Spice Up Your Blog

How To Generate A Sitemap And Submit To Yahoo

2010-02-27T21:55:00.003Z

With the popularity of Google many people don't consider the free search traffic available from Yahoo.In this post i will show you how to generate a sitemap and submit it to Yahoo.Yahoo site explorer is very similar to Google webmaster tools. Once signed up you can see detailed information of how Yahoo see your site on the web.

You can generate the same sitemap for Yahoo as for Google, as showed in a previous post i on How to submit 2 site maps to google.To generate and submit a site map to Yahoo you will need to first create a Yahoo account and verify your the owner of your blog, both will only take a few minutes.

Submit a sitemap to Yahoo

Step 1. Go to Yahoo.Com and create an account

Step 2. Once you have your Yahoo account details log into Yahoo Site Explorer

Step 3. You now must verify your ownership of your blog, there are two options for doing this.The easiest way is to copy the meta tag supplied and place it into your template.

The meta code goes directly below the <head> tag in your template.

Step 4. In your Blogger dashboard click 'Layout' > 'Edit Html'

Your will see <head> very near the top of your template Html paste the meta code below it.

Once the meta code is in place save your template and go back to Yahoo site explorer and click “Ready to Authenticate”.

Note : Unlike the Google and Techonrati verification code you must not remove the Yahoo meta code in place.

Step 5. Your blog is now verified click 'Manage Site' in your Yahoo dashboard then click 'Feeds' in the side menu.

Step 6. You will see the option to enter a feed/sitemap for your blog, you can enter the same 2 we entered for google.

You will see a section similar to the image below :

Copy this code and paste it into the area shown with the arrow above the click add feed :

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500

Now repeat the step with this code and click 'Add Feed' :

feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated

Remember you can get all these tips sent directly to your email and stay a step ahead.Its a quick and easy service Provided for Free by Google.Just fill in the Email form below the post.
If you need extra help on this or any tutorial just leave a comment, I love comments and feedback so this Blog is Do-Follow - when you comment here it helps Your Blogs Google rank !

You have just generated a sitemap for Yahoo and it's submitted.It will take a day or so before Yahoo start crawling your sitemap but once they do you should see you blog rank higher and an increase in search traffic from Yahoo.

Do you get much Yahoo traffic to your blog ?

The 5 Best Tips To Get A New Blog Indexed In Google Search Results

2010-02-09T23:25:00.008Z

One of the questions i am asked most here on Spice Up Your Blog is : "How do i get my blog in Google search results ?" or "Why has Google not indexed my blog ?" and recently i have looked into this a bit deeper.Most of the posts i write on S.E.O. (search engine optimization) are more targeted at blogs that have already been ranked and are looking to move up the Search ranks and get higher positions within Google, Yahoo and other search engines.

To answer the question "How to get a new blog ranked on Google?" i looked at the search engine tips and tricks we have covered and picked out the 5 best tips for new blogs, Blogs just starting out and wanting to get noticed.No matter what your blog is about it will eventually get indexed but everyone wants to be visable on Google quickly.

Before you try to get your blog indexed on Google you should try to have at least 4-5 posts published because you want to give the Google bot's or spiders something to crawl.

Here are the first 5 steps to take:

1. Submit you blog to google - Step one is an easy one go direct to the source and tell Google you exist and want to be crawled.You can submit your blog to Google and Bing here :

Submit Your Blog To Google

Submit Your Blog To Bing

2. Ping you blog to Google blog search - Most new blogs find it easier to get indexed by Google blog search first and this helps speed up the process of being listed on Google web search.Once again go directly to the source and tell Google to come check you out :

Ping Your Blog To Google Blog Search

3. Build back links to your blog - Apart from good unique content Google respect nothing more than links to your blog.Getting links from other websites and blogs to your blog is an absolute key step in Getting noticed by Google.Of course if you have a new blog who is going to link to it ? There are steps you can take to build backlinks to your blog and the first step can be as easy as leaving a few well placed comments on blogs and websites :

Using Do-Follow blogs to build backlinks

4. Set up a webmaster tools account and submit a site map - Google Webmaster tools is a hub of information for your blog.It's easy to get started and your first task is to submit a sitemap for Google to crawl.

Set up a Google webmaster tools account and submit a sitemap for your blog

5. Submit your blog - Submit your blog to blog directory's, my favorite is Blog Catalog but there are lots more.Submit your blog and individual posts to Bookmarking sites, How to use Bookmarking Websites to help your blog.

These steps should speed up the process of getting your blog on Google, How many will you try ?

Remember you can get all these tips sent directly to your email and stay a step ahead.Its a quick and easy service Provided for Free by Google.Just fill in the Email form below the post.
If you need extra help on this or any tutorial just leave a comment, I love comments and feedback so this Blog is Do-Follow - when you comment here it helps Your Blogs Google rank !

Lets look at some more steps that deserve a mention.

More Steps To Rank Your Blog On Google

Ping your blog to feedburner and pingomatic - We looked at using the Google blog search ping you can also use other ping services.

Pingomatic

Feedburner ping

Link within your own blog - This is sometimes over looked and can be an awesome tactic when used properly.You have to look no further than this post to see how it's done because i just built 2 links in this top ten list alone the the entire post has 4 links to other posts on the blog! When you write a post try to leave a link to other posts on your blog, Google do index links within you blog.As i have done in this post try to make the links relevant and not off topic.I have well over 100 posts here so it's easier for me but you can utilise this more as your blog grows.

Leave A Link Were Possible - Were ever you can leave a link without spamming you should.On a serious note leaving spam links will ruin your reputation and your blogs reputation, its simply not wort it !

You can find lots more tips on getting the most from search engines here.

More help is only a comment away.

How To Check Your Blog Stats - How Much Is Your Blog Worth ?

