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Adding a blogroll to Blogger

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The following instructions work for the old version of blogger. I’m not sure yet if they work for new blogger. If someone would let me know I’d appreciate it. These instructions also work for blogcharm and other HTML based templates too.

  • Go into your dashboard and make a new post (post like you would if you were blogging an entry).
  • In that post, insert the script shown for the blogroll. Publish. IGNORE errors when you publish it – because blogger will give you an error.
  • Next, grab the link to that page (go into your blog, find that post, go to the specific page – grab the permalink and copy that URL of the permalink). Take that URL and put it in your sidebar link this: [a xhref=”LINK”]name of blogroll post[/a]
  • Insert your permalink where I have LINK.
  • This will put the blogroll on a page and will not clutter up your sidebar to slow down loading time.
  • Change the date so the blogroll isn’t on your main page. Open the post, at the bottom of the text box where it says > Post/comment options – click there, change the date if you don’t want it to be the first post (backdate it).
  • Publish.



Adding a blogroll to WordPress on own domain

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These instructions are for adding a blogroll to WordPress on your own domain. At this time we haven’t figured out how to add a blogroll to a wordpress.com blog, but it’s fairly easy to add one to WordPress that is hosted on your own domain.

To put the blogroll code on a single page:

Go to the USER section on your DASHBOARD, and scroll down the user page until you find an area called PERSONAL OPTIONS – this will be in the lower left. Un-check the box beside “Use the visual rich editor when writing” and save options. You will now be writing your page in plain text.

Go back to the writing section and select WRITE NEW PAGE.

Give your page a title and perhaps use an image that might be supplied with the blogroll code that you are about to add to your site. Adding an image will create a nice looking header above the list on your new blogroll page. You can also link the image that you use to the home url of the blogroll that you are adding.

Paste the blogroll code into the page. The blogroll code will not work if you are writing in Rich Text so please be sure that you have done the very first instruction that I listed and switched to plain text mode.

Save your page and check to make sure it’s working.

You could also put the code in your sidebar:

Go into your WP admin section and select PRESENTATION, then select theme editor and select the correct theme.

Once you have opened the theme that you are using, you’ll find that the theme is open to the CSS Stylesheet file but all the other files that belong to the theme will be listed on the right.

You want to select your SIDEBAR page.

Find an appropriate place in your sidebar for the blogroll code. You can put an image header above the blogroll if you like and then past the blogroll code into your sidebar. You may have to enclose the blogroll code with list tags < li > < / li > or < div > < / div > (no spaces between selected li or div codes, blogroll code should go in the middle of either of these codes. )

If you’ve posted the code in correctly you should have a new blogroll in your sidebar. If by chance the blogroll isn’t working go back and make sure that there are no spaces in the code. Usually the only space in the code is right after SRC.

I hope that you’ve found this information helpful.

Adding a blogroll to Typepad

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I run some blogrolls of my own on my other sites and I’ve found that a number of people have no idea how to add a blogroll to their site. Even though I haven’t used all of the different types of blogging platforms I’ve learned from my blogroll members how they finally managed to add the code to their sidebar.

To make things easier for you I thought I’d post the instructions for Typepad users here.

Charles from Deuces Stay Wild figured out this one for us:

1. In TypePad, create a Notes typelist.

2. Name your list – perhaps “Wordless Wedneday” or whatever the name of the particular blogroll happens to be.

3. Next you click the “add new item” button

4. Then in the “notes” section you paste the blogroll code – that’s the code that begins with the word script.

5. Next you save the changes.

6. After saving your changes you must go to your edit design page

7. And then to change content selections

8. Once you are on the change content selections you select (check the check-box) your new typelist, which in this case is whatever you just named the new blogroll.

9. Save your changes and you are done!

I don’t use Typepad and as a result if you have further questions I won’t be able to answer them. Sorry. However, if you know of an easier way to add a blogroll to Typepad please feel free to tell me your method.

How to add a blogroll to B2Evolution

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Apparently adding a blogroll to B2evolution is a pain in the hinny. I don’t use that blogging software myself, however one of my blogroll list members was kind enough to have helped me out by giving me the instructions.

The first thing that you need to do is got to your Admin area and click on the Templates tab.

