Change the Title Tags in Blogger for More Search Engine Optimization

By default Blogger displays the blog title first, followed by the name of the post. As you might notice this is not good when it comes to SEO. It's important for the name of the post to come before the name of your blog, especially when it comes to google search results. Learn how to make your post title show up first so that you can reel in more traffic from the search engines.

Why Change the Titles?
It's quite important to have the Post Title + Blog Title arranged accordingly because this is how you would want your blog to be displayed on google's search results. This way more people will click on
your link when searching google because the post title is more relevant than your post name.

Example Google Search Results:
You are most likely to click on the bottom image when searching google for the keywords "image reflection generator". The reason being is that your mind reads text from left to right. So it makes sense to have the more important title on the left.

How to Change the Titles:

1. Go to Layout>edit HTML in your Blogger dashboard.


2. Search for this tag:


3. Replace this tag with the following code:


4. Save your template and you should see the results in your web browser as depicted in the images below.


5. It may take a few days for the changes to show up on the google search results. I guarantee you that you will start receiving more traffic from google once you are re-indexed!

Ways to Monetize Blogs

Commercialization of your blog must undergo serious thinking and evaluation on whether you’re up to the challenge or not. Monetizing your blog is a higher level of blogging compared to the early days of blogging where you just express your feelings, write about your interests, or just want to create networks. It is considered a higher form of blogging since your main goal is to generate income. Now, if you’re up for the challenge of earning income through blogging, here are some ways on how to maximize that writing talent of yours.

Advertisement
Web pages and blogs nowadays are full of these advertisements. You have the Contextual Advertising, the most popular one, probably due to Google Adsense. It has made a major impact because the advertisements are more targeted, and are more likely to be clicked. Another one is Text Links Advertising or Link Popularity which uses the text link ads or adbrite. This advertisement specializes on placing a static text link ads on high quality websites where there is high traffic. There is also what they call Direct Advertising. Here you create a page or dedicate a portion of your blog which offers options to businesses to directly place banners or links on your website.

Commissions
The other way you can earn is through commissions, others may call it affiliate program. Here you write something about the product and if someone buys that product you earn a percentage of there income. Sometimes it can be through a link inyour blog that leads them to the the page where they can purchase the product. The commission maybe big depending on the cost of the product being sold. .

Begging/ Donations
it never hurts to ask your readers directly for donations. It is not a shameful act especially if you have a good, honest and well composed blog. But of course you have to ask them in a polite way.Readers who truly value you work will be more than willing to support you. This is advisable if your blog has already a lot of followers.

Selling Products
If you have already mastered the way of blogging and already have a lot of follower, you may now sell the content of your blog through CDs. Your readers might want a compilation of your works. A good review of something you are selling could also result to a profit. You can also sell or endorse other products. A lot of big companies hire bloggers in order to promote their products.

Selling your blog
Sell your blog for a handsome amount of money. This way of monetizing your blog could be the most lucrative among the rest. But like any other product your blog must be on top of the line, must have a great content and a high level of traffic..

Monetization of blog will not happen overnight. It takes time, more good blogs and good traffic. Continue creating great blogs, and it’s pretty sure revenues will soon follow.

How To Choose A Blog Topics?

Choosing a topic has always been my dilemma. It is not as easy as it seems. Every time I start a blog, I always ask myself these questions – What topic should I discuss that will be of much interest to the readers? How to choose a topic that will always attract the whole blogoshpere’s attention? One has to give much effort on what to write since it is one of the most important part in writing an exceptional blog. Every good topic that you choose to write about in your blog will add to the blog’s appeal and uniqueness. It is important to have topics that are interesting for the blog to be successful and popular.

How then to choose a topic? According to what I have researched, it has to be something of your interest, something you are passionate about. The main topic of the blog should be something you can write about practically indefinitely. The overall topic of your blog should be interesting enough to you for you to right about it forever, and it should be broad enough to attract readers. Your sub-topics should have something new from time to time. By doing so, you’ll keep your readers wanting to read more and more of your blogs. Keep them interested. Keep them craving for more of your blogs.

Another is, your blog topics should be something fun. Make sure that you’ll not treat your blogging as a job. Your blog topics should never feel tired and monotonous. Your readers will feel it too. It is important that you choose blog topics that interests you and that will make you feel afresh and anew. You should choose a topic you like to discuss with others. After posting the blog, you, most possibly, will have some people comment on your blogs. Make sure to have a topic you want to talk about for you to be responsive to yourreaders.

To create a successful blog, you should create a rapport with them to keep them coming and visiting your blog. In this blog world, some people may agree with your blog, some may not. As long as you are enjoying discussing and you are doing it in a healthy way, keep going. Keep blogging. The topic should be something that is also of interest to you readers. Blog about what your readers want to read. Don’t be bias. Balance your interest with theirs. Keep an eye on your target readers’ favored topic. Talking about it would make them appreciate your blog. This is also one way to have a financially rewarding blog.

Keep these in mind and you most probably will have a favorable, profitable, popular blog.

Are You a Blog Addict?

Are you a blog addict? If you answer yes, you did found something worth your time and effort. Most people say blogging is an art, a way of expressing yourself, thoughts, and feelings. Others say, its a new way of communicating or conveying your thoughts to others. The majority also say that blogging is an income generating activity. Maybe, these are the reasons why you are hooked into it.

Blog, according to Wikipedia, is a type of website usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Some bloggers fill their blogs with comments about any topics – whether about events, politics and just anything under the sun. Some individuals made their blog to function as online diaries. Some others focuses on art – poems, photographs, sketches, videos, and music. But this individuals who maintain it sometimes get hooked that they wrote anything and everything they can think of, and posts blogs depending on what they think and feel at the moment.

Blogging is a new way of expressing oneself, thoughts and feelings. Gone are the days where only good writers can make books or novels to express their selves, because even a young adult now a days are into blogging where they express there opinions and experiences spontaneously and freely. The generations who got hooked into this stuff is getting younger and younger. We’ll never know it would be part of a curriculum in elementary in the near future.


Another good thing about blogging is that it is a way of communicating with others. With your thoughts expressed in blogs, you conveyed a message where people can react through comments. Others may like what you wrote and re-post them, while others may not. But what you wrote may, in one way or another, be beneficial to your readers. Others may find your blogs unhelpful as of the moment, but in the long run, as time and need arises, your readers will still, even in the littlest use, benefit from it.

The good thing here is you still communicated with them and you intended to impart your thoughts and ideas with them through your blogs. You may want to influence your readers through your words of encouragement but even if you can’t, even if your readers won’t agree with what you wrote, what is important is you shared something, you gave out ideas and you made it known loud and clear.

Writers are truly blessed. They are being paid for what they enjoy doing most. True to blogging, it has been a source of gaining revenues now a days. Some people earn a lot of money on this, others made it their profession by monetizing their blogs even those personal ones. Bloggers, not only earn money, but also knowledge from other blogs and articles they have and they will still read.

