How to add a Custom Favicon to your Blogger blog - Official

The favicon should be in .ico format, popularly known as windows ICO (icon) file format and should be less than 10kb. The best and appropriate sizes are 16×16 pixels and 32×32 pixels. You can easily create one with any photo editing software but most of them don’t allow the image to be saved in icon format. In that case you can save your image in .png format and use any online tool to generate favicon or use GIMP, a small but powerful photo editing software, to create one. Name the file as “favicon” and save it in you computer’s hard drive.
After you have successfully created the favicon, all is left for you is to add it to Blogger by clicking the “Edit” link beside “Favicon” as shown in the picture above. Choose the file that you have saved on your hard disk and “Save” it.

To be noted

• After saving the settings for your custom favicon, you may not be able to see it immediately while viewing your blog. This happens because the default Blogger favicon remains there in your browser’s cache. To view it, clear your browser’s cache or wait for sometime or days to expire and get deleted by itself.
• Your blog’s favicon URL is:

http://your-blog.blogspot.com/favicon.ico

By Raju

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How to Remove/Disable/Hide the Navbar in Blogger Blogs

Most of you know what the Navbar in Blogger is, that's why you're here : )

For those who don't, its the small toolbar that sits at the very top of a Blogger page which allows navigation of the blog and also search and login.

The Navbar is useful, but doesn't look great, that's why so many bloggers choose to remove/hide the blogger Navbar from their site. Disabling this feature is easier than you may think, and can give your blog a much more professional and unique look.

The below steps will take you through the simple process of disabling/hiding the navabar on your blogger blog...

(I am using the new blogger dashboard, but it is very similar on the old)

1. Sign in to your blogger account and select your blog. Go to Template then go to Edit HTML and select Proceed.

2. At the top section of code you will see your template info and under that you should see Variable definitions.

Copy this code:
#navbar-iframe { display: none !important; }
and paste it BELOW the template info ABOVE Variable definitions as shown in the picture below..

3. Preview your changes to make sure your blog is running correctly before you save.

4. Save your template, done.

I hope this simple tweak helps you to remove your Navbar. Any feedback will be gratefully received : )

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What are Backlinks and How are they used? Off Page Optimization

Backlinks, also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links, are incoming links to a website or web page. 

In basic link terminology, a backlink is any link received by a web node (web page, directory, website, or top level domain) from another web node.

Inbound links as votes

Inbound links were originally important (prior to the emergence of search engines) as a primary means of web navigation; today, their significance lies in search engine optimization (SEO). The number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page (for example, this is used by Google to determine the PageRank of a web page). Outside of SEO, the backlinks of a web page may be of significant personal, cultural or semantic interest: they indicate who is paying attention to that page.
Wikipedia



How do backlinks effect search rankings?

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What are Meta Tags and Meta Data?

Definition and Usage: 
Meta data is information about data.
The <meta> tag provides meta data about the HTML document. Meta data will not be displayed on the page, but will be machine parsable.

Meta elements are typically used to specify page description, keywords, author of the document, last modified, and other metadata.

The <meta> tag always goes inside the head element.

The meta data can be used by browsers (how to display content or reload page), search engines (keywords), or other web services.

Example Meta Tags:

<head>
<meta name="description" content="Free Web tutorials" />
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML,CSS,XML,JavaScript" />
<meta name="author" content="Andy Banks" />
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
</head>

Above is an average set of meta tags which should work on most sites. Including platforms like blogger.

One Problem
This type of meta tag may cause duplicate content. Why? because this meta tag will only set to your home page, and it will be duplicated across the rest of your pages unless you add unique meta tags to every single page.

Duplicate data in your site will seriously effect your google search and page rankings.

How do you fix the duplication issue?
well, you can use dynamic meta tags. Dynamic meta tags will automatically assign individual tags to each of your pages (usually using your title and keywords tags, to create unique description tags). This will stop search engines classing your page as duplicate content.

Sites built using programs like WordPress can use plugins for implementing metatags.