  • Then you will need to select:
  • “_main.php – This is the main template. It displays the blog.”
  • Once you are on main.php, figure out where your sidebar is located in the coding. Look for the words “START OF SIDEBAR”
  • Scroll down until you reach the end of the Side Bar Coding which often ends with an href link to B2evolution and a B2evolution image link.
  • Hit enter twice after the end of the B2evolution link code which ends with an ending paragraph code < / p>
  • Then add the following code:

    b2evoinstr.jpg

  • Save your work at that point and check your page. You should have a blogroll or whatever else (image?) that you pasted into the sidebar code area.

NOTE: If you are using a custom design you will need to edit the _main.php file in the folder that contains your skin.

I hope that you’ve found this information helpful. Remember, I do not use B2evolution so I won’t be able to answer many questions on this if you have any. I’m just trying to be helpful.

Promoting your website

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Which sites should you be sure to get listed in so that you will gain more visitors? Well, everyone wants visitors and being listed in the search engines won’t guarantee more visitors if you don’t have some half decent quality on your site, but it will certainly help.

Whenever I create a new website I go around to all of these sites and submit my url:

Google: This link takes you directly to the Google add your url page. You only need to submit the index page of your site. If you’ve set up your navigation on your page, created a sitemap on your site or by using Google Sitemaps, Google’s spiders will eventually crawl your whole site.

Yahoo: This link should take you directly to Yahoo’s free submit site page. You’ll need to sign in with your Yahoo I.D. in order to submit your site. Again, you only need to submit the top level page of your site to get Yahoo to begin spidering your site. Alta Vista, and All the Web pull their results from Yahoo’s Overture listings.

Yahoo Site Explorer – I’ve also listed all of my websites and Blogs on Yahoo Site explorer. You can list your site url and your site’s RSS feed in the explorer.

MSN Live Search URL Submission – I’ve found that sites get listed fairly quickly on the MSN search engines when I submit there.

DMOZ – Open Directory Project – A number of search engines pull their search results directly from the listings on DMOZ. Netscape, and AOL are among the popular search engines that now use the Open Directory Project. You’ll need to scroll through the DMOZ directory until you find an area that suits your site, and then submit or suggest your url in that area. It can take a long long time to get listed in DMOZ, but don’t give up hope.

MSN Submit It – get your site listed on MSN as well. I’ve found that when I submit my new sites to MSN they get picked up quickly.

If you have a blog you should submit to these sites as well:


Technorati – If you want visitors this site is one of the best to get listed on if you have a blog. Sign up for an account at Technorati, and then select “Claim Blog” and follow the directions to get your site listed.

The Truth Laid Bare – Another important site to be listed on. Register for an account, and then add your blog. You’ll have to put some code on your site so that the Truth laid Bare site can track your blogs popularity and links in and out.

There are plenty more search engines and blog directories to list your sites in, but these are the ones to begin with, and in my opinion are the ones that are most important if you want to begin getting visitors.

Increasing your link popularity

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Why is increasing link popularity important when it comes to promoting your blog or website? Well, link popularity basically means that you have several people linking to your site. The more sites that link to your own, then the more popular your site is seen as being in the eyes of the search engines- particularly Google.

Understanding how Google works helps to some degree. Google has a very complex algorithm – and I don’t think anyone has managed to figure out exactly how it works, but people watching how Google works have come up with some pieces of the puzzle over time.

Of all the search engines Google tends to drive the most traffic to our websites. This is more than likely because it is one of the most popular search engines in use world wide.

Google looks at a websites on and off site factors in order to determine how the website should rank. Page Rank plays a part in how Google rates our sites, and page rank is basically how important Google thinks your page is on the internet as a whole. Page rank is not the be all and end all of Search engine optimization but some still consider it to be important even though it is much less important than it used to be.

What Google considers important these days is the links pointing to your site, what types of sources they come from and how many sites link to your own. Another part of Google’s algorithm that we’re still trying to understand is the quality of the page that the link is on relative your your website or the page that it’s directed to. By this we mean- is the site or page that links to your own similar in topic or genre to your own? We believe that Google considers this very important. Also -is the page a list of links, or is the link to your site contained within the text of the site.

So how do you get sites that are similar or complimentary to your own to link to you?

Some methods that people have used are to distribute press releases, purchase links from link brokers or to trade links with other websites. It’s said that the press release is the most effective way of increasing your link popularity but it can be difficult because the content of your press release or article must be interesting enough for others to want to write about your press release and thus your site.

Purchasing links is quick and easy but the links are usually listed on a page on a website and not within the text of the site so they don’t work quite as well. Also, Google apparently automatically removes the value of links when they are placed at the bottom of websites with a whole list of outbound links.