2010-02-07T21:15:00.004Z

Have you ever thought "How much is my Blog worth?"

All Bloggers and Webmasters cant help themselves and have to keep an eye on there blog or website Page Rank, Alexa Rank, Number of Back links and of course the hit counters to see how many visitors they are getting.The slightest decrease in any stats can cause a panic in any site owner.Now to cause even more panic there is a number of websites that put all that information together and magically calculate the worth or value of your website or blog.

This is a fun post but is also a great way to be introduced to a number of statistics that are used in calculating the importance of your blog in the eyes of search engines and other ranking systems.If your blog is new don't worry about the stats but it's good to know what you can look for in the future.

What are the stats used to calculate the value of a Blog or Website ?

These are some of the stats used

Page Rank (PR) - Page Rank is a used by Google to determine the importance of a website.Page Rank goes from one to ten with ten being the highest ranking.I covered Page Rank in a post about Using Do-Follow blogs and it's quiet complected.

Alexa Rank - Alexa uses it's toolbar to rank sites although i have seen information suggesting they also use other sources.The Alexa rank and the format they use to generate their stats can be controversial with some people dismissing the accuracy of the results.

Backlinks - Back links are links from other sites on the web to your blog.We also looked into the value of back links in dept in the Do-Follow post.

Daily Visitors - The amount of people that visit the site every day.You can keep track of the visitors to your blog with a 'Hit' or 'Stat' counter.I have 'Ten Free Hit Counters For Your Blog Here'.

Daily Page Views - The amount of page views generated by the visitors.If you get 100 visitors and they all look at 2 posts in your blog then you got 200 page views.This information would be available with the hit counters mentioned above.

The Other Stats

Daily Ad Revenue - Estimated money earned by the site every day.They look at the stats and figure out how much each site is earning.

How accurate are the results ?

I will give you the links to these websites and tell you the best site to use for checking your blogger blog below.

First to check how accurate they are i looked at the Value Of Google.com in three different sites and then checked the value of Spice Up Your Blog, here are the results :

1. My Website Worth

My Website Worth Value Google At : $46,040,000,000

2. u2ws

U2ws Value Google At : $1.99 Billion

3. Cubestat

Cubestat Value Google at : $2,190,000,000.00

The value seems to vary depending on the site you use.

Checking Blogger Sites

The best and most in dept site is 'Site Value Check' also they will generate a value for blogspot blogs.

How Much Is Spice Up Your Blog Worth ? :

I have used various domains for this blog and they are all still directed here.

The original Blogger domain : www.spiceyourblog.blogspot.com is worth : $1,390

I also use www.spiceyourblog.info and that's worth : $1,210

On Christmas eve 2009 (6 weeks ago) i connected the current Domain and the main address www.spiceupyourblog.com .

Lets see how that's going after 6 weeks :

Site Value Check

Site Value Check Value www.SpiceUpYourBlog.com At : $7,198

Not bad after a few weeks - How much is your blog worth ?

Here are the sites i used in this post - Some of these sites wont give a value for blogs still using the blogspot domain so i suggest using the top one 'Site value check' :

http://sitevaluecheck.com/

http://www.mywebsiteworth.com/

http://u2ws.com/

http://www.cubestat.com/

There are lots more sites but most want your Email so i did not include them you can find more with a search.

The Top Ten Websites By Value

According to My Website Worth This is the top ten websites online by value :

1. $ 46,040,000,000
google.com
2. $ 900,000,000
yahoo.com
3. $ 600,000,000
youtube.com
4. $ 450,000,000
facebook.com
5. $ 200,000,005
live.com
6. $ 166,666,671
msn.com
7. $ 142,857,146
wikipedia.org
8. $ 142,857,146
blogger.com
9. $ 111,111,114
baidu.com
10. $ 111,666,667
myspace.com

Google own 3 of the top ten !

Remember you can get all these tips sent directly to your email and stay a step ahead.Its a quick and easy service Provided for Free by Google.Just fill in the Email form below the post.
If you need extra help on this or any tutorial just leave a comment, I love comments and feedback so this Blog is Do-Follow - when you comment here it helps Your Blogs Google rank !

All the websites in the top 10 were once only an idea and not worth a cent, and Blogger was once in serious financial trouble, a few years before Google Bought it.Who knows you could climb up that list.Check out some of these posts to Improve Your Blogs Rank.

Have you checked your blog or have you found a better site for checking value? Let us know

Improve Your Blogs Search Rank - 5 Questions Answered By Google Employee Matt Cutts

2010-02-05T21:21:00.002Z

Regular readers may remember a post in which we looked at an interview with Google Employee Matt Cutts.In that post i looked at the 5 tips Matt had to help your blog get crawled by Google, indexed by Google, and rank higher in Google search results.I added the tutorials needed to implement those tips on your blog in that post and if you missed it you can find it here : Getting Your Blog Ranked - With Google Employee Matt Cutts

Matt often does a Q&A were bloggers and webmasters post questions which Matt responds to in short videos.Some of these videos can be a great help when it comes to getting your Blogger blog ranked higher in Google search results.As the questions and answers in the Q&A are not specific to Blogger it can be hard to see exactly how you can use this information on your blog.

For that reason i have added 5 of the videos in this post and i will explain how you can use the answers to help your blog be more "Search Engine Friendly" and climb the rankings on Google search results.

At the bottom of this post i will give you the link to the official Google SE.O. Starter Pack a Free Ebook available in 40 languages.

Matt Cutts

You may be thinking who is Matt Cutts and why do i put so much faith into what he says.For me Matt knows what Bloggers and webmasters are looking for and always makes himself available to provide help.He knows how Google search works inside out and is willing to share his opinions.

