Increase Google Page Rank Blogger Blogspot

Today I continue my series of articles on search engine optimization SEO for a Blogger Blogspot blog. The focus of this article is on increasing the Google Page Ranking of your Blogger Blogspot blog. If your blog is like mine and relatively new you will find getting off the lowest rung of the Google Page Ranking a bit of a mission but it can be done particularly if you use solid SEO techniques.

To recap search engine optimization is the process of making your website search engine friendly. As major search engines like Google and Yahoo will drive most of the traffic to your blog the more search engine friendly your blog is the more traffic you are likely to receive.

There are a number of SEO - search engine optimization techniques you can employ on your blog to boost traffic such as adjusting titles tags, making use of meta tags, using keywords and keyword phrases, improving keyword density, submitting your blog sitemap to search engines. I have discussed these in detail in my article SEO Tips for Blogspot Blogger blog.

I have already written a number of other articles about SEO for Blogger Blogspot blogs too including the following articles so if you want help with basic search engine optimization try these:

How to Create Search Engine Friendly Permalinks for Blogger
Add Breadcrumb Navigation to Blogger Blogspot Blog
Add Meta Tags to Blogger Blogspot Blog for Better SEO
Adjust Blogger Title Tags for Better SEO
How to Add a Blogger Sitemap to Major Search Engines
Submit You Blogspot Blog to Yahoo
Add Blogger Sitemap to MSN Live
10 Tips to Build Traffic for Blogspot Blogger Blog

Once you've started employing these SEO (search engine optimization) techniques and tips you are going to want to measure your blog's progress. Two important tools that measure the popularity of websites are Google Page Ranking and Alexa Ranking.

Improve the Google Page Ranking of Your Blogger Blogspot Blog
Google Page Ranking is a tool which ranks websites listed in the Google search engine. Websites are ranked on a scale of 0-10 with 0 being the lowest possible score for a site and 10 the highest. The higher the page ranking of your site, the greater the amount of traffic it receives in comparison to other sites. Check your Google Page Rank.

Google uses a complex formula to rank websites which I am not going to cover here. However there are some basic tips about Google Page Ranking that are useful for any Blogger webmaster to know.

1. Make sure your posts are keyword rich.
   Google expects good usage of keywords so make sure your Blogger blog posts have a density of 3-5%. Keyword density is calculated by the number of keywords divided by the number of total words on a page. If your blog article is 500 words long and has 10 keywords it has a keyword density of 2%. A keyword density of anywhere between 2% and 7% is considered an acceptable range by Google. Anything percentage higher than 7% may well be regarded as keyword stuffing and your blog is likely to be penalized. You can check the keyword density using tools like
   
   
2. Post to your blog frequently
   Make sure you post frequently as Google prefers fresh pages and does not like out of date sites
   
   
3. Create internal links
   Link to previous articles you have written. If you have not cross linked as you posted it is probably worth going back and doing this even if it is a bit arduous.
   
   
4. Build external links to other sites on an ongoing basis
   Build links on a regular basis by commenting on other related blogs and in forums. Add social bookmarking buttons to your blog to encourage readers to bookmark and share your articles. Be aware though that many sites such as Reddit, Digg and del.icio.us implement the link attribute rel="nofollow" which will not boost your ranking.
   
   Ensure your blog is properly indexed by major search engines. List your blog in blog directories. Watch out for blog directories though as some require you to put a link on your blog but do not reciprocate with a link. See my article on getting listed in blog directories for further help.
   
   It is worthwhile to link to other blogs you may own as well but doing this will not boost your page ranking particularly. Google is weighted to give a higher ranking to links from other high ranking blogs especially if they are relevant to the content of your blog. The higher the ranking of the site externally linking to yours the better. So essentially you can't just create a bunch of blogs and link to them with the expectation that your Google Page Rank will miraculously increase overnight. Far better to spend your time concentrating on creating a small group of links to quality sites with a high Google Page Rank than going all over the net creating links to low ranking sites.
   
   
5. Another aspect to consider when building quality external links is to ensure that your keywords and phrases appear in links which point to your site. Google analyzes these links so have the linking text contain your keywords to get the most out of them.

Check the Ranking of Your Blogger Blogspot Blog in Alexa
Alexa.com is a website that measures the traffic levels of websites. An Alexa rank is measured according to the amount of users visiting your website with the Alexa toolbar installed and takes into account page views, number of users and three months of historical data.

