Getting traffic to your blog

After much planning and time spent on your blog, the worst thing that could happen is that your blog is not getting any attention or visitors (unless you are making a private blog).
First you need to check if Google has indexed your site by typing your blog URL address to the Google search engine. If your blog URL is not returned, it means that Google did not index your site and most probably your blog have no visitors. It doesn't mean that even if you use BlogSpot by Google, your blog will automatically indexed by Google.

Here are some tips to get your blog indexed by Google and generate more traffics:

• Get Google to index your blog by submitting your blog URL. Although this is the simplest way, but Google stated that it will not 100% index your page and there is no estimation of when your blog will appear in the Google search. But it is better than nothing
• Add your sites to all blog directories and search engines you can find. i.e; Technorati . Although this may take time but it is well worth it.
  
• Offer to exchange links on your site under your links section, it lets people know that your interested in linking and will build up your site quickly in Technorati and Google.
• Do not spam forums or emails to get more traffic (This will turn bad as people will start giving negative comments of your blog). Instead participate in forums in related matters and direct readers to the specific article in your blog.
  
• Promote your site by having signatures of your blog in email and forums
  
• Write high quality post and post regularly.
  
• Advertise with Google Adwords. It will cost money, but it will definitely draws people to your blog.

This tips are not necessary the only method of generating more traffics for your site, this is by my understanding and research. So if there is any other method of getting more traffics, please share with me.

P.S. Anyone want to exchange links with me?

Blogspot Labels

I was looking high and low for methods to categorized my topics and came across some tutorial on how to create categories by using some scripts or methods in BlogSpot. Some people even calls it hacking BlogSpot to create custom categories. I wouldn't call it hacking cause Google should have created such function in the beginning. It is like a holy grail in blogging cause your blogs would get messy and i mean seriously messy if there is no categories.

Anyways, as i said, i was looking for such function in BlogSpot and couldn't find such function to enable the categories. So i turn to Google search engine to look for tutorial or way to turn on categories. I came across many scripts, but was a bit too complicated to implement it. Then i saw this in delicious2blogger blog

I was like, *GASP*, there was such function in BlogSpot? Needless to say, i checked it out and it was there and now my blog have categories. Wasted 2 hours for nothing and now i need to re-tag all the labels

Google Analytics

Today i have just registered and installed the Google Analytics to my blog. If you don't know what google analytics does, it is used to track and monitor traffic on the site. At the moment i don't know what is the traffic like on my site not to mention if anyone is indeed visiting my blog.

I chose Google Analytics is because, well it is from google and my blog is by google, so it should be more integrated. Also registering is easy and it is free as well. On installing the tracker is pretty easy, just copy the codes generated and paste it to the blog. I just hope i did it correctly cause the tracker updates every 24 hours on the traffic of the blog.

There are other benefits from using Google Analytics as well. Some of those benefits are (Taken from Google Analytics site):

• Fast Implementation
• Paste the Google Analytics tracking code into each of your website pages and tracking begins immediately.
• Keyword and Campaign Comparison
• Track and compare all your ads, email newsletters, affiliate campaigns, referrals, paid links, and keywords on Google and other search engines.
• Custom Dashboards
• No more digging through reports. Put all the information you need on a custom Dashboard that you can email to others.
• AdWords Integration
• Buy keywords on Google AdWords and use Google Analytics to learn which keywords are most profitable to your business.
• Trend and Date Slider
• Compare time periods and select date ranges without losing sight of long term trends.
• Ecommerce Tracking
• Trace transactions to campaigns and keywords, get loyalty and latency metrics, and identify your revenue sources.
• Funnel Visualization
• Find out which pages result in lost conversions and where your would-be customers go.
• Site Overlay
• See traffic and conversion information for every link as you browse your site. (no download required).
• Email reports
• Schedule or send ad-hoc personalized report emails that contain exactly the information you want to share.
• GeoTargeting
• Find out where your visitors come from and identify your most lucrative geographic markets.
• Did i mention it is free?
  

Read more from Google Analytics site

Comments: FastStone Capture

Software name: FastStone Capture
Description: Screen capture utility
Type: Shareware; 30 days trial; USD19.95 for full version
Company: FastStone Soft


Before i got this nifty little software, whenever i need to capture a screen or make a screen shot, I would need to press the 'Prt Scr' (Print Screen) button on my keyboard and paste it into a Microsoft Paint. Then i would need to manually extract out the section that i require (Print screen just captures everything in the whole screen). Then i stumble upon this great piece of software and everything was like so much easier.

First you need to get the software from this site. It is a very small software, about 1.23MB for the zipped version, so it should take approx 3 minutes to download using a 56Kbps modem. Installation is fairly simple, just press next all the way and it should be done. Once installed and run, the program will sit on the taskbar and the menu can be activated when clicked.

On the capturing ability, it is very versatile. You can capture the whole screen, selected windows or objects or you can manually select what to capture. What is so great about this is that once you have capture the screen, it will immediately open an editor for you to edit or save and the editor is good enough for you to do some simple editing (much like Microsoft paint, but much more powerful than it) and filters (like having torn edge) without the need of another external editor.

You can also customize the setting for this program. Little things such as 'Auto save' once you have capture, the file format (BMP, JPG, etc) and even the auto file name generation

I would greatly recommend this program to anyone that does a lot of screen captures. It really makes a different on helping you make quicker and easier screen captures. The only thing that you would need to consider is that it carries quite a hefty price tag USD19.95 to register this program for the full version.

Remove Blogspot navbar

Is this navbar in BlogSpot familiar to you? Do you wish to remove it from your blog? You looked everywhere in the settings for the option to hide or remove it but just couldn't find it? And you wonder, why does some blogs able to do it?

Chances that if when you just open a new blog in BlogSpot, this navbar will definitely be shown above. There are many reasons to remove or to keep this bar. My reason to remove this bar is because it looks quite unprofessional in my blog and it is just plain annoying to see one strip of bar on top of my page (picky i guess).

There is no buttons or checkbox to easily toggle it on or off, you need to know a bit of HTML know how to be able to remove it. Luckily for you, it is just a 5 line piece of code which you just need to copy and paste it into the appropriate section.

Okay, first off, you would need to locate the HTML code for the main template page. It is actually very easy to be located with a couple of mouse click. If you don't know, it is located in your user administration:

Template -> Edit HTML

This is a screenshot of where to locate it





After you have located the HTML codes, this part is a bit tricky. You need to locate the end of the HEAD part in the HTML code. The easy way to find it is by pressing <CTRL>+F to open your find mode and look for the instance of </head> of the word . Then copy this codes before the </head>

<style type='text/css'>
#navbar {
height:0px;
visibility:hidden;
display:none
}
</style>

It will look like this after it is pasted

<style type='text/css'>
#navbar {
height:0px;
visibility:hidden;
display:none
}
</style>
</head>

And thats it, you have successfully removed the navbar.

Notes: After removing the navbar, i found out i couldn't sign in into my blog administration anymore. This is because i did not check the 'Remember me' checkbox. So what i did was to go to the Blogger homepage and sign in from there.