Matt Cutts works for the Search Quality group in Google, specializing in search engine optimization issues.He is well known in the SEO community for enforcing the Google Webmaster Guidelines and cracking down on link spam.Cutts also advises the public on how to get better website visibility in Google.
(Source: Wikipedia)

5 Videos To Help Your Blog In Search

Here are the videos and below each video i will explain what information you can use from the video to improve Your Blog Google Search Rank.

1. Should I Change My Titles And Description - This first video is on title and description and more specifically about meta title and description.

You can easily add a meta title and description to your Blogger Blog.

The snippet Matt mentions is the line of text that appears below your blog title in search engine results.

So currently the meta description i added for Spice Up Your Blog is this :

<meta content='Blogger help, tips, tricks and tools.Step by step tutorials to improve your Blog appearance and performance.' name='description'/>

And if you search for 'Spice Up Your Blog' on Google this is the snippet displayed :

So instead of Google crawling my blog and picking words or phrases they think should be used as the snippet i have took control and told them what i want used.

I choose that description because i believe it will be catchy and make more people click my blog in the results rather than others.

2. Should I Use Hyphens Or Underscores In My Titles - Matt answers a question on the use of underscores verses hyphens in your titles.

What are underscores and hyphens ?

This is a hyphen : -
This is an underscore: _

So if i wrote a post and wanted to break up the title how should i do that.
A perfect example was a post i recently wrote on Info Barrel .

This is the post i wrote :

"Making Money From Climate Change How Green Is The New Black"

I felt the title would make more of an impact if it was broken into two sections so i added a hyphen :

Making Money From Climate Change - How Green Is The New Block

I could have used an Underscore :

Making Money From Climate Change_How Green Is The New Block

What Matt tells use here is first using hyphens in our titles is fine, but try to use hyphens and not underscores.

3. What S.E.O. Agency Should I Use -This is a short video about the use of S.E.O. (Search engine optimisation) agency's.

A seo agency is basically an agency you pay to help improve your blogs Search ranking.I guess the reason for adding this video is because you see so many ads with titles like :

"Guaranteed Number 1 On Google"

You may see these and think about paying for the service but you need to be very careful.

Matt kind of dodges the question, as a Google employee he cant really promote a outside product but he does give some guidelines.

4. What is more important content or links - I added this video because it is something i covered recently.

In a recent post i covered How Do-Follow works, The post looked in dept at how back links help your blog get ranked on Google, how to get backlinks to your blog and the main topic was Do-Follow comment sections on blogs.

I showed how to make your blog Do-Follow and how to use comments on other Do-Follow blogs to increase your blogs google rank.

In that post and in every post i have on Search engine optimisation i always finish by saying yes use these tip to help your blogs S.E.O. but 'Content is king' and posting constant good unique content will do more for your blog than anything else and Matt agrees.

5. Why do Google crawl/index Blogs quicker than other sites - I'm sure a lot of new Bloggers will see this title and laugh.I know i get contacted a lot about blogs especially new blogs not being indexed, crawled or updated by Google.

You Will notice a part of the question refers to "Wordpress ping".

I have meaning to write a post on using a ping services to send your blogs to search engines, blog directory's and bookmark sites.

In fact the reason i hadn't covered it was i was trying to build a ping service into Spice Up Your Blog.There are plenty of Ping services available and you should use them every time you update your blog.

Matt mentions 'Feedburner Ping' in the video.Every time you write a new post or update your blog head over to the Feedburner ping service and send out a ping :

feedburner Ping Service

Another ping service i use is Pingomatic you can also get pingomatic to ping your updated blog :

Pingomatic Ping Service

Remember you can get all these tips sent directly to your email and stay a step ahead.Its a quick and easy service Provided for Free by Google.Just fill in the Email form below the post.
If you need extra help on this or any tutorial just leave a comment, I love comments and feedback so this Blog is Do-Follow - when you comment here it helps Your Blogs Google rank !

I was originally going to add more videos in this post but i decided on quality ahead of quantity.As the questions Matt answers are not specific to Blogger i wanted to take the time to explain how you can use the answers to improve you blogger.

I will try to get another post on the subject soon and look at some more video Q&A sessions.

For now you can take a quick look at some other videos and help from Matt :

You can find Matt on his own Blog : www.mattcutts.com/blog/

And on Twitter : http://twitter.com/mattcutts

You Can look through the Google Webmaster Tools channel on Youtube

I have plenty more posts to Help Your Blog In Search Engines check them out.

And as promised here is the link to the Official Google S.E.O. Starter Pack Ebook

I think that about enough links to keep you busy for a while.

If you have any problems help is just a comment away.

Have you learned anything new from the videos ?

Use Do Follow Blogs To Improve Your Blogs Google Search Rank And Page Rank

2010-01-27T08:16:00.009Z

Regular readers of this blog will have noticed i have a You Comment I Follow image in the comments area and most posts have the message : "This Blog is Do-Follow - when you comment here it helps Your Blogs Google rank !"

This has lead to a few questions mainly :

*What does Do-Follow mean ?
*Is My Blog Do-Follow ?
*Should my blog be Do-Follow ?
*How does commenting on a Do-Follow blog improve my blogs Google rank ?

In this post i will explain what "Do Follow" is, how it works, how to make your blog Do Follow and a very interesting exercise of going on a "Do-Follow Road Trip" (Just made that phrase up very clever) to improve your blogs Google rank, Page rank and increase the amount of visitors to your blog.

Sounds Good - Getting Started

First up, this is a post i wasn't sure if i should write for a number of reasons but mainly because like with every good deed, some people (the minority) will see another way to spam and piss off a lot of hard working Bloggers.But i feel it's unfair on new bloggers to not let them know some of the little tricks others are doing to give their Blog a Boost.