Trading links with other sites used to be the best method of gaining link popularity, and it can still be a very good method but you need to get links from sites with similar context as your own. Also, if your reciprocal link is on a page that lists a number of links it still won’t be of that much value. You need to try to exchange links with other sites in a manner that gets them to mention your site or pages of your site within an article on that site for the best value.

As has been said hundreds or thousands of times before the very best way to gain link popularity is to work on your sites content. Create content that makes people want to come back to your site for more.

It is also important that when other sites link to you that they use descriptive text in their links. For example if you are linking to a site don’t write something like xyz company is fantastic click here to visit the site, with the link text being click here. It would be far better to write out a descriptive sentence that is appropriate for the site and link to the word in the phrase that describes the site best. For example if xyz company sells bikes you might write “xyz company sells bikes and you can read articles on biking, and purchase bike accessories directly on the site” with a link to the work bike or bikes.

BlogAdvance Traffic Engine

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Going on with my series on blog traffic engines I’d like to discuss BlogAdvance. I’ve seen this site go through a few changes since I joined.

When I first signed on they only gave 0.5 credits per blog view when you were surfing, but now they have upped it to 1 credit per blog viewed so the ratio is 1:1. You visit one site, one person visits yours.

I’m not sure how many members Blog Advance has right now, but I wish I got a few more blog views per day. Perhaps if I can entice you to join their service and actually surf blogs regularly we’ll all have our blogs viewed more often over there. I find that my Blog advance visitors stop and leave comments a little more often than my Bl0gexplosion visitors do. Bl0gAdvance also has a forum for members to talk and discuss just about anything to do with blogging.

One thing that I like about Blog Advance is that they occasionally have surfing contests and they give out cash awards to the top surfer. I haven’t won anything yet but I’ve come close!

Give Blogadvance a try –

Blogexplosion traffic engine

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I’ve been using some of the popular blog traffic engines for my other blogs since February or so and I thought that it might be time to do a series discussing each traffic engine that I use, and how well they’ve worked for me.

One thing that I like about traffic engines in general is that you get to visit more blogs and if you take the time to stop and leave a valid comment on the sites you like they will often come and visit you. If you’re lucky you might gain a few extra loyal readers in this manner.

I’ll start with the first one that I joined. It’s called Bl0gexplosion. When I first joined I got quite a bit of traffic from the site, but it seems to have slowed down lately. I’m still getting about 15 to 20 views of each of my sites a day, but when I started I think I got about 30 views each day. Some new traffic engines opened up since I joined Bl0gexplosion and I don’t know if they took some of the members away from BE and if that’s why it’s slowed down a bit, or there are just so many members and so many blogs that the circulation per blog has slowed.

Features – They have a number of different features that allow you to earn credits. The main feature to earn credits is to surf other blogs. For each credit you earn gets your blog viewed by another surfer – once you assign your credits. You can also put your site into the blog rocket and have it visited from that area, Battle of the blogs- pit your blog against others and earn credits if you win. You can earn credits by voting on battles as well. This by far is my favorite feature of the site, and the main way that I earn credits there.

They also have forums where you can discuss a variety of topics and get help with the bl0gexplosion system if you are having a problem.

Give Blogexplosion a try –

DIY Search engine Optimization tips #2

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Continued from DIY Search Engine Optimization Tips #1

6. When writing your articles or posts on your pages be sure to include important keywords and search phrases at the beginning, middle and end of the article.

If you are using good writing technique when composing your pages and articles you shouldn’t have a problem with this phase of SEO. As you might know, a well written article usually begins with a paragraph that describes what the body of the article will be about; the mid section of your article goes into more detail or greater depth regarding your initial statement in the first paragraph; the end of the article should come to a conclusion regarding the information you have discussed in the mid portion of the article.

Write naturally, but do remember to use terms within your post that might be used by people when they are searching for the type of information that your article contains.

7. Place your keywords and phrases in the link text of your web pages.

Keywords should be used in your links. When you are linking to another page or subpage on your site use a descriptive keyword or phrase to describe the clickable link. Don’t use terms like “click here” as that offers no description of what the link is for the search engines.

8. Make sure your site can be navigated easily by your visitors as well as search engines

When someone links to your site, or when you submit your site to a search engine it is often only the index page of the site that is given to the search engine. When the search engine visits your site it will index your main page. Your main page should contain some links that lead deeper into your site but if you have a javascript based navigation system the search engine spiders may not follow the links deep into your site as easily as if your links are text (html) based.