Add Meta Tags to your Blogger blog
If you would like to add Meta Tags to your Blogger blog that wont duplicate data, then follow the link below to the guide...

Blogger: How to add Dynamic Meta Tags to your Blog

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Blogger: How to Add Dynamic Meta tags To Your Blog

Meta Tags are key to the success in search engines for any website or blog. If you have not already, you should add Meta Tags.

This post will show you how to add Meta Tags to your Blogger page which will create unique tags rather than creating duplicate content.

How to Add Dynamic Meta Tags

1. Log in to your blogger account >>Design >> Edit HTML
(Make sure you backup your template before editing)

2. Find this tag by using Ctrl+F

<b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>

3. Paste below code after the above tag

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'>
<meta content='ADD YOUR WEBSITE DESCRIPTION HERE' name='description'/>
<meta content='ADD YOUR KEYWORDS HERE' name='keywords'/>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;index&quot;'>
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> ~ <data:blog.title/></title>
</b:if>

4. Replace PUT YOUR WHATEVER HERE with your description and keywords.

5. Click Preview to see if your page loads correctly before committing to changes.

6. Save Template and exit. Done

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How to add Google Adsense Ads to Blogger Below Post Title, Above Content or Below Content Area

Adding Adsense ads below post title or above content area is definately a good way to increase your CTR ( click through rate ) in Blogger. Also, if you've placed it in your blogger post above the fold, you will receive higher CPM rates than at the bottom of your page below the fold area of your blogger blog. This technique of placing Adsense within a post is a great way of getting more targeted ads to your site, thus, more clicks on ads.

Before you start I just want to tell you a couple of good ad units that work well below blogger posts...

    Large Rectangle (336 x 280) - Recommended First

    Medium Rectangle (300 x 250) - Recommended Second

These Ad formats are highly recomended. You can also choose to align your ads to the left, right or center using float.

So lets get started : )...

How to add Google Adsense Ad Below Blogger Post Title

1. If you want to show your Google Adsense ad BELOW your Blogger post title on the LEFT side, then copy the below Code...
(Replace YOUR ADSENSE CODE HERE with your Ad Code)

<div style="float: left; margin: 10px 10px 10px 0;">
YOUR ADSENSE CODE HERE
</div>

OR

2. If you want to show your Google Adsense ad BELOW your Blogger post title on the RIGHT side, then copy the below Code...
(Replace YOUR ADSENSE CODE HERE with your Ad Code)

<div style="float: right; margin: 10px 0px 10px 10px;">
YOUR ADSENSE CODE HERE
</div>

OR

3. If you want to show your Google Adsense ad BELOW your Blogger post title in the CENTER, then copy the below Code...
(Replace YOUR ADSENSE CODE HERE with your Ad Code)

<div style="text-align: center; margin: 10px 10px 10px 0;">
YOUR ADSENSE CODE HERE
</div>

NOTE:

If you use Code 1. and Code 2. then your content will start to show on the other side of your ad.
If you want your content to show below your Google Adsense Ad, then paste the following code just below  Code 1. or Code 2. ...

 <div style="clear:both"/>

NEXT:

Now you need to add this code to you Blogger Template. Sign into your Blogger account and go to Dashboard--> Design--> Edit HTML, make sure you check the EXPAND WIDGET TEMPLATE box.

Now find this code (use ctrl+F)...

<data:post.body/>

Now paste your code just BEFORE that code.

NOTE:

If you are using the automatic read more option for your custom Blogger template, then you will find the <data:post.body/> code more than once. So, do it for each one and look which one is working (make sure to backup you template). You can paste for both, if you want to display on home and post pages.

All Done!

 

A little Extra...

The area below the content of your post pages or you could say the area above your comment section is also a great place to catch your visitors eye. Placing your ads here could be beneficial if using the Large Rectangle (336 x 280), Medium Rectangle (300 x 250) or Banner (468 x 60) formats.