This post goes into detail on every area of the subject, if your new to blogging you should take it all in if your more experienced you can pick the info relevant to your needs.

So lets first look at Links or back links.

A back link is a link from a web page to your blog, it may be someone mentioning your blog with a link in a post "Hey i just read a great post by John Click Here to see it" , someone adding you blog as one of their favorites in their sidebar or Footer, or anywhere on the web that there is a link to your blog or any page of your blog would be a back link.

Every link on every website, blog and web page gets crawled by search engines (For this post from here on i will use Google as the example search engine).When Google crawl a web page and pick up a link to your blog they use this link like a badge recommending your blog.

The more links they find to your blog around the web, they take as more people recommending your blog.

This has a few effects :

1. The more links to your blog the higher your blog will rank in search results
2. The more links to your blog the higher your blogs page rank(PR)

"What is Page Rank?"

While i have a good idea of how page rank works, i recon the guys that invented page rank don't know how it works any more !
But the main thing to understand is that page rank goes from 0=low to 10=high with the higher the better.

I could go much deeper into this but why bother we know the main goal here and that's the more sites we can get to link to our blogs the better.You can see how many sites link to your blog by signing up for Google webmaster tools and registering your blog.

What Links Count As Back links

Of course not all the links will be to the homepage of your blog and a great example of this is from the post i published last December showing how to add a snow fall effect to your blog.That post alone has has been linked to 1,221 times, that's over 5 times more links than there are to the homepage ! That is not a problem a link to any page is good.

The image below is from Webmaster Tools updated 24-01-2010 :

You must also consider i only bought the domain SpiceUpYourBlog.Com on 16-12-2009 and did not get the Domain connected until Christmas Eve the 24th - so the total number of links built in 1 month at almost 2,000 is great.

Before i got spiceupyourblog.com this blog had started with the address : www.Spiceyourblog.info.
Both spiceyourblog.info and the Blogger default : www.spiceyourblog.blogspot.com (both still direct to this blog) have built back links also, they are not included in the list above.

However every back link is still huge and as reveled in a recent interview with Google employee Matt Cutts back links in the body of a post are counted as more important than links in the footer or sidebar sections of web pages.This basically means if i was to link to your blog in this post that would be of more benefit than if i linked to your blog in my footer (Bottom section).You can of course link to Spice Up Your Blog to thank me for the hard work (Blatant Self Promotion :D)

Once again i could go much deeper into this but i fear some poeple could get lost if i do.

Links are also for clicking

OK so we have looked at back links and it is indisputable how important they are to a Blogger but we have left out the fact that people also click links !

So not only will a back link to your blog help your blogs rank in search results and your Page Rank but it will also bring new visitors to your blog who may like what they see and link to you and the whole cycle starts again.

Now your thinking this is great Paul but how do i get people to link to my Blog ?

Generating Back links

This is not easy and in a way i cheated because the snow effect gadget had a built in link so most of the people providing those 1,221 links don't actually know they are linking to me at all.This is something you see with a lot of gadgets you use on your blog and i actually include links on very few gadgets i provide here as compared with some similar sites.
Most of the 237 links to the homepage are links that people created because they liked my blog and wanted to share it with their readers.

There are lots of ways to get back links you may have heard of link exchange were two bloggers agree to link to each others blogs thus creating a back link for each of them.You can write guest posts on other blogs, submit to blog directory's, social bookmarking, article submission and many more, maybe you can share some ways you get back links in the comments.

Some people actually pay for back links, and a quiet good option if you were willing to spend a few bucks is permalinks.These links are be placed in a prime position at the top of a post and once purchased are there forever, they are sold for a one off fee.
This is slightly different to the normal link you may get in a sidebar or footer as
1. Its in the post body which is seen as more important by Google
2. It's in a prime position with some text, so it also works as an ad for your blog
3. Most 125x125 banner ads you buy in a sidebar (You can see 4 of those in my sidebar) are No-Follow (You will see why that's bad below)
4. Of course a permalink lasts forever.
(Update : Google Dont Like People Selling Links)

Links And Comments

Now were are into the heart of how Do-Follow came to exist, lets look at this example :

If i go to your blog and leave a comment i am asked to leave my Name, sometimes i have to provide my Email and i have the option to add my URL i add the URL to my blog.

(I know blogger works differently we will go into that in a minute).

I add all this information and write my comment.The comment is now there for all to see and my name or nickname is beside the comment.

What if i click on my name beside the comment ? - It leads to the URL i provided when filling out the comment form and that URL is my blog address so it leads to my blog.

So hold on..My name beside the comment is a link to my blog..that means their is a link to my blog on another site..that means i have got a back link just by commenting..

In most cases No !

All blogging platforms have the default comments as no-follow.This means that when Google crawl that blog they come to the comment section and are told not to index the links in the comments.So although i left a comment and there is a link to my blog on the page it will not count as a badge or a recommendation it will count as nothing.

And it's not only comments that can be No-Follow i could add a small piece of code to make every link on this blog No-Follow ! And one of the biggest websites online has already done this, do you know what one ?

Wikipedia

Almost every link on wikipedia in No-Follow - So you could have a million links to your blog from Wikipedia and while it may bring you some traffic it will not help your blogs page rank or search result rank.To be fair Wikipedia was becoming a spammers heaven and they had to take action to put off the spammers.And the fact that making the entire site No-Follow stopped a lot of spammers just shows you how important backlinks are.

Back to the No-Follow comments, when people come to my blog i want them to leave comments we all love comments.So as an incentive i have changed my comment section from No-Follow to Do Follow, now if you leave a comment here when Google crawl my blog they will pick up your link and it will be a recommendation from me for your blog.I get more comments and i get to help the readers of my blog..Great !