Both the bloggers and their readers will learn from blogging and reading blogs. What disadvantages could you get from blogging? None. Blogging is indeed a good addiction.

Guidelines for Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is a trick to optimize or improve the volume or quality of traffic to a certain web site. There are two types of SEO. First is the “black hat” SEO where search engine optimizers’ main goal is to achieve high rankings in the search engines through any possible means, even in an unethical manner. Optimizers breaks search engine rules and regulations, and unethically presents contents in a different visual or non-visual way to search engine spiders and users. The second type is the “white hat” SEO, where the usage of SEO strategies, techniques and tactics focuses on human audience opposed to search engines. This type is also called the Ethical SEO because it completely follows search engine rules and policies. Both types’ primary goals are to increase the visibility of your website, to gain high rankings and for internet marketing.

Here are some guidelines to achieve the primary goals of Search Engine Optimization.

1. Clear Hierarchy and Text Links.

Webmasters should make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Each page of your site should be reachable from at least one static text link. In giving very informational heading tags, the bots will see the hierarchy of the page. This is very important foryour site to be very visible to bots. Webmasters should choose the right text to be used as links in each page and should put relevant Tag for clear hierarchy.

2. Site Map.

Create a site map for your users. A site map lets the search engine know that the pages that might not be discovered through spiders exist. The site map must have links that points to the important parts of your site. If you have a large website with so many links, you can break the site map up into many pages.

3. Useful and Information-rich content.

Having a solid content would entice more the users to continue reading and browsing through your site. Therefore it is very important for your site to be full of useful, clear and accurate information about your topic. Your content should be original and should make sense. Throw relevant keywords in your content, and have it updated once in a while. Besides, it is what your users are really looking for.

4. Keywords.

Don’t use words that are too generic since it would be very hard for you to optimize for them. Try to pick keywords that are specific; words that users would usually type when searching. You make sure that these words are found in your article or blog. Research your keywords and know which of these are most possibly going to be searched by most users.

5. Use texts instead of images in displaying important names, contents, or links.

Search engines don’t recognize images. So instead of displaying names or contents through images, it is advised to have it displayed through text. And if you need to use images for your content, try using the “ALT” attribute, where you can include some words that would describe that image.

6. Descriptive and accurate Title elements and ALT attributes.

You should make sure that what you wrote in the TITLE Elements and ALT attributes should be descriptive of the content of your site. What you write in the title element and the alt attributes will be used by search engine to find the articles related with the user’s given keywords. Feel free too to make bold the texts that are important since bots will tend to give value on bold texts.

7.Check for broken links and correct HTML.

The spiders will stop the search if they find broken links in your site. Check your site thoroughly for broken links in order for the bots to have something to crawl through. You should also create a proper 404 page in casethe search engine gives the visitor an old URL. Include in it the appropriate link in the error page for the visitor to know where to go.

Top 5 Ad Networks To Use On Your Blog

More often than not, bloggers and website owners allow contextual ads on their blogs and sites. These contextual advertisements are web ads that are “targeted to the specific individual who is visiting the website,” Webopedia. That is, the ads appearing on the site are based on what the user is viewing and on what the users is searching using the search engine of the site.

Why do site owners allow these ads to appear in their sites? Simple. It’s purely business. Site owners receive revenue from the ad networks hosting these ads and at the same time ad networks also receive revenue for hosting these ads while the advertisers attracts and gains more costumers thru these ads. Site owners, primarily wants to gain something out of their sites. Whether we all agree or not, websites, at the moment, are created for monetizing purposes.

So I’ve gathered up some resources about these ad networks for which you can choose from for your site. Top five of my researches about them are listed in here.

Google AdSense. This one is a free program allowing you to display interrelated Google ads on your site. They offer competitive filter which enables you to filter competitors or advertisers, contextual filter, which eliminates delivery of ads found inappropriate for the page, editorial review which means all Google ads are reviewed and approved before being provided on the page, and customizable default ads wherein in the unlikely event that Google is unable to provide your page a contextual ad, they allow you to place a default ad of your choice. Consequently, it doesn’t just add up volume to your site but definitely lets you earn money. How? It is very simple. You earn just through valid clicks or impressions. It is definitely plain and simple. Just visit their site by clicking Google AdSense. Apply. Once your application is approved, you can get started in a jiffy. You basically copy and paste a block of HTML to your site and voila! Google ads will now start appearing on your site.

AdOn Network This one now is a subsidiary of PV Media Group, Inc., which offers a full set of online media solutions from leading companies in online advertising, SEO, and more to form a first-class Internet marketing powerhouse. AdOn Network guarantees an innovative contextual and behavioral advertising solution to both advertisers and publishers to deliver quality traffic from the US and Global sources. It allows publishers, that is, you site owners and bloggers, to monetize your traffic from multiple forms of display and search advertising. Their turnkey, private-level ASP(Active Server Pages) solution, AdOn Direct, allows you to create, manage, and distribute your own advertiser account. AdOn Network fully handle keyword management allowing you to concentrate on marketing and advertiser attainment.

Simply sign up. Then you can now get started. Create your own codes with just a few simple click and then you can now display contextual Banner Ads, Pop-Under Ads, Search Listing Ads, and BackgroundAds on your site.

Chitika. This ad network assures you to be a full-service, on-line, easy-to-use platform for receiving on-a-daily-basis ad revenue. Chitika is made for bothadvertisers and publishers and it allows views only from Canada and the US. You can use it with AdSense or as an AdSense alternative. Yes. You can use it altogether in one site. Like any other search targeted advertising, they assure you to be able to display relevant ads on your site. And just like the previous ad networks mentioned, you simply apply as a publisher and then you can now get started displaying contextual ads on your site in just a matter of seconds. No hustle.

Viral Ad Network. This one is used by, BBC, Nokia, Sony, Greenpeace, Polaroid, and easyJetsHotel. Yes, you read it right, coming straight from their site. All the world-renowned companies mentioned use this ad network on their site. Viral Ad Network offers a great deal of earning an income the easy way. It provides you with a high quality content the readers will surely love. This network is run by seven people at Rubber Republic, a specialist viral and buzz marketing company. They deliver a great deal of “addictive, ROI-driven creative campaigns and effective viral seeding services for clients like JVC, Easyjet, Warner Music and Sony,” Viral Ad Network. Again, simply sign up and it would only take you a moment to start earning out of showing ads on your site.

ValueClick Media. Made for both advertisers and publishers, ValueClick Media assures you of a leveraged “expertise, scale, extensive targeting capabilities and market leading optimization technology” to achieve both direct response and brand marketing goals. Publishers are further guaranteed that ValueClick Media serves as a strategic buddy “offering a national sales force” and a complete suite of tools and services. This makes these publishers get the chance to earn the maximum possible income from a variety of online advertising inventory. Moreover, they offer you a great arrangement of qualityadvertisers , advanced technology, and superior support. As usual, it’s easy to start earning through them. Simply sign up and them you can now get started.

