URL of your blogger post and own Keywords and Description, and paste it in your blogger HTML Header section. So from this time whenever you post a new article, just change the second code with your own article URL, keywords and description. Now you are done and ok your final custom Meta Tags looking like below :

This article will be very profitable for you and you can make easy custom Meta Tags for your blogger blog and you can increase Traffic more and more and also I mention that when you want to make new post chose popular description and keywords for the post and make every custom Meta tags for every post. Now I want to give you one example I have used in Blog Blogger training post. 

 

Posted on 09:32 / 0 comments / Read More

Free Contact Form For Blogger

By this useful article you will teach that how you insert contact form in free blog blogger. I have found and searched that lot of free services are available in this regard. You will be able to find fairly only some of them. I think two are best services, Google Docs and Zoho Creator.  If you want to insert contact form in free blog blogger your blog will show professional look due to contact form. Now I describe following two services step by step suggestions and tips how you insert contact form in free blog blogger.If you want to insert Login Form click here.

1. Google Docs
 

2.  Zoho Creators

1. Google Docs

1. First go to http://docs.google.com/  and then you should be  Signup to Google account with gmail after that  if you have any problem in signup procedure look at the picture has given below:

 

2.    After that create a new spreadsheet and then click on the tab Form and then click create form for more guideline look at the picture has given below:

 

 

 

 

3.      Now insert your questions and name properly and check the box make this a required questions anywhere. For the comment box, choose Question Type as Paragraph text for more guidance look at the picture has given below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4.     After that you are complete, save the form. Now check the box "Custom confirmation message" and type the message you want to display after the user submits the form for more information look at the picture has given below:

 

 

 

 

5.     Finally click on Embed under the Preview section to get the code. You can edit the width and height of the form by editing the parameters in the code. Whenever any user uses the form, the entries will automatically appear on the spreadsheet. The drawback of using Google doc to create the contact form is that there is no email notification. In view of the above procedure you have understood more and more and Google Doc system is very easy if you want to insert another contact form look at the Zoho Creator.

2.    Zoho Creator

1.  This is very popular and great free service signup yourself with gmail account and click on this link http://www.zoho.com/creator/ .Now login with your gmail account accordingly.  After that click create new application and in the next page name your form "Contact Form". click next.  In the next page, you will discover different fields on the left hand sheet. Drag the Single Line field to the right hand sheet. Name the label Name. Click on options and check the box "This is important field" for more guidance look at the following pictures:

 

2.     In the same way drag the Email field to make email box and the URL field to make a box. Drag the Multiline ground to make the (Comment box). Drag and insert any other basics you desire to insert to the form. Select which fields are compulsory and mark them consequently. Show the picture has given below:

3.    See more actions with carefully on the right hand sheet to expose a drop down box. Click on Form Properties, to add a completion.  Message will be put on showed after a user submits the form and verification. For more guidance follow the picture has given below:

 

 

 

4.     Another time under additional measures, click set email notification and fill-in the particulars to obtain email notification whenever users submit the form. Otherwise you will have to stay checking whether anybody had tried to contact you using the form. Make sure the box "Contain user submitted data" is to be verified. Look the sample has given below: 

 

 

 

5.   After that  you have ended making  all grounds, click access this application. On the next page click more actions, Embed in your  blogger blog. See picture below for more guidance:

 

 

 

 

 

6.   You ought to create the form available without involving of login. Click on the suitable link and you should see a message (Through this code snippet, you can access the form without login). Follow the picture has given below: 

 

 

 

 

7.    By modify objects and more looks you can further customize the form. Finally copy the code and embed it in a post on free blog  blogger. In the way, you can exercise this form on any free blog blogger like Typead  and Wordpress. Now you will see the final result of the form look at the picture has given below:

 

 

 

In view of the above both systems how to insert Contact Form in free blog blogger are very useful, if you have succeeded to insert form in blogger blog your free blog will give professional look to the other visitors and readers, if you like this article please leave your comments.

