Just A Quick SEO Update

2008-12-16T21:51:00.025-05:00

Hey Everybody,

I know that it's been a long time since I made a new post here, which is because I originally intended to use this blog mainly for the benefit of my APSense group members (as thoroughly discussed in my first post entitled How to Add a Blogroll (a.k.a. Link List) to Your Blogger / Blogspot Blog).

However, I just read some brand new Search Engine Optimization (SEO) reports and learned that "backlinks" (i.e., incoming links to a blog, website or web page; a.k.a. incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links) are still a viable source for SEO "points" from all of the major search engines, along with a few new white hat SEO tricks.

Not to mention that Google loves Blogger / Blogspot blogs, because it's the owner. As such, Google spiders them quite frequently and will place more importance on backlinks from them (hint, hint).

This fact alone will help you get indexed by Google much faster than normal and will help to increase your target blog's or website's PageRank (i.e., the level of importance Google places on a site).

The best part is, you can have multiple Blogger / Blogspot blogs on different niches. And I'm sure you've heard the saying, "There's riches in niches," right?

So I decided to incorporate this blog into my SEO backlink structure for all of my personal blogs and websites (e.g., my niche website at Free People Search). And I will probably start some more Blogger / Blogspot blogs to increase the number of backlinks overall.

Of course, this all translates into more "natural" (a.k.a. "algorithmic" or "organic") search engine traffic, as opposed to, say, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) traffic, which is the main purpose behind SEO to begin with.

Moreover, I'm gonna start writing more posts here in order to generate fresh content, which, according to what I've recently learned, increases the importance of this blog for SEO purposes.

Well, I guess that's enough ramblings for now. Thanks for reading and have a great, blessed day.

Regards,

Michael Brock

How to Add a Blogroll (a.k.a. Link List) to Your Blogger / Blogspot Blog

2007-07-07T05:24:00.007-04:00

Hello Friend,

First, let me explain why I've done this, in case you're not a member of APSense and/or of my group there called The Blog Exchange. See, I had members join my group and require assistance in adding a blogroll (a.k.a. link list) to their Blogger (a.k.a. Blogspot) blogs. And I have my blog (FreeBlogger) hosted at my own domain and it's powered by WordPress. So I honestly didn't know the exact process for doing this at Blogger / Blogspot.

And rather than just speculating about how to add a blogroll / link list to your Blogger / Blogspot blog, I decided to start my own Blogger / Blogspot blog this morning (07/22/07 AD) to see how the system actually works instead. This is so that members of my group can implement it and complete The Blog Exchange ASAP, if you don't know how to do this already.

No frets if you don't, because it's very easy to do here at Blogger / Blogspot, as I suspected it would be since it's owned by Google and they attempt to make everything easy for their members / users. I love Google for a lot of reasons and this is definitely one of them! So without further ado...

Here's How to Add a Blogroll or Link List to Your Blogspot Blog:
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NOTE: This is for "adding" a blogroll / link list to your blog when none exists. The process for adding links to your blogroll / link list once it's been added to your blog is a little different and much easier. I have included instructions for that at the end of this post as well. Enjoy & happy blogging! (Last updated on: 12/16/08 AD)
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1) Open your Blogger / Blogspot blog and login to your account.

NOTE: It seems that the proper URL format is that of a sub-domain to "blogspot.com". For example, mine is:
http://mbrock1.blogspot.com/

2) Once you're logged in to your Blogger / Blogspot account, look for the Customize link in your blog's Navbar menu, which should be located in the upper-right-hand corner of your screen and click it to be taken to another screen (i.e., Edit Layout), showing the layout of your blog in edit mode.

3) The Edit Layout section is where you can add or edit page elements to your blog, such as a blogroll / link list. You will notice a sidebar section that will contain your Blog Archive and About Me elements already. The actual location of your sidebar depends on the blog template you're using. And there will also be an Add a Gadget link at the top of your sidebar section.

4) Click on the Add a Gadget link to open a small popup window listing the various items / elements you can add to your blog. Select Link List (s/b on the right side) by clicking the button labeled ADD TO BLOG right below this element. This will take you to another screen entitled Configure Link List within the small popup window that should be self-explanatory from there, as it contains a few different data / text fields where you add the appropriate info for the link/s you're adding (i.e., "Title" of your blogroll / link list, "Number of links to show in the list", "Sorting", "New Site URL" and "New Site Name").

5) Fill-in the various data / text fields with the relevant info and click the ADD LINK button, then SAVE CHANGES to save the blogroll / link list to your blog. For example, to add my blog, you would input "FreeBlogger" (minus the quotation marks) in the New Site Name field and "http://www.freeblogger.biz" (minus the quotation marks) in the New Site URL field and click the ADD LINK button, then SAVE CHANGES to add it to your new blogroll / link list. That's it, you just blogrolled me!

Now, to add a "new" link to your blogroll / link list once it's been created / configured, simply repeat steps 1 - 3 above, but click on the Edit link for your blogroll / link list in your sidebar element instead of Add a Gadget, since you've already created / configured it earlier.

This will again open a small popup window entitled Configure Link List and will contain all of the same text / data fields as before, but you will only need to enter and save the info for the New Site URL & New Site Name text / data fields, since you've already configured the others when you created it. Of course, you can also change that information too, if you like.

Well, my friend, I truly hope this helps you and if you have any further questions, don't hesitate to ask in the group discussion entitled The Blog Exchange: Questions, Answers & Comments, or stop by my WordPress blog (FreeBlogger) and find a post you like and leave your comment and/or question/s there. In the meantime, happy blogging, have a great day and God bless YOU and YOURS!

To Your Blogging Fun and Success,

Michael Brock

Ramblings of Michael Brock

Just A Quick SEO Update

How to Add a Blogroll (a.k.a. Link List) to Your Blogger / Blogspot Blog