Have a happy way of earning. Don’t waste the chance. Every penny counts.

Top 5 Photo Hosting Websites for Your Photoblog

Blogging doesn’t just constitute on text documents alone. Blogs can be of different forms depending on the blogger’s specialization. You can have vlogs (video blogs), sketchblog, artblogs and even photoblogs. Vlogs are for blogs making videos its topic, sketchblogs for sketches, artblogs for arts. Photoblogs are for your great photographs and for displaying the art of photography.

Photography had taken a real leap in our world today. As what they say, photographs aren’t just still images of memories and the world. It is far more than that. If you take a good look at every picture there is you’ll see that they aren’t just memories of events, places and people. It talks to the soul. Yes, if you’ll look at it more closely, you’ll certainly feel different emotions it employs. It is more than just an art. It is more than just a piece of paper. It is more than just a mere photograph of something.

That is why more and more people are getting hooked at photography. And displaying it is just a wonderful way of telling the world how magnificent a photograph is. Photography is one theme you can have for your blog if you have that love for photography. And displaying these photographs isn’t hard. There are lots of photograph hosting websites out there of which you can choose to host your beautiful pictures for your blog.

For photobloggers out there, here are 5 top image hosting websites you can choose from:

Photobucket.
Is a free image hosting site dedicated to make sharing images hassle free. It has a total of 500MB free storage. They provide you with easy sharing and with family and friends with just a single link you will give them.

No hassle with sending them photo attachments on emails. Various themes are available for you to choose from to make your Photobucket account more alive and inviting. There’s a built-in organizer for you to be able to organize photos into albums for easy access. A built in photo editor is also available for easy fixing and editing of your photos. Built-in searching, scrapbook builder, slideshow builder, remix builder.

ImageShack®
Just founded on November 2003, ImageShack® had taken its way to popularity on photo hosting. It provides a user-friendly line of image hosting. Powered by Linux, they offer an easy uploading of different image formats, an unlimited storing time, and a better security. They can support file formats like JPEG, GIF, PNG, SWF(flash), BMP, and TIFF.

Images of BMP and TIFF formats are automatically converted to PNG formats. And you ca store these photos on ImageShack® forever as long as it doesn’t violate any of its terms and conditions. And you are rest assured that you are totally protected because the thumbnail links provided after every upload is limited to the account owner only. Photos must not exceed a size of 1.5Mb/photo.

TinyPic.

Is owned by Photobucket Video and Photo Sharing Company designed for you to easily upload, link, and share your images and videos on your online scrapbooks, blogs, journals and on messageboards. It is a fast, simple, and reliable photo and video hosting website you can use for free.

ImageHosting

This image hosting site has dedicated servers which hosts your images for free. They make your photos easily get linked in websites, emails and blogs. You can upload an image of up to 1.5MB in file size in any formant and as many images you want, photos will be stored as long as you want in to be stored, thumbnails are automatically created, and you can easily share image with friends and family.

It is also a free image hosting site designed to make sharing photos easy and hassle free. You can upload photos of up to 10 photos and a maximum size of 3.5Mb/photo without registering to Pict. Registered accounts, that is, those accounts of registered users with personal Pict accounts, can upload of up to 20 photos/album and a maximum of 3 albums also at 3.5Mb image size. And if you apply for a Pro account, you can upload unlimited photos and create unlimited albums with a maximum of 12Mb image size. Pict has its own uploading software to make downloading fast. They have an application for Windows which allows you to upload, manage and share photos and screenshots with just a single click. They also have a Firefox Add-on to make screenshots in just one click with an automatic upload to Pict image hosting. They also allow you to upload images online with just a right click.

Never waste an opportunity of sharing wonderful moments and places to the public and especially to your families and friends. Bring photos to your blog and let them see how wonderful photography is. Have a happy photo sharing!

Search Engine’s Web Crawlers: its importance to web rankings

Ever wonder how search engines rank your sites? What these engines do to determine how popular your site is, especially the crawler-based search engines? Crawler-based search engines have what they call a “web crawler”, and that will answer if not all, most questions lurking in your mind.

What is then web crawler? How does web crawlers work? What does it do or what is its purpose? Well, a web crawler is a simple, automated program or script that “crawls” or scans throughout the internet pages. Some call this crawler, automatic indexer, web spider, web robot or bot. This leaves traces in your access logs, which means that, if you know what to look for, you will know too that a spider has visited your web site.

You can also tell what it has or has not recorded. This unmanned program is operated by search engines. And how does this works? The web crawler visits each Web site and, each and every pages of your site. This then reads the visible texts, hyperlinks and contents of the tags used. In short, it reads all the contents of the site’s page and the pages of your site. It then determines, using the keywords gathered, what the web page is about. Then records all the words and notes each links to other sites.

The web crawler indexes the information and stores the web site into the main database of the search engine it’s working for. And from there, the web page will then be included in the page ranking process. A web crawler is programmed to follow web links from one web page to another, and from one website to another. The more links this web crawler finds in you site, the more they will visit your site for indexing.

These web crawlers are important for it serves many purposes. Linguists use web crawlers. They use web crawlers to perform textual analysis by determining the words that are commonly used now a days. Market researchers may also use web crawlers in order to determine and to assess the trend in a certain market. This just means that web crawlers can be used by anyone who are collecting information on the internet. But the web crawlers’ most common purpose is associated with search engines.

These search engines use web crawlers to collect information from web pages for them to quickly provide the internet users or surfers with websites that are related with the keywords they [meaning, the internet surfers] have inputted in their website. This web crawler is your most important visitor. If you allow these to have an easy access to your site and make it easy for these crawlers to go around your site, then you will have more points, which also mean higher search engine rankings. Search engines use web crawlers to collect data and to keep up with the rapid internet change and expansion. These help search engines in keeping their databases up to date.

But recently, many search engines index only up to a certain number of pages, often it indexes at about 400 pages, then it stops. This is due to the rapid expansion of the world wide web. It has become impossible to index everything. We cannot really determine up to how many pages the web crawler will index. It is therefore important for web developers to submit each page of the site that you want to be indexed, especially those pages that contains important information, hyperlinks or keywords. This just means, web crawlers are very important for web developers too. Through these, search engines will know the sites that you linked to and the sites that are linked to you. The number of links to your site indicates popularity, which will then boosts your ranking.

Commonly Used Blog Types

A blog is an online journal where a business can share information about their product and their company and where a person can share their opinion on any topic. Blogs are used to communicate online. A blogger, in order to choose a topic for his blog, must first choose the type of blog he wants to create. Below are the different types of blogs that a blogger may consider creating.