I personally believe all comments should be Do-Follow because it builds a better sense of community and Bloggers helping Bloggers.Changing your blog to Do-Follow couldn't be easier so with that in mind we will get to the first tutorial.

The steps to make your Blog Do-Follow.

Step 1. Click 'Layout 'Edit Html' Tick the 'Expand Widget Templates' Box

Step 2. Find the following piece of code in your blogs html :
(Click 'CTRL and F' for a search bar to help find the code)

<data:comment.author/>

Step 3. Directly before the code you found you will see the following code :

<a expr:href='data:comment.authorUrl' rel='nofollow'>

Step 4. Simply remove the no in nofollow so it looks like this :

<a expr:href='data:comment.authorUrl' rel='follow'>

Once you have made that change save your template and your blog is now a Do-Follow Blog.
I will give you 7 Do-Follow image codes (including the one at the top of the post) to display on your blog at the bottom of the this post so you can let people know your blog is Do-Follow.

Don't Link To Your Profile

So you now understand how No-Follow and Do-Follow work and you know that leaving comments on Do-Follow blogs will go a long way to helping your blog, but apart from changing your blog to Do-Follow what more can you do with this information.

First and this is Huge !

When you comment on a Blog hosted on blogger like this one, you usually comment using your Blogger / Google user name, most of the time you are already logged in and your user name is showing on the drop down menu as mine is below :

If you leave a comment with your Blogger / Google user name then the link when your name beside your comment is clicked will be to your Blogger profile not your blog !

So your profile is getting the back link and that's no good.

But this can be avoided, every time you leave a comment on a Blogger blog use the Name/URL option :

Click the arrow on the Drop down menu and choose Name/URL as shown below :

And fill in your name or nickname along with your Blogs URL as i did below and click continue:

Now write your comment and you have created a backlink for your blog.

When you comment on any blog using a different comment system make sure you add you blog address.

Don't Be Fooled

And now we get to the part were we have to be careful because while all the bloggers including myself changed to Do-Follow to help the regular readers and to reward people that took the time to comment we are also opening up a portal for spam.

Lets face it if you could find a thousand Do-Follow blogs and leave a comment on each one, you have just created a thousand backlinks to your blog.

That is why almost all Do-Follow blogs use comment moderation - your comment wont appear until it has been approved.

So if you went to a thousand blogs and simply commented 'nice post' the chances are 990 of those comments will not be approved and you will have wasted a lot of time.I'm not saying that every person that just writes 'nice post' is a spammer in fact i have had people who have left that exact comment on this blog and commented as 'Anonymous' so they did not even leave their URL to get a back link.

The Do-Follow Road Trip

That's a good introduction to building backlinks from commenting.Most bloggers don't mind if the only reason you went to their blog was to leave a comment and create a backlink as long as you actually read the post you are commenting on, and leave a comment that is on the topic of the post and actually adds something to the conversation.

So were you to comment on this post instead of writing

"Good info"

Try to show you have read the post and of course Big Up the author, how about this :

"I wasn't sure about Do-Follow and how it works thanks for taking the time to explain it in more detail.I have not yet changed my blog to Do-Follow but thanks to this post i will seriously consider it now - Thanks John"

You have shown that you at least looked at the main points of the post and you have done something every blogger loves - You praised them, lets face it we are all vein and love to be told how great we are.If you tell a blogger in detail how much you liked their post your comment wont be waiting for approval for too long.

Finding Do Follow Blogs

Your probably thinking wouldn't it be great if there was a list of Do Follow blogs ?

It's all about supply and demand and to that end their are hundreds if not thousands of lists of do follow blogs.In fact their are people trying to sell systems that will submit comments to Do Follow blogs for you.
(Don't touch them they are not able to submit to blogs with word verification and we all know the automated messages)

Should you use a list and go on a Do Follow Road Trip ?

I will actually say it : Yes - Some time when you have an hour to spare Go find a list of do follow blogs and start leaving comments !

But be Very - Very - Very careful what list you use and Don't use a list were you have to provide your Email in order to get the list, there are lots of lists freely available just Google 'List of Do Follow blogs'

How to make sure your comment is approved or not deleted

Make sure to at least scan through the post
Leave a comment that relates to the topic of the post
Make your comment a minimum of 3 sentence's
In the 'Name' section use your actual name and not your blog name

This was supposed to be a normal post but it has almost turned into an Ebook, i felt i needed to share this information with people new to the weird and wonderful world of being a Blogger.

As always if you keep posting quality content to your blog it will have more of an effect than all the links in the world.Whats the point in working so hard to get people to your blog if theres nothing for them to see when they get there ?

We have covered a lot of points in this post and if i lost you at any stage just let me know, the important thing and the point behind Spice Up Your Blog is that nobody gets left behind.

I would be interested in knowing how much you knew about the topics covered in this post and i would love to know if you made the change to Do Follow ?

You Comment I Follow Images

As promised if you changed your blog to Do-Follow you will want to let people know so i have 6 images you can use below.

Simply copy the code under the image and place it on your blog.If you would like to put the image directly above the comment area like i have it you will see how in this post : Click here

Remember you can get all these tips sent directly to your email and stay a step ahead.Its a quick and easy service Provided for Free by Google.Just fill in the Email form below the post.
If you need extra help on this or any tutorial just leave a comment, I love comments and feedback so this Blog is Do-Follow - when you comment here it helps Your Blogs Google rank !

Image 1.

Image 1 Code.

Image 2.

Image 2 code.

Image 3.

Image 3 Code.

Image 4.

Image 4 code.

Image 5.

Image 5 code.

Image 6.

Image 6 code.

Image 7.

Image 7 code.