9. Build a site map page or use the Google sitemap option.

It’s important to get all of the pages on your site indexed by the search engines. Creating a page that contains links to all of the pages within your site, a sitemap, helps the search engine in this matter. As you probably know, visitors using your sitemap will be able to find items on your site easier as well.

You can create an xml version of your sitemap and submit it to Google Sitemaps. Google has links to third party XML sitemap creators in it’s Webmasters tools area. Once you’ve created your xml sitemap you can submit it to the sitemap area and googles spiders will visit your site on a regular basis depending upon how often you update your site.

10. Off-site optimization

Now that you know how to optimize your site, and write articles and sub pages for search engine optimization you should concentrate on off site optimization. Google places a high measure of importance as to where you site is ranked on factors such as how many other sites link to your page, the page rank of the sites linking to your site, and the type of sites linking to your site.

The best way to get off site links of course is to create a website with valuable information that will make others want to link to you. If you exchange links with other sites try to exchange links with sites that are similar to your own. For example if you have a gardening site you should attempt to link up with other gardening sites – of all types.

You can also write informative articles and get them published on other websites which will result in a link back to your site. This may also help increase the amount of visitors coming to your site as well. Submit your links to all of the main directories- Google, Yahoo, MSN, the Open directory, and directories that are perhaps related to your sites genre as well. Participate in forums in order to promote your site and perhaps get more visitors to your site as well.

All of the tips that I have listed should help you promote your site and get better rankings on the main search engines.

DIY Search engine Optimization tips #1

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Individual website owners and bloggers usually can’t afford to pay SEO (Search Engine Optimization) companies to optimize their sites so that they reach the top of the search engines, however there are a lot of things that you can do yourself to improve your page rank and publicize their sites.

Here’s some tips

1. Plan your site for optimization from the beginning.

Start by choosing a domain name that includes words that could be considered important keywords for your site. For example, if you are creating a gardening site it would be great to have the word garden or gardening in your domain name. Use keywords when you create pages on your site too. A sub page of a gardening site might be called rosegardening.html .

Titles of posts in your blog – if your blog is for a specific niche should also contain keywords that pertain to the post and to the theme of the site itself.

2. keep search engines in mind as you design your site

Search engines use the text on a site to figure out what the site is about, and in part, where to place it on the search pages. If you use photos on your site always use the alt text tag to describe what the photo is about. This will make the search engines spiders and robots job easier.

Sites designed with flash format are difficult for search engines to navigate and index, as they don’t contain much text for the search engines to use to classify the site.

It’s also been said that long strips of java script might be better put in an external file that is called upon from the main page or CSS style files.

3. Each page of your site should have it’s own title tag

It’s very simple to make sure that each page has a title – simple use a Meta Title tag in the header for each page, and individually give each page it’s own title. Search Engines look at the title of each page as being one of the most important factors in telling it’s robots and spiders what the page is about. As per my earlier example if you created a gardening site and you talked about different types of plants on the various subpages you would want each page to have a title that contains information about the plant that is being discussed in the page. For example a sub page of the gardening site my have the title “Growing Daisies” if it discussed how to grow daisies.

Title tags should also contain important keywords that will help people find that specific page on your site when they are using a search engine. Think about what words you would choose to search for the type of information that your page is about and use some of those words in the title.

The main page of a gardening site might have a title tag – “Gardening- plants for the garden, gardening tips, and gardening FAQ’s”

4. Be sure to add a description tag to each of your pages:

A description tag is as important as the title tag. The first couple of sentences on your page should summarize what the page is about using important keywords and search phrases that you think people would use when searching for that page.

A gardening sites description tag might say “XYZ Gardening provides information to gardeners about growing plants in the garden, plant profiles, gardening tips and advice.”

5. Put your keywords into headers and headlines on your page.

Search engines give high value to the use of header tags on a page. Header tags are used to enclose the title of an article or as a sub heading in a page. I can’t write the full code here but the tags are H1 H2 H3 H4 and so on. The headline of your page should have a H1 header tag around the words.

Good blog themes often come with CSS style sheets that incorporate important items like header tags into the theme. You shouldn’t really have to think of this feature on a well made blog theme, but if you are writing and designing your own site or theme please remember that header tags are very important.

Please remember that article titles and sub-headings within an article or page should contain important keywords as well. Use words that best describe the content of the article or page when you make a header tag.

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