The Personal Blogs. When the word BLOG is heard, people usually think of it as the Personal Blog. This type of blog is the most popular blog since this triggered the start of blogging. This diary type of blog contains the different aspects of the author’s life – like the important events in his life, about his family and friends, or about his thoughts, feelings, emotions, or this may contain his opinions or reviews about topics such as politics, music, religion, photography and just anything under the sun. It may also contain the blogger’s rants. This type of blog is great especially in starting a conversation, a serious discussion and debates. But bloggers must be careful on how he will convey his thoughts since it might also trigger a controversy that may blemish his reputation. This is the most famous type of blog used in some of the networking sites.

The Corporate Blogs. Corporate blogs, also called as Business Blogs, is a blog about the stock markets and other business related topics. This blog is published by an organization in order to achieve its goals. This facilitates the organizations with proper communication flow, and is concerned about the culture of the organization. This blog has two types: the internal corporate blog and the external corporate blog. The Internal corporate blog is created to share information and views just within the organization, while External corporate blog is created in order to communicate with the public for marketing the organization’s products or services.

The Professional Blogs. Professional blogs are created for bloggers to share about their expertise on a certain subject. This is where the blogger can chronologically record his career development. Professional blog is a way for the blogger to present his career history that may answer questions the interviewer may have about the his resume. Professional blogs are made forreaders, a real contrast to personal blogs since what the blogger may share in this blog will help his readers gain knowledge about the subject he is tackling; and may help the blogger’s future employers to learn more about their potential employees – the blogger.

The Micro Blogs. Micro blog is a form of multimedia blogging. This blog may contain brief posts or micro media like that of the photos, audio or video clips. This is done for thereaders to cope up with the latest trends or the little changes of the lifestyles of the people. This kind of blog is typically smaller or shorter. Its contents may consist of just a single sentence or an image with just a brief description or a short video clip. But it has the same purpose as the traditional blog – to share about ones plight, thoughts and interests; or a news about a company’s product or services, only that Micro Blog is short and concise.

What To Do With a Messy Page

Who wants to see a very messy page? Most likely, no one wants. Definitely, readers want to see a dense page not because of the content of the sidebar, but rather, because of the substance of the posts. So make sure thatyour blog looks tidy in every way. To get into attracting more readers into following your blog, start cleaning it. Let them see the professionalism beyond the uniqueness of your page.


To get into it, here are 3 easy ways to cleaning up your page.

Be specific.

Surely, blog readers don't want to go over a blog with an undefined topic, right? They want to know what sort of topic they would probably be reading or else they would just get totally confused over whatyour blog is all about and end up closing your page and never ever come back again. You don't want that, don’t  you? So GET SPECIFIC. Define your blog, make sure your topics are on the range of your blog definition. And then by that, soon enough, you'll get readers interested on your blog. You definitely will be able to get followers engrossed on it sooner or later.

Be organized.

When you get specific, certainly, you'll be getting several topics related to one another. What do you do about them? Well, there are two ways to get these topics get to be linked to. You can categorize them. You can think of categories as a filing system and each category is one file case. Be sure to name each category the right keyword for the things you will be putting into it. But then every category can be very vast. So for you to be very organized, tag your every post with the appropriate label. You may think of tagging and categorizing as the same thing. But they are not. You can visualize tagging as small and veryspecific sections on your file cases. But be sure to recycle you tags, don't use varying tags or else it would be useless. Use them for every topic you think is related to them. By that you'll get to link related topics and be organized as well.

Be sensible.

Bloggers wants to earn extra money for what they are doing, even if it turned out just to be a hobby. That is why we see ads on any part of the page. But you have to remember that thesereaders aren't visiting your site for the ads. Rather, they want the main content of your blog, that is, your posts. So don't upset your readers . Don't make them think that you are only after of the money you will be earning for every clicks and every page visit you'll be getting. Minimize your ads sections. Donate be hungry over money. Don't make them look like these ad sections overrule your posts or you end up loosing yourreaders.

So don't waste time, clean up your page now. GET SPECIFIC, ORGANIZED, AND SENSIBLE. Convince your readers with the substance of your page.

Great Resources for FREE Blogger Templates

Blogger is one of the most popular hosted blogging platforms out there, but many people are still surprised when they learn you can customize the look of your blog well beyond the pre-built options the site offers.  Finding these other templates can be a bit of a task, so we’ve come up with over 30 resources to help you find brand new designs, converted WordPress themes, people who will build unique custom templates, and more. What are you waiting for? Get out there and freshen up your blog!

What is your favorite resource for Blogger  templates?  Tell us in the comments.

Free Templates

5ColumnTemplate.Blogspot.com – This site only offers one template with five variations, but it isn’t every day you see a five column theme for any blogging platform, and it is actually pretty clean in presentation.

AllBlogTools.com – A collection of over 100 templates from an assortment of a lot of smaller designers. You can look them up by layout, color, subject matter and so on.

Blogger-Templates.Blogspot.com – Keeps a small selection of top-notch Blogger themes up and running.

Blogger-Templates.Deceblog.net – A small selection of unique themes for Blogger accounts.

Blogger-Templates-Directory.Blogspot.com – A large directory of Blogger templates, links to resources for further development and a whole lot more.

BloggerTemplates.org – Doesn’t seem to have been updated since it originally launched, but all of the templates still work, and have a lot of resemblance to WordPress themes.

BlogspotTemplates.Blogspot.com – Several pages of Blogger templates with tips on how to use them.

BlogspotTemplate.com – Right around 100 templates for Blogger of varying styles and colors.

BlogTemplates.Noipo.org – A small selection of graphical and text based templates for your blog.

BTemplates.com – Features a wide assortment of over 600 free Blogger templates that can be browsed by category, tag, number of downloads and so on.

Carl Galloway’s Blogger Templates – A small selection of some fairly unique templates that haven’t been updated in some time, but are still fully functional.

FinalSense.com – Offers over 300 templates for your Blogger account. Have just about every theme and color combination that you can think of.
FreeBlogger-Templates.Blogspot.com – Focu
ses heavily on simplified Blogger templates that make for the easiest reading possible.

FreeTemplates.Blogspot.coms – A blog dedicated to bringing you nothing but free Blogger templates. Nicely categorized, and easy to browse.

FreshBloggerTemplates.Blogspot.com – It has been a while since this site released any new templates, but their designs are very clean and still in working order.

Gecko & Fly Blogger Templates – Offers many Blogger templates, most of which are in a more “classic” style, as well as tutorials on how to tweak your blog even further.

GoSuBlogger.com – A large selection of free templates that mix original work with converted WordPress themes.

Isnaini.com – A large and varied collection of templates for use on Blogger, along with a detailed tutorial on how to properly insert them into your account.