 

 

Posted on 07:29 / 0 comments / Read More

10 Link To Avoid

Google’s gold standard of whether or not a website should be ranked well continues to change over time, but for quite a while the best method has gone unchanged… relevant backlinks from legitimate, authoritative sites. On page Search Engine Optimization and lots of great content may get your site indexed for specific keywords, but quality backlinks will drive up its rank.

Since backlinks have become a known commodity, many linking scams and services continue to pop up all over the web. Don’t be persuaded in spending the money for these services. Not only will you not improve your ranking, you may be putting your websites at great risk of being dropped from search engine indexes.

Yes, there are such things as bad inbound links.

Here is a quick list of some of the types of links you DON’T want pointing at your website. This list is not to be confused with links that simply to not pass value such as links with the rel=”nofollow” attribute.

1. Don’t get links from sites that blatantly sell text links.
2. Don’t buy into link farms. You may have run across a deal like, get 1000 links for $29.95 per month. Stay away from these programs.
3. Stay away from popular link brokers like text-link-ads.com or textlinkbrokers.com. These brokers will sell you text links with the direct intent of influencing Google’s search results. This is a violation of Google’s Terms of Service.
4. You will find users on popular webmaster forums offering to sell high pagerank links. Many of these sites are created by buying expired domains with high Google PageRank values and quickly throwing up template websites with little to no value/unique content. These sites will not maintain these PageRank values as soon as Google realizes they have changed ownership and content. There are also many ways Google can identify that these simple sites are selling links.
5. Make sure your links come from US based and targeted websites if your entire target market is in the US.
6. You really don’t want links created by spam software. Most of this software leaves a footprint and it is quite easy for Google to identify.
7. You really don’t want links from junk websites. These are sites like affiliate sites that have little or no unique content.
8. Don’t post links to spam sites relating to the three P’s (porn, pills and poker). Period.
9. Avoid the temptation of posting links to a forum that the owner no longer effectively manages and that is full of spam.
10. Avoid the temptation to add and publish your URL in link memes. A meme is a growing list of links that passes from one site to another for the sole purpose of sharing links and pagerank across the list of participants.

These are just ten of the types of links you don’t want, but this list is not all inclusive.

Info : Marketing Tech Blog

Posted on 06:54 / 0 comments / Read More

SEO Tips for Blogspot and Improve Search Engine Rankings

10 Easy SEO Tips for Blogspot Bloggers to Improve Search Engine Rankings

1. Make Your Title Tags Search Engine Friendly

One of the most important tweaks necessary for Blogspot Blogs is theadjustment of the title tags of your website because Blogger.com by default has not optimized these for search engines. To prove this point navigate to an individual post on your blog and you will see that the blogname appears first in the title bar at the top of your browser followed by the post name. As search engines place greater value on the first words of an entry this puts your site at a disadvantage in search engine results. Fortunately it is easy to reverse the blog name and the post name with a simple tweak.

2. Create Search Engine Friendly Permalinks
Blogger automatically generates a permalink based on the title of your post each time you make a post. For this reason it is important tocraft your title carefully. Permalinks are sometimes less than ideal especially if you have a long title. Take for example the following permalink for one of my posts:

http://digitalinfotech.blogspot.com/2009/02/improved-permalinks-for-blogger-posts.html

You will see that it is search engine friendly in that in contains 2 keywords blogger and permalinks. However you may be surprised to know that How to Create Search Engine Friendly Permalinks for Blogger Posts is actually the title of this post not Improved Permalinks for Blogger Posts. I have initially used a title that is keyword rich and then after publishing gone back and entered a more descriptive title. No matter how many times I change the title the original permalink remains. If I had entered the second title straight away I may have ended up with the following permalink:

http://digitalinfotech.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-to-create-search-engine-friendly.html

Not very pretty is it? And as you can see the whole point of the post is lost.