Never finish a post with an image, video or code always finish with text..like this :D

Getting Your Blog Ranked On Google With Google Employee Matt Cutts

2010-01-10T19:22:00.001Z

Some of the most popular posts on this blog are in the Search Engine Optimization (S.E.O.) category.I have tried to provide information i have picked up over the years to help you get indexed on Google.I have covered lots of Google tips and tricks and tried to make them easy for all users.

I came across a recent video from USA Today, it is a Jefferson Grahaman interview with Matt Cutts from Google and he asked Matt how do we get our sites onto Google ?

What was Matt's answer ?

He made 4 main points all of which i have told you and shown you on this blog :

Take a look at the video and see were i covered the points last year below :

1. Submit your blog to google, I showed you how to do this on the 16th of November 2009 in a post titled 'Getting New Visitors To Your Blog - 8 Ways To Get Started'

2. Add a meta description to your blog, I showed you how to do this on the 12th of November 2009 in a post titled 'How To Improve Your Blogs Google Rank With Meta Tags & Description'

3. Submit a sitemap to Google, i showed you how to this on the 26th of December 2009 in a post titled 'Get More Traffic To Your Blog By Submitting 2 Sitemaps To Google In 5 Minutes'

4.Improve your blogs title tags that appear in search results, I showed you how to do this on the 6th of October 2009 in a post titled 'How to improve Your Blogs Google rank.Change how search engines see you Blog'

Remember you can get all these tips sent directly to your email and stay a step ahead.Its quick easy and of course a free service provided by Google just fill in the form below the post.

Yes Matt's tips are the same tips i gave you last year.I have been working with S.E.O. for a while over half the traffic to this blog is from Google, everything i tell you is genuine and the S.E.O. tips i have ready for future posts will help some more Click Here to see some more S.E.O. tips from the archive..

As always you have to keep posting to your blog and give the google crawlers something new to find, try to post new content to your blog once a day if you can.

It's not rocket science you can do it.

6 Ways To Keep Your Blog Archive Alive, Getting Hits And Making Money

2010-01-08T23:55:00.005Z

As our blogs grow and we add more and more content we tend to drive ahead forgetting the trail of posts we have left behind us.Yes the Blog Archive, it can be a trip down memory lane looking back at the posts we lovingly created...But should you just let your blog archive lay down and die ?

Your archive can be kept alive and can justify it's existence by bringing visitors to your blog and keeping current visitors on your blog.If you advertise on your blog with AdSense or other advertisers and sponsers you archive can keep attracting traffic from search engines, and keep earning for years.This all sounds great, but your archive cannot survive by itself it needs you to provide life support.

So lets look at 6 ways we can keep our archives alive.

Remember you can get all these tips sent directly to your email and stay a step ahead.Its quick easy and of course a free service provided by Google just fill in the form below the post.

1.The first is obvious but a big one simply keep your archive updated.

Obvious yet most bloggers fail to do it.When i say updated i mean a few things, once you have been blogging for a while you learn new tactics and tricks.You find the best way to present your blog posts for your readers, for S.E.O. and to look more professional.Go back through your archive and make sure your archived posts are up to standard.You don't need to do it all at once, a good way to organise this is to edit an old post every time you publish a new post.

Add some keywords relevant to your blog if they were not added when you first posted or maby change the title to something more catchy .I am currently working on a post showing the best way to pick a title and write the first paragraphs, the paragraphs search engines index the most so keep posted for that.

2. A full site map not the default.

Adding a sitemap to Google containing all my posts not just the default sitemap (The one most bloggers are using) which only contains your last 26 posts.Even if you don't have 26 posts yet set it up now.Here is how to add the sitemap: How To Submit A Sitemap Of Your Blog To Google

3. Related Posts.

Another obvious one that a lot of blogs have add already is a 'Related Posts' list.This is a list placed under your blog posts containing posts from your archive that are on the same topic.This will send people to your archive.
I have a related posts widget you can use : Related Posts Widget For Your Blog
You could get the LinkWithin recent posts with thumbnails : Click Here

4. Re-Share them and Re-tweet them.

We all tweet our latest post on Twitter and share them on Facebook, Digg and others why don't we give our archives some life by Re-Sharing them.When you happen to find yourself on an old post give it a tweet.

5. Link to them in your latest posts.

Once your blog has 20-30 posts you should start linking back.If your a regular reader here you will notice i always have a line similar to this somewhere in my posts
"I covered this in a recent post click here to see it " or " for more info click here" ..
Yes it's all very organised my friends.
Make sure the link is set to open in a new window and make sure the post your linking to is relevant to the one your writing.

6.Analyze the stats.

This does not have to be hard and you don't need to be an expert to do it.You can add a free 'Hit Counter' to your blog that will show you which posts from your archive are getting the most hits.Learn from this information, once you know which posts are most popular you can try to work out why and use that information to edit the older posts and of course it will help you when writing new posts.
Here is 10 free counters you can choose from : Free Hit Counters For Your Blog
You might also add the Feedjit widget :
Go to Feedjit and click 'Widgets' in the top menu for the Free widgets : Click Here

There are lots more things you can do but remember your archive represents you and if its not up to standard it will look like your not up to standard so fix it or delete it because you cant hide it !

Do you have any tips or a routine to keep your Archive Alive ? I would love to hear any suggestions.

How To Get A Free Domain Name For Your Blog

2009-12-30T04:00:00.007Z

A top tip to promote your blog and grow your readership is using a custom domain.

Basically instead of using the blogger sub domain www.Yourblogname.blogspot.com
you use www.Yourblogname.com.

When i created this blog i started with the domain www.spiceyourblog.blogspot.com
but shortly after changed to
www.spiceupyourblog.com.

The reason everyone doesn't make the change is simple domains cost money.But you can get a domain for free.

(This Post Contains affiliate links)

OK it wont be www.yourblog.com it will be www.yourblog.co.cc but i still think its a valid option that's deserves consideration.