The Alexa rank is measured according to the amount of users who’ve visited a website with the Alexa toolbar installed. This is kind of an odd way to measure traffic but that is how it works. However it is a well established measure of the value of your site against others so it is useful to see how highly your blog is rated in Alexa. Provided your blog has been around a month or two you can check out how your blog is ranked by visiting Alexa's site info page



Alexa supplies you with statistics and information about your blog's traffic and ranking in handy graphical format



If you want your Blogger Blogspot blog to improve its Google Page Ranking concentrate on building quality external links. Google likes it when your site is getting linked to by other sites. The more the content is related the better. In this article I have given you some pointers about how to boost the Google Page Ranking of your Blogger Blogspot blog. If you have time let me know how you get on. Particularly how quickly you got off the Google Page Rank of 1 and how you did it. I'm sure other readers would be interested too.


Related Articles
List of Blog Know How Tutorials for Blogger Blogs
Blogger Blogspot SEO Tips and Tricks
How to Create Search Engine Friendly Permalinks for Blogger
Add Breadcrumb Navigation to Blogger Blogspot Blog
Add Meta Tags to Blogger Blogspot Blog for Better SEO
Adjust Blogger Title Tags for Better SEO
How to Add a Blogger Sitemap to Major Search Engines
Submit You Blogspot Blog to Yahoo
Add Blogger Sitemap to MSN Live
10 Tips to Build Traffic for Blogspot Blogger Blog
Get Your Blogger Blogspot Blog Listed in Blog Directories

Social Networking and Blogging

Though we've been loyal bloggers for about a year now, in the past few months we have really seen an gigantic increase in our clients who are interested using blogs and social networking sites in their marketing programs. So we felt it was time for a little review of what we offer in terms of social networking and share some tips with you.

BLOGS:
This week we launched our first internally hosted blog site - which is http://rinckerlaw.com/blog/. We did this site this week for our fellow Aggie friend Cari Rincker who is agriculture and environmental attorney licensed in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and District of Columbia.

The neat thing about Cari's blog is that it if you notice, her blog is hosted on her own web site. Ours is hosted at blogger -- so our address is ranchhousedesigns.blogspot.com. Cari's is hosted at her own web site which just gives more promotion and credibility to rinckerlaw.com. With this project we set up her blog and also designed the matching supporting graphics and icons to have a seamless integration with her web site.

If this is something you are interested in for your site, just let us know and we can help you get set up to start blogging away! The main thing about a blog is keeping the information fresh and current. You have to commit to blogging regularly, otherwise the blog loses it's appeal.

FACEBOOK:
In April we did a test experiment using our family's ranch as a guinea pig and we created a ranch page for V8 Ranch on facebook. At this time this was the first U.S. cattle ranch page on facebook to the best of our knowledge. So we created it and within a matter of weeks we had over 400 "fans" on our facebook page. If you are a member of facebook, you can easily create your own fan page yourself and then invite friends to join your group. This is a great way to socially network with others online and share news, success, and stories.

We've also found that there are many other ranchers on facebook and it is really fun to interact with them. For example, a couple of weeks ago my mom posted that during our first rain storm of the summer, unfortunately we had 4 baby calves that died in a lightning storm. This post resulted in 13 comments from other ranchers all over the world. So it's definitely fun and easily something you can get addicted to!

TWITTER:
When we made the V8 Ranch facebook fan page, we also gave them a Twitter page. We have to give the credit for this to Luann Williams who was the person who suggested the facebook and twitter accounts for the ranch. Currently we have 45 followers on our twitter page, so you can see it's roughly 10% of what we have on facebook. Personally, I can't quite get into twitter as much as I like facebook....but there are definitely those who prefer it and so we try to update our twitter page just as much as the facebook page.

On all of these 3 services, you can easily set them up yourself or we are happy to help you set them up if you aren't quite as computer savvy. Once they are set up, we can also gladly design custom graphics for these pages for you to use as your icons and backgrounds.

Add Twitter Badge Button to Blogger

In this tutorial you will learn how to add a Twitter badge aka Twitter button to your Blogger Blogspot blog to link your blog to your Twitter account. By adding a Twitter button you will give your readers the option to follow your blog on Twitter.