JackBook.com – Besides offering a large selection of free templates, with a heavy saturation of video game inspired themes, JackBook also offers tips and pointers on better SEO for your blog.

OurBlogTemplates.com – An odd mix of nearly 200 free templates for you to use and with a dash of reviews of DSLR cameras.

PannaSmontana Templates – Numerous free templates for Blogger, but the site is entirely in Italian. Thankfully it is well designed and you can find your way around.

Public-Template.Blogspot.com – Features a mixture of free templates for you to download, tutorials on how to make your own, and admiration for templates they enjoy.

Simple-Blogskins.Blogspot.com – Offers a handful of free skins for your Blogger account.

Template-Godown.com – A site specializing in converting WordPress themes to the Blogger friendly XML format.

WP-Themes.us – Yes, the name points to them being all about WordPress themes, but they also provide a nice selection of free templates for Blogger.

Yanku-Template.Blogspot.com – Offers some very slick looking, free, Blogger templates of the 2 and 3-column varieties.

How To Launch A Blog On Blogger Platform

Creating a blog on blogger platform is a matter of minutes. Anyone can create it very easily by following some simple steps. If you are planning to launch a professional blog on blogger platform, some things need to be taken into consideration before you create a blog. It will not only help you in creating a unique, clean and crawler friendly blog, but at the same time it will also save you from messing it up, if you do not plan from the very beginning.

How To Start?

I would strongly suggest you to go for a customized domain for your blogger blog. It gives professional look and feel to the visitor. Once you have chosen the niche of your blog, it's time to look for a good domain name.

Choosing a good domain name is not an easy task and requires some brainstorming. Configuring and integrating your own domain with blogger blog is not difficult at all. Add the following host record in your domain hosting control panel.

HOSTNAME        IP ADDRESS/URL              RECORD TYPE

    www            ghs.google.com.                      CNAME (alias)
     @        http://www.yourdomain.com/         URL Redirect

Once you have added these records, go to your blogger dashboard and click Settings tab, then go to Publishing subtab. Click the Custom Domain link and follow the simple procedure to add your domain URL and click ok. Once it is done, it may take from 1 to 3 days before the DNS records of your domain are cached all over the world in domain name servers. You can also see blogger help of configuring custom domain with blogger.

Choose a good theme

The next step is to choose a good theme for your blog. There are hundreds of blogger templates to choose from, and depending on the niche of your blog, you may choose a specific type of template. Do not go for bright, multicolored and fancy themes.

Tweaking the theme

Almost every template needs some customization as per bloggers requirements. Designing a good landing page from your chosen template is not difficult at all. All it requires is a bit of CSS editing and some add-on widgets. With simple CSS tricks you can make your blog posts more spicy and attractive.

Initial setup

Once your theme is tweaked as per your needs, start building the core pages of your blog. Do not straight away start posting. First create Archives, Contact and About pages with old timestamps, and place a link for each page in navigation menu. It is always advisable to make these important pages beforehand, because any new post on blogger always comes in recent posts. If you will try to make them later, they will appear in recent posts. You can use Disqus commenting system for your blog, as it supports multi-threaded conversations, video comments and standard track backs. A Wordpress style contact form is must for Contact page. Blogger currently has no option to create such form, but you can use Kontactr, to create a customized contact form. Install at least two web analytics script in your blog template, because in case one of the services fails still you can get the traffic data from the other one. Of course Google Analytics should be one of them, the other one can be Sitemeter or Woopra. Both are excellent web analytic services and I use all three of them for my blog. Do not forget to put a search box in the navigation bar. Here is the code.

Building on foundation

Once initial setup is complete, you can start posting on your blog. The first 25-30 posts on your blog matters the most. Make good long posts and put the cream in these posts. Populate the Popular Posts section with selective hand picked posts.

Monetization strategy

After all the hard work, its time to monetize your blog. There are many approaches to that, and you have to choose the best one for your blog. I would strongly suggest leaving home page free from ads. If your new blog's home page is stuffed with ads, it may annoy the visitor and you may loose your valuable subscriber. Some 125x125 ads in the sidebar are fine, but avoid ads between posts on home page of your blog. Only when the visitor clicks the individual post, ads should be placed in the body of post.

Posting structure and frequency

Every blogger has it's own approach in building a post, still there are some common traits in every good blog post. Often novice bloggers take some time to come up with a definite pattern and structure for their posts. Whatever your approach is, stick to your style for uniformity in your blog posts. If you have time constraints, I would suggest you to publish at least two good long posts per week.

Blog Promotion

Unless you do not tell the world, no one is going to see the gem you have polished. Blog directory submissions and RSS feed submissions is must for any blog to grab attention in the blogosphere. You can submit your blog and its feed in most popular blog directories and feed syndication services. Another good way to promote your blog is popular social bookmarking services

Viewing Tags Using Tag Clouds on Wordpress

For every blogger and website owners out there, tags aren’t new. They know that these though not required, had been essential parts of their every post. Why? Well basically, in computer jargon, tags are non-hierarchical keywords given to articles, posts, images, internet bookmarks or any bit of information. They are generally hyperlinks that lead to a compilation of items that are connected with it. These tags which can be selected personally and casually by its creator and even by its viewers if allowed by the network, are descriptors of your data and allow it to be located again through searching or browsing. They aid classification and are a way of helping viewers to find content on your page.

Consequently, as to further help your viewers in finding content on your page, you need to add a tag cloud on it. A tag cloud is a visual collection of tags with their corresponding weights which depends on how frequent you have used them. More often, weights of these tags regularly used are illustrated in larger fonts or otherwise accentuated and the displayed order is basically alphabetical, therefore allowing probing a tag via alphabet and via popularity.  Typically, tag cloud may contain 30-150 tags (Tagclouds). Tag clouds are interactive, which means, tags are hyperlinked therefore permitting the user to surf on the data. When selecting a tag from a tag cloud, it usually leads to a collection of posts connected in it.

These tag clouds are illustrated using inline HTML elements. Thus, you are able to control how they would appear as to their order, either alphabetical or random, how they are sorted according to their weights and more. You can also huddle your tags semantically so that comparable tags appear close by. Then, heuristics can be utilized to decrease the dimension of your tag cloud either you are trying to group the tags or not.
That means, you can customize your tag cloud. All you just need is a tag cloud generator (which we will discuss separately) and a little knowledge on HTML.

Since tag clouds uses HTML and the tags’ range is only within the page, then, for you to indicate that the linked-to page acts as a tag for the current context use the rel attribute value “tag” (i.e., rel=“tag”). The rel=“tag” is exclusively designed for “tagging” content, naturally web pages or portions of it, like blog posts. It is NOT designed for “tagging” random URLs or external content. Although there is demand for an all-purpose decentralized syntax for tagging URLs external to the current page it is beyond the scope of our tags. So basically you cannot use this to help you in taking the top rank on search engines. Nonetheless, it is still essential since your viewers can have the ease of finding related posts.

