Freedom Wall

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Index Your Blog Posts Automatically to Google Search

Author: ian | Posted at: 12:26 PM | Filed Under: Blogger tutorial, SEO Tip

Google is the most powerful search engine today. It is where most internet savvies around the world type and click and is ranked no. 1 by Alexa web ranking.

If you have a blog and wanted to create significant visitors to your blog, you must allow Google to crawl and index your blog posts and articles and be searchable. To be able to do this, try using Google Webmaster, a great tool that will automatically inform Google about your blog updates. By this, your articles will be indexed to Google search, making it available to all internet browsers worldwide.

Sign up to Google webmaster tools now. Then start adding your site's URL (make sure that you have submitted your URL to Google. If not Click here to submit. Take note that it make take up to 5 days for Google search to index your page). You can still proceed adding your site and make sure to verify ownership. You have an option to use a meta tag or by uploading an HTML file to verify. For blogger users, a meta tag is the only option.

In order to verify your blogger site, copy the meta tag provided. In a separate window or tab, open layout tab in your blogger account and click edit HTML sub-tab. Find this code <head> (you can use Ctrl F) and paste the meta tag provided by webmaster right beside or below the <head> code. The code may appear as shown below.

(Click image to see actual size)

This may not take effect instantly, but will be very useful for your future posts to be indexed and crawled in Google search. Enjoy blogging, feed others mind and share your ideas to anybody who always wanted to earn new ideas.

How to Fix "Google Error 404" for Blogger Custom Domain

Author: ian | Posted at: 11:41 AM | Filed Under: Blogger tutorial, customize domain

Have you purchased from Google a custom domain for your blogger but a "Google Error 404: The Requested URL / was not found on this server" appears when opening your domain in your browser? At first, I cannot believed when it happened to me. I was able to use my custom domain before, so I was shocked when one time, such error occurred. I tried my best to trouble shoot and below is the solution I found.

♦ When you purchase a custom domain for your blogger using Google, it is bundled with Google Apps. Before proceeding, please check first your Google Account dashboard by opening it at

http://www.google.com/a/YOURCUSTOMDOMAIN.com

my account for example is...

http://www.google.com/a/freedomwall.net

and make sure you do not use www for your apps (see my screen shots below)

♦ If you used www for any of your apps such as your site (i.e www.yourcustomdomain.com) change it with either www1, web etc. (I assume that your host is blogger.com and not Google Sites)

♦ Log-in to your enom account to change or check your DNS records by clicking 'Domain Settings' tab, 'Domain Name' sub tab and then 'Advanced DNS Settings'. A new page will open and click 'Sign in to DNS Console' (see my screen shot below)

♦ Sign in to your enom account using your domain and password provided. Make sure to assign host www to ghs.google.com and to YOURCUSTOMDOMAIN.com. If such addresses are not assigned, click edit and add new. (see my screen shot for reference)

I hope this may help for those who are still experiencing such errors. Contact me for further assistance by leaving a comment below this post

How to Insert Adsense Ads to Blogger Post Body

Author: ian | Posted at: 11:38 AM | Filed Under: Adsense, Blogger tutorial

One way to maximize your earnings is to show you must have a good location of all your ads. You may use your sidebars for your ad space but your readers may just negate it specially those who only after the contents of your post or articles. With that, there will be lesser clicks and slower income returns.

The best location for your ads is to paste it inside your content block...(See the ad space just above the first paragraph of this article and below the post title). In that location, I am sure that my readers will first noticed the ads and if its enticing, they will surely hit it.

If you want to include or insert an ad in your content block just like mine, you may follow the procedure below. Take note that I was able to test only two advertisement platform for this settings and it works with BidVertiser and Google Adsense. But is you are using other providers, you may follow the same procedure for your experiment.

1. First You must generate you Adsense and/or BidVertiser code. ( For Adsense users, always remember that there are only three Adsense blocks allowed in every space, the fourh one will certainly not appear)

2. Paste the code in any editor such as notepad and change all < with < , all > with > and all " with " or to make it simple, open POSTABLE by clicking here, paste the code then click "make it friendly" in the bottom-right of the page. See image below.

3. Log-in to your Blogger Account

4. Click "Layouts" followed by "Edit HTML"

5. Back-up your Templates by clicking "Download Full Template". (Just in case of unintentional deletion of some contents)

6. Tick "Expand Widget Templates"

7. Find this code

<div class='post-body entry-content'>

8. Copy the code generated after performing procedure 2 and paste it above the code in procedure 7 then save the template. (See image below)

If you want to post the Ads below the article the paste the article below this code <p><data:post.body/></p>

Blogger Template Customization Made Easy

Author: ian | Posted at: 11:32 AM | Filed Under: Blogger tutorial

One reason why many visit one's blog, aside from the interesting posts is the appearance of the blog. It should be inviting, easy to navigate and has a good layout. Classic templates offered on blogger don't usually give too much space and size and some latest applications are not compatible to it. And one great solution for this is to customize your template into a more pleasant to see and more spaces and columns for your third party tools.

Here are the easy steps you must follow. The steps below are basically designed for the newbies and those non newbies but wanted to say goodbye from their classic templates.

1. First, you must download a template you want. Many website offer free blogger templates such as btemplates.com and bloggertemplatesfree.com. Choose the templates that is best suited from your posts and topics you tackle in your blog. Click on the templates you like and you will be directed to another page where you have the option to download or preview the template. If you have decided to use the template, download then save it. The file that will be saved is a zip file of folder. Open the zip folder and look for the file with dot xml (.xml) extension and copy it into a new folder or storage that is easy for you to find. If there is no options to copy the open your 'My Documents' folder then drag the xml file into it.

2. Proceed to your 'layout' tab and make a back-up of all your tools and widgets (html and javascripts) in your side, bottom, or top bar. Copy their respective html/scripts into your notepad or word pad.

3. Under the 'layout' tab, click on 'edit html' sub tab, then click browse and hit upload. Click 'confirm and save'. A warning will show up but don't worry if you have lost these tools/widgets. You can still add it anytime since you have a back up from all of it as what is instructed from procedure 2.

4. Click 'SAVE TEMPLATE' bar at the bottom of the page and then your new template is ready. You can go back to your page elements by clicking 'page elements' sub tab under 'layout' tab. Add your widgets again from procedure 2 to your desired column.

If you like to change your favicon, CLICK HERE. For those who have previously changed their favicon, you have to repeat the procedure.

If you have some questions about blogger to clear, just leave it in the comment form below. I will do my best to find you an answers. Who knows, someone who may read it might give you the clarifications. You can also subscribe to my email list below to receive updates. Answers may be posted as new articles