Display a Twitter Icon in the Sidebar of Your Blogger Blog
If you look at the top of the right sidebar you will notice that I have placed a Twitter icon with a link to my Twitter profile. Adding the Twitter badge and link is not difficult and requires no change to the template. We will simply be adding a gadget to the sidebar. I have assumed no knowledge of Blogger and widgets so that absolute Blogger beginners can follow this tutorial.


1. Login to Blogger if not already logged in

2. Navigate to Layout > Page Elements

3. Click on Add a Gadget in the sidebar or other location eg the footer if you prefer

4. Select HTML/Javascript from the list of available gadgets

5. Paste the following code into the content box depending on your choice of button:

<a href="http://twitter.com/Your Profile"><img width="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0RULmqziRwz5hKU0rcjEgwsMHe6VHnuy6kWxAz6XD8XRPj_sSbD74yMcwpHUU7Cdhpsak0i8olJytxRhwTB9XkHaJcA5UjNx2GAfniJqb6s8Wq1f2kh7ICr74fOIu-O53rOy1DijtzSs/s200/twitter-bar.gif" height="34" title="Follow Your Blog Name on Twitter"/></a><br/>

<a href="http://twitter.com/Your Profile"><img width="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg64nnbRvLAks0PQUjcdvC6pBqh14bXGNLiI4zBp3uw1tmwEGmcd76R5H5f9NT7am2FezKJuosWtcBK59a733BI1Npvoc2-qc6CJWuDfnbtnhoVvfgDa0PzS_O6L9PyNdMuscF3abnhysA/s200/twitter-35a.png" height="42" title="Follow Your Blog Name on Twitter"/></a><br/>

<a href="http://twitter.com/Your Profile"><img width="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXDrrDxsuYCC1QuAvfTJOKYAv4g2XzNtJNw3c5cVBI6UJvOv6sHS85sLr71u7T_BwK2AslrcN-zz9IgXd1tNGfB0vPveqqkhxP9TUFgjR6uhE97YLC2ASe9OFu6lg8m4lmo9Wc32frEbY/s200/twitter-32a.png" height="58" title="Follow Your Blog Name on Twitter"/></a><br/>

6. Change Your Profile to your own Twitter profile. For example:

http://twitter.com/YourProfile

to

http://twitter.com/BlogWizz

7. Substitute your blog name in the title for your own blog name

title="Follow Your Blog Name on Twitter"

to

title="Follow Blog Know How on Twitter"

8. Click on Save.

9. Move your new Twitter widget to the desired location on your sidebar using drap and drop

10. Click on View Blog to admire your new Twitter button



In this tutorial you have learned how to add a Twitter button, badge, icon to your Blogger Blogspot blog so that readers can sign up to follow you on Twitter. I have supplied you with a choice of three different buttons to get you started. For more Twitter buttons try these free Twitter vector icons or these free Twitter graphics or just type Twitter icons into your favorite search engine

Related Articles
List of Blog Know How Tutorials for Blogger Blogs
Add Twitter Followers Counter to Blogger

Add Chitika Ads to Blogger Blogspot

In this tutorial you will learn how to add a Chitika ad unit to a Blogger Blogspot blog. To put a Chitika ad unit on a Blogger blog you will need to add the Chitika ad code directly into your Blogger template. Full instructions are set out below so that even beginner bloggers and Blogger newbies can follow these to install Chitika advertising program on their blog. If you are not already signed up for Chitika read about some of the advantages of advertising with Chitika at Blogspot Blogger Guide.


Chitika and Google Adsense - A Winning Combination
One of the main questions that bloggers ask about Chitika is can it be used with Google Adsense. The answer is most definitely yes. Chitika and Google Adsense can be used in conjunction as there is absolutely no conflict because Chitika ads unlike Google Adsense are non-contextual.

By adding Chitika to your blog you will increase your revenue from pay per click advertising. The CPMs are reputed to be higher than Google Adsense making it possible depending on your blog theme to make potentially higher earnings than with Google Adsense. For those looking for the highest possible earnings the new 550x250 mega units from Chitika are a particularly good choice if you have the space to display them. Best of all the earnings payout threshold for Chitika is only $10.00 making it a very achievable target for even the most modest blogger.

How to Add Chitika Advertisements to Blogger Blogspot Blog
Following these instructions will put a Chitika ad unit at the end of your blog posts but before the post footer details.