So look for a cloud generator now, create your tag cloud, customized it, and start collecting your tags for a happy probing in your blog. Make the life of your readers easy.

Optimizing Your Website Brings Traffic

If you want your website or blog to get good traffic, you need to apply some Search Engine Optimization tricks to entice the search engine spiders to visit your site and rank it highly in the results pages.

Many people avoid using SEO techniques because they think SEO is complicated and difficult. SEO can be complicated and is often best left to professionals. However, you can take a few simple steps to greatly increase traffic toyour site.


The first step in optimization is keyword research. Keyword research is an easy process, although it can be a bit time consuming. Thanks to several online tools like Wordtracker or the Google Keyword tool, you can find keywords yourself and begin using them inyour site content. Start by typing in a word or short phrase that best describes your business service or features. If you are selling auto parts, for example, type in “auto parts” and let the keyword tool go to work. It will show you how often the word is searched for on a regular basis. It will also provide a list of similar keywords used in website searches.

The next step in choosing keywords to optimize your site is to choose the top five or so keywords and run a Google search on them to determine how much competition there is for each one. If a keyword is searched for 1,000 times a day, but there are 2,000,000 websites in the search engine results for that particular word, you may want to consider a different keyword without quite so much competition. By creating more precise keyword phrases, you can whittle down the search competition.

Once you have your list narrowed down to about five keywords, it is time to start using them strategically on your website or blog. For instance, an ideal use of a keyword is in your domain name, but many businesses have already established a domain name and cannot easily change it. You do have other options to use your keywords There are several other places you can add your keywords to help optimizeyour website for the search engines.

The search engine spiders will check you title first, so use your keywords in your website title and page titles as often as you can. Headings and subheads are other great places for your keywords to be noticed when your site is scanned. Using keywords in these two places will increase your visibility in the search engine results. However, because the rules the search engines use to comb sites change on a very frequent basis, it can be difficult to keep up with these changes. For many business owners, hiring a company specializing in Search Engine Optimization is the best route to get their websites ranked quickly and frequently on the results pages of the popular search engines.

Debbie Dragon is a freelance writer providing articles for Trace Media – a New York seo company specializing in getting websites up, and making sure they perform to their full potential.

Edward Roberts Jr. is a owner of GlobeTourGuide, a tourist destinations blog who managed to appear his blog on first page of Google and Yahoo search.

How about you? How do you manage your website's traffic?

Why Choose Niche Marketing Over Mass Marketing?

Previously we have defined niche marketing and discussed about using it in getting specific on your blog. Now, have you ever been asking yourself on why and is it really important that you should define your niche and why and is it really important that you should know your perspective costumers?


Well then I’ve researched about the importance of niche marketing and saw several similar tips some marketing guides are suggesting which I think are very reasonable on why you should prefer niche marketing rather than mass marketing.

Here are few of the reasons why you should prefer niche marketing rather than mass marketing:

1. Minimizes Advertising Budget

It is apparent that if you know who you are marketing to, you certainly will be able to use your budget wisely to those who are likely to be your costumers, and in blogging, your viewers. Take it this way; your product includes engineering books. Are you going to market that to everyone? Is it sensible to try to advertise your books to everyone? Is it sensible to spend money advertising your products to no one in particular? Definitely not! If you go massive, how many percent of the population you aremarketing are interested in engineering? A little I guess. Then, you should be reasonable enough to advertise only in this small part of the bigger market since most likely; they are the ones who are going to be your potential costumers.

Focusing on people who are likely to buy from you means minimizing your allotted budget. BUT at the same time it means maximizing the chance of selling since you have targeted to a niche who would be interested in buying an engineering book.

2. Easier way of Making Your Website Special.
If you have defined your niche market, then it would be easier for you to develop your website in a way that would meet the needs of your probable costumers. Your site would be narrowed down to topics and solutions which would be of great interest for your costumers. You will be able to have more time in makingyour site stand up in the group of similar sites offering the same product, the same services, the same information, etc. You will be able to think of ways in whichyour site will have more big, sensible, and welcoming offers.

3. Develops Stronger Customer Relationship
When you only have a small number of costumers, you have a big chance of having stronger customer relationship. Why? It is simply because you can easily define their needs. You can definitely meet those needs by sending useful newsletters, replying to their emails and requests, and providing them what they need. Tending in their needs will eventually develop a sense of trust within customer-marketer/advertiser/seller relationship and eventually they become your loyal costumers.

With these reasons in mind, you would deeply think of whether to enter niche marketing or stick to mass marketing. Yet, you may still think about your profit. With niche marketing you probably will worry about less traffic and even fewer sales. But take a few minutes and think over this statement Mila Sidman the Editor of Internet Based oms had left for her readers, “Even if your potential traffic numbers were to a bit lower…isn’t it better to have a small audience of captivated visitors than a large audience of half interested ones?”

How To Get Direct Advertisements For Your Blog

About a decade back, nobody thought that blogs would transform from a personal diary to full-fledged money making websites. Blog monetization strategies have undergone several transitions during these years, and bloggers have tons of monetization options at their disposal. One of the options is 'Direct Advertisements'. Interestingly, large number of bloggers does not use this option for many reasons. Let's try to understand the dynamics of direct advertising and the methods to grab direct advertisement deals.

If you own a blog with decent traffic (at least 500-1000 unique visits/day) and are planning to monetize it, direct advertising is an excellent option for you. Quality content and good traffic are two most important prerequisites before pitching for direct advertising.

Advantages of Direct Advertising

Cuts out the middleman - Almost every blogger who has monetized his/her blog is familiar with PPC (pay-per-click) ads served by popular 3rd party advertising networks. Since they act as a middleman between the advertiser and the publisher, they take a good share of revenue. On the other hand, getting direct ads from advertisers removes the middleman and you as a publisher get full incentive for your service.

More choice on type of ads - You can offer almost any type of ad format for the advertisers. With 3rd party advertisements, you have limited choices with some predefined standard ad formats. Through direct advertising you can offer a wide array of ad formats with much more flexible ad placements. Following are some popular ad types used by bloggers.

1. Banners (Animated/Static)
2. Text Links
3. RSS Ads
4. Newsletter Ads
5. Site Reviews
6. Audio/Video Ads

When you are in complete control of your ads, advertisers gets more variety to choose from that suits his business demands.

Flexible payment options - Another advantage is acceptance of payment in multiple ways. If an advertiser is not willing to pay by one method you can opt for the second. Normally, bloggers prefer wire transfer or Paypal as the best method to get payments from advertisers. Still, if an advertiser chooses any other payment medium you can be flexible and can go ahead with that option without any chance of losing the deal.