3. Add a Social Networking Button to Your Blog
By adding a Social Bookmarking button to your website you will enable visitors to your blog to create links to popular social bookmarking sites such as Google, Technorati, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Stumble Upon, Reddit, Delicious, Furl, Yahoo etc. This means that visitors to your site will be able share these links with others thereby helping you attract more traffic to your site and encourage return visits.

Another benefit of a social bookmarking button is that you will be able to identify visitor trends and social bookmarking behaviour on your site. 

4. Submit a Sitemap of Your Blog to Popular Search Engines
If attracting traffic to your site is important to you then it is imperative that you ensure that your Blogger (Blogspot) blog isproperly indexed by popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. One way to expedite this is to submit a sitemap to each of three major search engines. Please refer to my tutorials on website submission, authenticating your site and adding your site feed to Yahoo Site Explorer, Google Webmaster Tools and MSN Tools.

Google - Submit Your Blogspot Blog Sitemap to Google

Yahoo - Submit Your Blogspot Blog to Yahoo

MSN - Submit Blogger Sitemap to MSN Live Search

5. Build Quality Links

If you want to rank highly in Google and other search engines then you need to generate quality in-bound links. That doesn't mean exchanging links with everything and everyone as I see some new webmasters do. A few quality links from authoritative sites will boost your page rankings quickly and are far superior to a bunch of links from low ranking sites.

There are several good ways to generate links to your blog. One easy way is to to submit your site to blog directories. Another way to cultivate in-bound links is to submit your best articles to article directories. A third possibility is to actively participate in forums and on other related blogs where commenting affords you the option of adding a link to your site.

I would recommend linking to DMOZ (Open Directory Project). Care needs to be taken to submit your site to the correct subject area. Becoming listed can take awhile so patience is needed.


6. Write Quality Content and Post Frequently

If you have read any articles on the subject of Blogging and SEO you will no doubt have observed writers emphasising the importance ofquality content. I can't stress enough how much return visits depend on providing inducements to visitors to come back. If your site content is well written and informative half the battle is won. Make sure you post frequently so that visitors can see the value of subscribing in a reader. Take some care with the presentation of your content and images as this will present a professional image. Avoid common pitfalls like bad grammar and spelling mistakes which stand out like a sore toe and detract from a visitor's overall positive experience of your site.

One leading professional blogger Yaro Starak recommends the use of pillar articles. These are articles that don't change over time and continue to attract visitors. The best pillar articles explain some concept, provide definitions, give advice or present some argument. Your site needs to have at least 5 pillar articles and more if you can manage it. Pillar articles need to be more than 500 words long, crafted to generate interest and provide a welcome resource to your visitors.

7. Ensure Your Content is Keyword Rich

Apart from the quality of your content there is the question of keyword density. The more keyword rich your posts are the greater the likelihood they will appear higher in search engine results. This means it is worth the effort of crafting your content in such a way that you make use of important keywords and keyword phrasesfrequently used. Don't go overboard however as Google is smart enough to recognise if your pages are littered with keywords and nothing much else. A useful free SEO tool to help you optimise your site using keywords and labels is Google Adwords. Another good tool to help you quickly craft keyword rich material is Live Keyword Analysis which assesses the keyword density of keywords and keyword phrases of any post you paste into the analysis box.

When writing posts make sure your opening sentence describes what the article is about and contains your keywords and keyword phrases. It is important that your first sentence is keyword rich as search engines like Google give more emphasis to content at the beginning of the post. Also it is worth including a short ending statement about the content of the post as there is some evidence that Google also places value on the content at the end of the post.

8. Manage Your Feeds Carefully

Feeds help your visitors find your site so they need to be managed carefully in order to make the most of them. Your site feeds are an important way to create backlinks too. Backlinks from authoritative sites are highly valuable and can boost your page ranking. For information about showing backlinks please refer to the Blogger Help Article About Backlinks

Ensure you have your RSS feed icons clearly visible for visitors to see. The most superior positioning of the feed icons on your site is in the header. Watch out for coming tutorials on how to improve positioning of RSS feed links.

You can redirect your feed to a feedburning service like Feedburner and then add a chicklet to your site (orange RSS feed button) so that the feed is instantly available on click.