1. Sign up with Chitika Advertising Program and set up your ad unit following the online instructions

2. Highlight and copy the premium ad code. It needs to be parsed before entering it into the Blogger template so go ahead and paste it into the code window at Centricle.com and click on the encode button


3. Login to Blogger if not already logged in

4. Navigate to Layout > Edit HTML

5. Back up your template as a precaution by downloading it to your computer

6. Check the Expand Widgets Template box

7. Find the following line of code by entering it into the search tool (Use CTRL + F)

<p><data:post.body/></p>
or
<data:post.body/>

8. Copy the parsed Chitika code from Centricle.com and paste it into your Blogger template immediately after the above line

9. Click Save Template

10. Click on the View Blog link to view your ad unit. You will need to add the following to the end of the URL address in your browser to see your ad unit as ads are only served to North American visitors.

#chitikatest=yourkeyword

for instance I would enter

http://blogknowhow.blogspot.com#chitikatest=blog

to see how my ad unit would display ads for this keyword. Don't forget to refresh your page using CTRL + R

Summary
In this tutorial you have learned how to add a Chitika ad unit to your Blogger Blogspot blog. If you would like to start taking advantage of the Chitika advertising program on your blog and earn some extra money you can sign up to Chitika by following this link.

Tips and Troubleshooting
If you want to place your Chitika ad unit in another location other than below the post it is possible to add the code directly into a gadget in which case there is no need to parse it.





Related Articles
Earn Money with Chitika and Blogger
List of Blog Know How Tutorials for Blogger Blogs

June Web Updates Report

Just when we think our web site updates reports can't get any better -- the ladies of our web division continue to raise the bar!

For the month of June, we are happy to report that 99% of all web updates were completed on a SAME DAY turnaround. The average web update was completed within 1 hour of our clients requesting their update!

Great results like this are due to the excellent customer service and teamwork here at RHD. When web updates come in, we know you want your work done as fast as possible. This month, everyone on the RHD staff worked on web updates - and we have added two new members to our updates team (Dollie and Emily).

As always, we do want to remind you that our GUARANTEE is a 5 day turnaround on web updates, however for the past two years we have always EXCEEDED that guarantee with an average of a half-day turnaround.

This month's winners for most web updates are.....

Grand Champion June Updater: Matt Lautner

We had a 4 way tie for Reserve.....
Bauman Cattle
Beefmaster Breeder's United
Illinois Club Pig Assn
Washington County Fair

Other honorable mentions doing a great job of sending in web updates are:
Adam White
Effective Stockmanship
Grumbles Performance Horses
Brad Hanewich

So to all our clients keep sending in your updates -- and we'll do our best to get them cranked out for you as fast as possible.

Add a Twitter Followers Counter to Blogger

In this tutorial you will learn how to place a Twitter Follower Counter on your Blogger Blogspot blog to display the number of followers you have on Twitter. A Twitter count button will encourage readers to follow you on Twitter much in the same way as putting a Feedburner subscriber counter on your blog will encourage new subscribers.

How To Place a Twitter Followers Counter on Blogger

1. Login to Blogger if not already logged in

2. Navigate to Layout > Page Elements

3. Click on the link to Add a Gadget to the sidebar or footer

4. Select HTML/Javascript from the list of gadgets

5. Paste the following script into the widget content box depending on the button your prefer:

Standard Button

<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://twittercounter.com/embed/?username=yourTwitterusername"></script>

Black Button

<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://twittercounter.com/embed/?username=yourTwitterusername&style=black"></script>

Big Bird Button

<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://twittercounter.com/embed/?username=yourTwitterusername&style=bird"></script>

If you would like to view more Twitter Counter badges you will find them at http://twittercounter.com/pages/buttons/

6. Replace the username with your own Twitter username. For example my username is blogwizz so I would enter username=blogwizz. If you are not already a member of Twitter sign up is a breeze

7. Enter a title for the widget if you wish

8. Click Save

9. Move your new widget into position on your sidebar by using Blogger's drag and drop feature

10. Click the View Blog link to admire your new Twitter Followers Counter



In this tutorial you have learned how to put a Twitter Followers Counter on your Blogger Blogspot blog so that you can display an accurate count of your Twitter followers. This will encourage other readers to begin following you on Twitter.


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List of Blog Know How Tutorials for Blogger Blogs