Now, if you want to show your Google Adsense ads ABOVE the comments area of your Blogger post pages, then do the procedure as you did before but this time paste your code just after this code...

<data:post.body/>

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Website Navigation, Redefined

We all know that confusing website navigation turns visitors away, so we often aim to develop an easy-to-understand navigational structure. But this isn't the solution.

Searchable,Not Navigateable

Every webmaster is working hard to create better navigational structures. Unfortunately, visitors don't care about it. When people come to your site and they become interested in seeing more of your site, they will try searching on your site. (They want information fast, so yes, they do search, not browse.) When they want to search, they expect there to be a search box on the page, and will look for it. A plain and simple search box is way more important than a fancy navigation bar. Add a search box to every page of your site.

Scannable

Also, don't forget to make your content easy to scan. Scannablity doesn't seem to have anything to do with searchablity. But, while people are searching, they scan the content of pages that come up in the search results, to see if that is what they're looking for. So, scanning is part of the search activity. "Easy to scan" means "easy to search."

Links

Additionally, adding a few links pointing to similar pages will help visitors a lot. Search engines provide very good results these days, but they are not perfect. People will find something very close to what they are looking for through the search engines, but maybe not exactly. Links to similar pages might lead them to exactly the one they are after. The anchor text must describe clearly what the linked pages are all about, though.

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4 seconds, that's all you have to make an impression

A while ago I said "you have only 15 seconds to capture your visitors' attention". Unfortunately, things got worse: you don't have these 15 seconds, today.

Recent Study
According to a study conducted by Harald Weinreich et al. of the University of Hamburg in Germany, today's internet users stay on a web page for less than 4 seconds most of the time. This means that you have only 4 seconds to convince your visitors to stay on your site. Otherwise, the effort you spent to attract the visitors to your site in the first place will have been in vain. Choosing the right page design, including wording of headers, font types, color schemes, etc., has never been more important.

ImagesGenerally, images should be used sparingly, but since (as they say) a picture is worth a thousand words, images can be useful for attracting user attention, as long as they are clear representations such as images of your products or figures that will help readers to understand your content. Definitely, your company's logo will not help. The quality of the images is also important; low-quality images give visitors the wrong impression.
 
Video
You might wonder if the first 4 seconds of a video will make visitors stay. It will not. Web surfers who only stay for 4 seconds will not play the video. First, convince them to stay on your site. Then, encourage visitors to play video if the video will help you to sell your products or to accomplish your site's objectives.

Note
One thing needs to be clarified. You do not need to make web pages that can be completely viewed in 4 seconds. Rather, you need to make web pages that convince readers to stay at your site within 4 seconds. Once they decide to stay longer than the 4 seconds, you will have lots of time to convince them to buy your products.

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Your Content Does Matter. Content rules

Making a content-rich website is the key to succeeding online, but "content-rich" doesn't mean having Harry-Potter-length content. You need a collection of short but informative pieces.

Collection

The more articles you have on your site, the more internet surfers you can capture. Because search engines provide page-by-page results, articles on different topics show up in search results for different keywords.

So if you have a lot of articles on different topics, searchers can find your articles in the search results for a wide variety of keywords - hence, more traffic to your site. In reality, however, not every article generates the traffic directly from search engines. But having a large collection of articles generates consistent traffic far better (because there is less of an effect on algorithm changes) than the average SEO.

Length

Many people think longer articles are better, but that is not so. Ideally, your article can be read within 60 to 90 seconds. This is how long the average person will pay attention. For my newsletter content, I try limiting the length of articles to less than 300 words. Considering the fast-paced behavior of internet users, I'd say 300 words is still rather long.

Special Concerns

If your target audiences are members of low-literacy groups, such as children or people with developmental disabilities, writing short content will become more critical. Low-literacy users need more time to read any given article than average-literacy users do.

Also, average-literacy users often scan and find the part of an article they want to read, but low-literacy users generally cannot do this; they read your content from top to bottom. Pay extra attention to every word you put in the articles to determine if each one is absolutely necessary.

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