Long-term relationships - More than often, bloggers develop long term relationships with advertisers who are satisfied with their service. This not only opens the door for consistent stream of income from these advertisers, but also increases the probability of grabbing more advertising deals through referrals of these satisfied advertisers.

Flexible pricing - Since you are in complete control of your ad inventory, you can exercise extreme flexibility while quoting price of different types of ads to grab virtually every advertising deal that comes in your way.

Builds Credibility - A blog that gets consistent direct advertisement deals automatically builds it's credibility and is seen as an authority in it's niche.

Disadvantages of Direct Advertising

Difficulty in finding advertisers - Initially, a lot of effort goes in finding advertisers for your blog. Sometimes, it may take considerable time before any such deal is finalized. Once you start getting the deals, things become easier though you still have to move your legs aggressively to clinch new deals.

Time consumption - Keeping track of ad inventory, negotiating deals with advertisers, keeping track of payments and time deadlines consumes lot of precious time. If you have multiple blogs that are updated daily, things can become more difficult as considerable part of your blogging schedule is spent in maintaining your ad inventory and in finding new advertising deals.

Disputes - Sometimes, an advertiser is not satisfied with the results and may nullify the agreement from his end demanding refund of his payment. This can also lead to negative feedback to other advertisers in the pool.

Preparations For Getting Direct Advertising

Before you decide to approach advertisers, you must do some very important preparations to increase the probability of clinching your first direct advertising deal.

Create a dedicated advertising page - An advertising page concentrates all the necessary information needed to convince potential advertisers (kind of a portfolio of your blog). This page tabulates the most important statistics about your blog. In simple words, this page gives all the reasons why advertisers should choose your blog for advertising.

Following are some of the essential ingredients of a typical advertising page.

About your blog section - This section gives a brief introduction about your blog. What it's all about, it's niche, target audience and the purpose of its existence (reader's perspective).

Traffic statistics - The most important part of advertising page. Give all the important data related to your blog traffic to convince the potential advertisers. Following are some major blog statistics that are commonly used by bloggers in their advertising page.

1. Page Views (per day/ per month)
2. Unique Visits (per day/ per month)
3. Alexa/Compete and Similar Services Ranks
4. Number of Feed Subscribers
5. Demographic Data (V. Imp)

Some advertisers don't give much importance to Alexa and similar ranks but others do take them into consideration, so its better to include them in your traffic statistics section. Similarly, providing concentrated demographic data increase the chances of getting advertising deals.

Available Ad Slots - In this section the available ad inventory is showcased. This includes each ad type, their format, their exact placement and the number of such slots available for any location. To give a clearer picture you must supplement this section with appropriate snapshots of ads placed in a particular location.

Now here comes the tricky part. What about pricing of ads? Should we straightaway quote the price of each available ad slot? Well, I would strongly suggest you to keep your cards closed. Let the advertiser contact you with relevant details and then you can play your cards according to the situation. Ask for advertiser's website address when he first contacts you. This way you can visit their web site and can get fair idea about their budget and purchasing power. Through this approach, you create an opportunity for yourself to assess the situation and then create a flexible pricing plan. If you publicly display your ad prices, websites with considerably low budget may not approach you and big websites may grab it in much lesser rate then they were willing to pay earlier.

Testimonials - Great marketers use their customers feedback to promote their products. Same rule applies here. Get some testimonials from your satisfied advertisers and prominently display them on your advertising page. This builds your credibility and shows your track record of giving excellent advertising services. Apart from publishing the plain testimonial statement, you can further replenish it by including thumbnail image of the person with his/her designation.

Calculating Advertising Prices

Often newbies are in dilemma about setting the correct price for their advertisements. Sometimes, they fear that quoting a high price can result in loss of advertising deal, while quoting less will be like giving their real estate in pennies. How to overcome this situation and how to correctly calculate the prices for your ad inventory? Here are some basic guidelines to calculate ad prices.

Image Vs Text Ads - Normally image ads are always priced high than text ads. The CTR (click-through ratio) of image ads is much higher than text ads and hence this pricing difference.

Size Does Matter - Larger the size of the banner, higher the price is. If your 125x125 image banner is priced at $30/month, a 250x250 banner should be priced at 4 x 30 = $120/month.

Placement - If the advertisement appears above the fold (area visible without the need of scrolling), it is priced much higher than those ads that appear below the fold. If an ad is going to appear in the footer, it's price will be considerably low than that placed in the header of your blog.

Pricing Model - There are two popular pricing models for advertisements. The CPM (cost per thousand impressions) model and CPA (cost per action) model. The CPM model is the preferred way to calculate ad prices and is widely accepted model throughout blogosphere. In this model, a fixed amount is paid for every 1000 page views, simple. But how would you calculate the right price for a particular ad in this model? Here are some ways to do it.

The best way to get the correct value of an ad is to check public ad inventories and see their CPM rate. Login to your Adsense account and go to advanced reports to view the CPM rate for a particular ad. Take at least month long data to get the clear picture, though a long-range data will give much more accurate rate. Let's suppose you get a CPM rate of $1.20 from the report. Now according to your assessment of the purchasing power of the advertiser you can increase or decrease this rate. A low budget advertiser can be offered a rate of $1.00 or $0.80, while a big web site can be asked for a CPM rate of $1.50.

Let's assume that the deal is finalized with a rate of $1.50 CPM. How the monthly rate will be calculated? Suppose your blog generates 5000 page views per day. This amounts to 30 x 5000 = 150000 page views per month. So, at this rate the price of the ad will be (150000 / 1000) * 1.50 = $225/month.

Daniel Scocco has written an excellent article about calculating ad prices for your advertising space. If you are still in dilemma, you can also ask an expert to assess your blog's worth.

Finding the Advertisers

Now comes the real tough part (at least for newbies) of finding advertisers for your blog. There are many ways to do it.

Visit Marketplaces - There are several popular forums and discussion boards where advertisers and publishers meet solely for the purpose of finding and negotiating advertising deals. You can visit Digital Point - Buy, Sell or Trade Forum, SitePoint Marketplace and Webmaster World Commercial Exchange Forum to find advertisers for your blog.

Check Competitor's blogs - Visit popular blogs related to your blog's niche and see who is advertising on these blogs. This is a good source of creating a list of potential advertisers. Since they are already advertising on a blog related to your blog's niche, a chance of clinching a deal from these advertisers is more likely to happen.

Check public ad inventories - Some 3rd party advertising networks give public access to their inventory to account holders. Sign-up for these ad networks and browse their ad inventory. Again, filter out advertisers related to your blog's niche. Here not only you can get a list of potential advertisers but can also get a fair idea about how much they are willing to pay.

Write a blog post about it - This is one more way to attract advertisers. Write a blog post explicitly stating that your blog is now open for direct advertising.

Search engines - And last but not the least is search engines. Type in relevant keywords and visit the web sites. Check their contact page and create a list of potential advertisers.