Using a .co.cc domain will separate your blog you blog from the now millions of .blogspot.com blogs and the URL is shorter and more unique.

Even though you are using a new domain your readers wont get left behind as the blogspot address will divert to your new domain.

www.spiceyourblog.blogspot.com will still bring you to this blog even though i changed.

To be honest finding an available .com address is near imposable as most are being used.You will have noticed more and more blogs and websites using others like .net and .info

Remember you can get all these tips sent directly to your email and stay a step ahead.Its quick easy and of course a free service provided by Google just fill in the form below the post.

So can you find a good free .co.cc address ?

There is a good chance that if your blog address is lets say www.JohnsCarBlog.blogspot.com you will be able to get JohnsCarBlog.co.cc.

Of course if your blog grows you can still make the change in the future and buy a .com or .net domain your .co.cc will still work as well.

To make it easy for you you can check if your preferred address is available right now from this blog.

Type in the domain you would like and see if its available :

If you would like to go to the .co.cc website and check out how it works and get more info Click Here

Whats the catch ?
There genuinely is no catch they dont look for anything and the domain will work the same as a domain you buy.I guess they hope that if in the future you do decide to buy a domain you will buy it from them.

New : As the free domains have become so popular i have added a post showing exactly how to connect your new domain with your Blogger blog.The posts uses full screen shots to show you how to connect in 5 minutes with 12 quick steps.Once you have picked your new domain Click Here to see that post.

Before we finish : If you need more help or have an opinion or suggestion Please leave a comment Below.
To help you this is a Do-Follow Blog leaving a comment will also help your blogs Google rank.

If you do need more help let me know.

Do you use a custom domain for your blog or still use the blogspot sub domain ? Let us know.

Get More Traffic To Your Blog By Submitting 2 Sitemaps To Google In 5 Minutes

2009-12-26T01:40:00.006Z

If you want to get more hits to your Blog making your blog 'search engine friendly' is an absolute must.Sitemaps basically show Google search bots you recent activity quicker and without the bells and wistles than can cause crawl errors (Dirthy words to a blogger).

Im always trying to provide better tips and improve the tutorials when possable and this post has been updated from the original to include a second sitemap.Why? The first sitemap only contains your 26 most recent posts ! If you have more than 26 posts they are not indexed.You should still add both sitemaps, the more the better.

In earlier posts i posted tips on changing the default title tags of your blog and adding a meta title and description both great tricks in their own right.

There is a number of ways to generate a sitemap for blogs and websites, here on blogger generating a sitemap and submitting it to Google can be done in 5 minutes and can be achieved by even the least experienced Blogger.

What Is A Site map ?

"Site maps can improve search engine optimization of a site by making sure that all the pages can be found. This is especially important if a site uses a dynamic access to content such as Adobe Flash or JavaScript menus that do not include HTML links.

They also act as a navigation aid by providing an overview of a site's content at a single glance.

Most search engines will only follow a finite number of links from a page, so if the number of links is very large, the site map may be required so that search engines and visitors can access all content on the site"
(source :Wikipedia)

We have 3 sections to complete this tip

Getting your sitemap address

Submitting your blog to Google webmaster tools

Submitting your Sitemap to Google webmaster tools

So lets see how its done :

Sitemap 1.
I will show you how this is done for future referance.

Getting the sitemap address

Step 1.
Go to your blog and look at your blogs address in the browser at the top of the page it will be :
http://www.YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/
or if you have a custom domain :
http://www.YOURBLOGNAME.com/
Mine is http://www.spiceupyourblog.com/

Step 2.
Add the following to the end of your blogs URL :
robots.txt
So now you have :
http://www.YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/robots.txt
http://www.YOURBLOGNAME.com/robots.txt
Mine is http://www.spiceupyourblog.com/robots.txt
Click enter or go to go to the address

Step 3.
Now once you go to this page it will look like this :

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /search

Sitemap: http://www.YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated

Mine looks like this :

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /search

Sitemap: http://www.spiceupyourblog.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated

Above as i have highlighted in red is your site map address - that's it as far as getting the site map.
Keep this you will need it later.

Sitemap 2.
I will just give you the default 'atom 500' address :

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500

Sponser: We Simply sell one product every day.We have awesome products that we sell at unbelievably low prices.Click Below To See Todays Special.

Now you can Submit your site map to Google.

Submitting your blog to Google webmaster tools

Step 1.
If you do not already have a webmaster tools account to do this you go to www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ you can log in to webmaster tools with your Google account the same details you log into blogger with.

Webmaster tools is a Great source of information to see exactly how Google sees your blog but that's another days work..

Step 2.
On the homepage if you have not already submitted your site to webmaster tools click 'Submit A Site' .
You can submit your blog URL.Note: just submit your URL here http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com we enter the site map address later.

You will have to verify that you own the blog this is straight forward follow the steps provided by Google.

For mor help adding your site click here

Once you are verified as the owner of the blog we can carry on.

You are now ready to submit your sitemap.

Step 1.

Submitting your Sitemap to Google webmaster tools

Click on your blog address in your webmasters dashboard you will arrive on this page.In the left sidebar click 'site configuration' as shown below ::

Now in the drop down click 'sitemaps' as below :

Before we finish : If you need more help or have an opinion or suggestion Please leave a comment Below. This is a Do-Follow Blog leaving a comment will also help your blogs Google rank.

Click 'Submit Sitemap' as circled in red below and enter the site map you generated earlier:

feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated

As you can see circled in blue below your URL is already there so just type or paste in : feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated

Click submit.

Now enter the second sitemap :

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500

Click submit.

Your sitemaps have been added and the Google bots are heading your way.Why not now Submit A Sitemap To Yahoo.