If you haven't burnt your feed you can try adding a Subscription Links widget to a sidebar too to encourage visitors to subscribe to your site in popular on-line readers such as Google Reader. You will find the Subscription Links widget available under the list of gadgets.

Display your most recent posts by configuring a feed widget. UnderLayout > Page Elements add a feed gadget to a sidebar. Enter the URL of the default feed of your site which will be:

http://yoursitename.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Enter Recent Posts in the title and then Save. For more information about adding a posts feed widget to a sidebar please refer to my article Add a Recent Posts Feed to a Blogger Blog

You can do the same for comments if you wish to have a list ofrecent comments displayed in your sidebar. In this case you would enter:

http://yoursitename.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default

Ensure you set up your site feeds to show the full text. To check this navigate to Settings > Site Feeds and select yes from the dropdown box for all three feeds.

Consider having a feed specifically for a popular label if it contains 20 or more posts.


9. Optimize Your Use of Images

Chances are you don't give a thought to images when you insert them into your posts but images can be optimized by careful use offilenames and the alt attribute. When naming images avoid long names. Instead give your images distinctive filenames rather than something generic like 00045.jpg which has no meaning.

The alt attribute allows you to specify what text is displayed when a visitor's mouse hovers over an image. The alt attribute also gets displayed if the image is not available for some reason. By optimizing your alt attributes you are increasing the likelihood of your images appearing in Google Image Searches.

Optimizing your alt attributes is easy. Every time you insert an image into a post look for the alt attribute which will be empty by default

style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 122px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt=""src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/abcdeefgBxA/4560/sidebar-add-this-bookmark-button.JPG" border="0" />

Fill in the alt attribute with a useful description of your image

style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 122px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="Blog Know How Sidebar Showing Add This Bookmark Button" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/abcdeefgBxA/4560/sidebar-add-this-bookmark-button.JPG" border="0" />

Depending on the subject of your site you can gain a lot of traffic from the images you post on your site. The more unique the content of your site the greater the likelihood that your traffic will stem from images. Without going overboard ensure you have a good mix of images to support your articles.


10. Take Advantage of Web Analytics Services

Having implemented some strategies to improve crawling and indexing of your site by search engine giants Google, Yahoo and MSN chances are you will want to see how these changes have impacted on the traffic reaching your site. Web Analytics programs are a valuable tool for gaining insight into visitor behaviour and trends. The kind of information that a program like Google Analytics will provide is:

how users reach and behave on your site

the most popular content on your site

the impact of optimizations you make to your site (e.g. by how much did changing the order of title tags improve traffic from search engines?)

To integrate Google Analytics into your Blogger (Blogspot) blog please refer to my articles Track Visitors to Your Blogger Blog and Add Google Analytics to Blogger Blog
This article has discussed 10 easy ways to build site traffic and improve SEO for Blogger (Blogspot) Bloggers by addressing the following areas: feeds, images, social bookmarking, title tags, permalinks, content, analytics, submitting your blog to search engines. 

Info : BlogKnowHow

Posted on 06:29 / 0 comments / Read More

How to Optimize Blogger Post Title

Search Engine Optimization is essential, and its important to also know how you optimize your site. So here is a one good way how you can optimize or tune your blog post title to be user friendly for search engines to pick your site up on the top page results.

Normally when you are reffered by Search engine you'll notice or about to notice that in Search Engine results your blog title appears first and than appears your blog post title. There is a way how we can optimize this by allowing our Blog Post title to appear at the right first and than the Blog Title. So here is the hack how you can do this.


1 - Login to Blogger account with your ID
2 - Click on Layout
3 - Click on Edit HTML Tab
4 - Find for this line of code before the head section ends (hint: use Ctrl+F)



5 - Now replace the above code with the following code



6 - Now Save and Finish.

Now if you notice by viewing one of your blog post to see that your blog title will appear first and than your Blog title at the end.

Posted on 08:00 / 0 comments / Read More