How To Approach Potential Advertisers

Once you have the list of potential advertisers in your hand, its time to contact them inviting to advertise on your blog.

Write a mail giving your brief introduction. State your purpose of writing in brief. To speed up the process give your phone number and messenger id. Attach the media kit/rate card showcasing various advertising options available on your blog. It's somewhat similar to mobile version of your 'Advertise' page. However, this document must contain detailed pricing of every ad type. You must also quote discounted prices for long-term deals. One more convincing methodology is to give limited period read-only access to Google Analytics dashboard to verify your traffic claims for long-term deals (6 months or more). This offer increases the confidence of advertiser and the probability of negotiating a deal also increases.

If this is your first advertising deal, be ready to be flexible enough while negotiating pricing of your ads. Remember, your first deal will open the door for more such deals.

What Else I Have Missed?

I would like to know your experiences in maintaining independent ad inventories and your approach towards grabbing such advertising deals.

Instructions for changing template for New bloggers

Here are the easy steps made only for new bloggers or beginners.

1. Download a five column template of you choice and extract the xml file from the archive ( Double click on the downloaded rar file and then drag it to desktop or another folder ) .

2. From Dashboard click on Template tab and then Edit Html sub tab.

3. Back up your existing template and widget data.

4. In the “Upload a template from a file on your hard drive”, browse the extracted
xml file and press Upload.

5. Message in red will appear alerting you that “Widgets are about to be deleted” .
You will be also asked to confirm the deleting of existing widgets. If you have already followed section 3. then press Confirm and Save.

6. You are done . Now go to Page Element sub tab and reset your widgets !

Yes, it’s that easy… !

How To Keep Your Domane Name Safe?

Your blog's domain name is by far one of the most important assets of your blog. It's a brand through which your blog is recognized. One day you wake up and see that your domain name is no more yours and is hacked. It can happen to anybody, anytime. But we can take some precautions to minimize this risk. Let's see what we can do to keep our blog's domain name safe from hackers.

Register Domain Yourself

Let's say, you have decided to hire an expert for designing your blog's theme and for installing your blog CMS. His package also includes domain registration for you. Beware and never fall in this trap. Always register your domain yourself. The person who registers the domain with his name, address, email and credit card details is the legal owner of the domain. So, if your designer is registering a domain name for you, he will be the legal owner of the domain, not you. Once you have decided to register a domain name, make sure to check that your domain registrar is ICANN accredited.

Use WhoIS Guard

Almost every domain registrar provides whois guard subscription on yearly basis to protect your sensitive contact information. Keeping your registration information public invites spammers and domain hackers, especially if your blog or web site gets popular. With WhoIS guard protection enabled your contact information is kept secret preventing any unwanted customers filling your inbox with junk.

Lock Your Domain

Always keep your domain registrar's lock enabled to prevent any unsolicited 3rd party domain transfer requests. That's how domain hackers steal domains. Locking your domain to your domain registrar ensures that no unauthorized domain transfer can take place.

Enable Account Activity Alerts

Some good domain registrars provide the facility of email alerts for any account activity. You can see below, how I regularly receive security alerts whenever any activity is performed in my domain account.

The security notification includes user name, IP address, time stamp and modification done for specific domains. Ask your domain registrar whether they provide similar security alerts or not. Normally, this is service is free of cost.

Keep Registration Information Up-to-date

Whenever you register a domain, you provide 3 types of contact information to the domain registrar.

1. Registrant's Contact
2. Administrative Contact
3. Technical Contact

The first one is of course your own contact information, the person who is registering the domain. Normally, if you are maintaining your blog on your own, you must provide the same contact information in the other two, as you gave in the 'Registrant Contact'. Always, keep your contact information updated. As soon as you change your email, phone or mailing address, do update your contact information in the domain account. If you forget to do this, you will not receive any notifications, alerts and reminders from your registrar and you may end up loosing your domain.

Keep Domain and Hosting Separate

Are your web host and domain registrar separate? If not, think about going this way. These days almost every web hosting service provider is coming up with hosting plans that include free domain with hosting package. I would never advice to go with this kind of arrangement, as it gives complete control of your hosting and domain to one company. In future if you are not satisfied with the hosting service and want to switch, they can create trouble for you by locking your domain and preventing any transfer.

Renew In Time

As your domain expiration time approaches, your registrar sends you several reminders for renewal. Ignoring these reminders and not renewing your domain in time can cost your very dearly. After expiration date, your domain goes into redemption grace period, and you can still get it back. But it will cost you anywhere between $100 or $200. So register your domain for long period (2 or more years) and renew in time to prevent any unwanted expenses or loss of domain. The best strategy is to register a domain name for long period (let's say about 5 years) and annually extend it for one year adding it to that final year. This way your domain expiration date will always remain that many years (5 years in our example) ahead.

Last Piece of Advice

And last but not the least are some general security concerns.

1. Use a separate email account for hosting and domain.
2. Use strong passwords and change them frequently.
3. Keep a back up of your password and registered information.
4. Do not go to your registrar's site via email links. Keep the habit of manually typing the address. This extra burden can save you falling into trap of hackers and phishing sites.

What Else I Have Missed?

I would like to hear more new methods you may have used to keep your domain in safe hands. What other safety precautions you implement to keep your domain safe?

Tips for new bloggers

If you write only for yourself or people that know you and your blog, it’s ok to just post your content. But if you wish to reach readers that may not known to you, follow these –

Copy your blog address and with that make searches in all major search engines. First time you may see that they haven’t indexed you blog. But as you do query, search engines will come to see what is in your blog so that they can show it later when other people will search topics , relevant to your published contents.

Do not ever publish anything only to test in your blog. Why ? Search engine may index that useless pages. Sometimes these kind of test posts with nothing, can be shown at an upper position than that of your original content pages. To test all your settings set a test blog and play there. After you finish apply the changes to your original blog. Again, before posting, check whether your post title is ok or not. Because blogspot will take the first segment of the post tile to make the post page url.

Try to guess or use tools to know, from which reign majority of your blog readers come . If they are from a reign where provided internet connections are too slow, you should not load your blog with heavy contents like – numerous long posts on main page, high quality images, heavy flash files and unusual scripts. Longer loading time may force your readers to leave your blog.

Let other know about what you are writing. How? By sending 100 of mails to unknown addresses? No. Search blogs of your interest. Go there. Leave your comment along with your blog address. Those bloggers, even some of their readers may get back to your blog. If possible leave a relevant question there, so that a blogger feel interest to visit your blog before answering.

Join different communities and forums. Publish your blog address there.

When you are preparing to write something, think about the words that best present the subject matter. Put those words relevantly into the title of your post.

Try to do post regularly if possible.

Put your blog address whenever you mail someone.

Try to keep pace with latest buzzes and publish them before some other do so before you.