This is one of the many ways we can help our blogs get ranked higher in search results to see some of the other posts on this S.E.O. Blog Tips.

Dont worry if you struggle first time just take your time and let me know how you get on or if you have some trouble.

How well does your blog rank in Google? Have you any tips that you found successful?

How To Improve Your Blogs Google Rank With Meta Tags & Description

2009-11-12T08:26:00.005Z

In this post i will show you how to add Meta Tags And Meta Description to your blog.

Improving your search engine rank is key to the success of your blog.This is known as S.E.O. (Search Engine Optimization).
Large companies spend a fortune on S.E.O. ,That's great if you have a fortune to spend !

Search engines use automated spiders and crawlers, to collect information from your blog.They collect URL'S ,Titles,etc...
They also collect keywords from the early parts of your blog posts.

However you don't know which words are taken as keywords connected to your blog, It's likely the keywords been taken are not relevent to your blog at all. In this case your blog won't be indexed properly in search engines.
Theres also a chance your highly relevant keywords might not even be used to index your blog.This will result in your blog being ranked behind Thousands of others in searches !

But you can take control !

You can add Meta Tags and Description to your blog.

Now YOUR telling the search engine spiders and crawlers the key words and description YOU want your blog to be indexed under.

So lets do it !

First you must copy the code below and add a meta description and meta keywords (as shown in bold) as follows:

<meta content='text/html; charset=utf-8' http-equiv='Content-Type'/> <meta content='PUT BLOG DISCRIPTION HERE.' name='description'/> <meta content='PUT, KEYWORDS, HERE, SEPERATED, BY, COMMA,' name='keywords'/>

Heres an example of how the code might look for this blog:
(Just a quick example not my actual meta content)

<meta content='text/html; charset=utf-8' http-equiv='Content-Type'/> <meta content='SPICE UP YOUR BLOG BLOG TIPS TRICKS' name='description'/> <meta content='blog, tips, tricks,' name='keywords'/>

Notes on Description:'PUT BLOG DISCRIPTION HERE'.-TRY KEEP IT LESS THAN 150 CHARACTERS

This explains its self,Keeping it under 150 characters is search engine friendly,you don't have to use 150 characters it can be as short or long as you wish once its relevant to your blog.

Notes on Keywords :'PUT, KEYWORDS, HERE, SEPERATED, BY, COMMA,'-YOU CAN ADD AS MANY AS YOU LIKE - SEPARATE BY COMMAS - DON'T USE THE SAME WORD MORE THAN 5 TIMES

Think which words or phrases best describe your blog.Repeating a word more than 5 times can be seen as spam by search engines.

Adding The Code To Your Blog :

We Are Nearly FinishedIf you need more help or have an opinion or suggestion Please leave a comment Below.It also really helps me to get feedback..

1.Click 'Layout'-->'Edit Html' For your blog.

2.Find the following piece of code in your blogs html:
(Its very close to the top)

<head>

3.Add the meta content code Directly Below <head>

4.Click save and your finished.

In a previous blog i covered Improving S.E.O. by Changing the way Google sees your blog this is also important: Click Here To See That Post

For a list of S.E.O. tips on this blog Click Here

Getting New Visitors To Your Blog - 8 Ways To Get Started

2009-10-16T14:31:00.005+01:00

I suppose there is no point in spicing up your blog if you get no visitors.Getting your blog noticed is not an easy task but there are steps you can take to give your blog a push in the right direction.

Remember you need to keep posting to your blog, this is one of the most used phrases but 'content is king'.Try to publish a post once a day or at least five time a week if you are posting more than once a day try leave a gap between the posting times.

Here is the list of Eight ways to get started :

Submit your blog to search engines

Click here to add your blog to Google

Click here to add your blog to Bing

Get a feedburner for your blog :

Click here to see how

Join and submit you blog to Blog Directories :

20 Essential Blog Directories to Submit Your Blog To

Leave your link :

Traffic Exchange

(Don't use traffic exchanges if your blog has AdSense it is against their T.O.S. and could get you banned)

Press Release

Click Here

Here's a list of free press release Distribution Sites

Tell your friends online on offline !

Feedburner Connect

Twitterfeed Connect

Leave your blog link at the foot of all your Emails.

These are just a short list of ideas and suggestions try to cover as many as you can.
I have are more tips to help get visitors to your blog Click here to see them.

And keep posting make sure there is content there for people to see and remember only good content will bring them back.

How many of the eight are you going to try ? Have you any suggestions to bring people to your blog ?

How to improve Your Blogs Google rank.Change how search engines see you Blog.

2009-10-06T16:00:00.008+01:00

In this post i will show you how to get more visitors to your blog from search engines by changing how you blog is seen.

Improving your blog and working on getting more traffic from search engines is called 'Search Engine Optimization' (S.E.O.)
This is a very easy yet extremely effective way to improve your blogs search engine ranking and move you towards the top of search results.

To change how search engines see your blog you must change the default setting in your blog template.

What we are doing here is making your Post Titles be ranked up ahead of your blog title,Believe me every top blogger has made this change.

I am constsntly looking for ways to improve your title tags for improved S.E.O. and this is the forth edit i have made to this code :Latest Change:05 DECEMBER 2009

We do this in four simple steps.

1.Click the layout and then edit html options for the blog you wish to change.

If you need more help or have an opinion or suggestion,
Please leave a comment Below.

2.Near the top of your blogs html you will find this piece of code :

<title><data:blog.pagetitle/></title>

3.Replace that piece of code with the following piece of code :

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "index"'> <title><data:blog.title/></title> <b:else/> <title><data:blog.pageName/> | <data:blog.title/></title> </b:if>

4.Click save template and your finished !

You have now changed Blogger's default title tag to help focus relevant keywords to your blog which improve the search engine ranking of your blog.