Syndicate your Blog with Feedburner

Feedburner syndicates blogs (just like Seinfeld gets syndicated in Cable TV land), you can have your blog syndicated such that it will not only publish your content on your site, but allow your readers to read your content from their preferred news related tools. Everyone has their own news preferences. I like Google News and push all my subscriptions to my my.yahoo.com. so if you set up a feed, I could subscribe to it and have your headlines pushed to my.yahoo.com where I could read it.

Feedburner provides many other useful tools to promote your blog as well so don't miss those tips either!.

Why do sidebars fall below the body of a Blog?

There are several things that can cause a sidebar to appear to fall below the body of a blog.

As an example,

1. A very long hyperlink in the text of your blog article can sometimes fail to wrap and make the post to wide for your side bar to fit, thus pushing it down to the bottom
2. A picture loaded into the article of a blog that is too wide, will do the same thing and push your sidebar down to the bottom.
3. A Google search box on your sidebar, if you make the number of visible characters too long for the box, the box itself may become too wide for your sidebar to fit next to your blog articles.

In your template there is a specific width set for both the body of your articles and for your sidebar and for your entire blog page. If you put something that is wider than is set out from the beginning in either the blog body or in the sidebar, it will cause the two components to no longer fit next to each other and then the item that appears last in your template (usually the sidebar code follows the body code) will be pushed down lower on the page.

Hope that helps you troubleshoot it in the future, and understand what you are trouble shooting!

How to TAG with Technorati

Tagging your blog posts with Technorati is a very important tool to publish your information such that others can find your articles when they search on keywords. Technorati will ping your blog on demand once you have set it up, and they will monitor the tags you create such that their searchers or readers can find relative information.

TAGing is still a little foreign to some people new to blogging. Its still a little foreign to me, but I'd like to share with you what I've learned so far.

1. As you write articles pay attention to the key concepts in the article. make sure these concepts are expressed in the title of your article if possible and then 'TAG' them. (explain how in a second)

2. The Tag will alert Technorati where your information is and it will allow your readers to leap to Technorati to get more information on that same topic. Similarly, people leaping from other sites to Technorati may find your Tag back to Technorati and come in to visit your blog article

3. How to create a TAG . Checkout Technorati's help section


4. If you have written about a topic yourself in the past, you can Tag your own older articles or topics.

Don't go Over board with lists of links in a Blog

One tip that is very useful for improving your blog for your readers and for search engine bots is to keep your pages or blog articles limited to no more than 100 hyperlinks. Including too many links on a page makes it difficult for readers to absorb the content. It can also be interpreted in a negative fashion by Search Engines like Google that attempt to identify the importance of you page and the related links. Too many links suggests an abuse. If you are writing a blog article, I'd even further suggest limiting this number to no more than 30 and it should be balanced with at least 10 paragraphs of text.

In addition, use the hyperlink option in blogger if you do not know how to create tags. Hide the unsightly full hyperlinks and encase the link in text or even in a picture so that readers do not have to read long URLS.

Long URLs can create problems with blogger templates as well. If the width of a URL is longer than a browser window allows in the body/content section, it may shove the sidebar to the bottom of the blog where its not visible. If your side bar disappears, this is the first thing you should check as a troubleshooting steps to fix your blog. (Pictures that are too wide is the 2nd thing you should check.)

For more information on general tips check out Google's Webmaster Guidelines section for more information.

Google's Adsense Glossary

Google provides an Adsense Glossary for Adsense users. They define many of their acronyms and jargons used throughout the Adsense program and also throughout forums and discussion boards.

As you get started with Adsense, this is a great resource to review. I highly recommend at least clicking through the acronyms to pick up the definitions of programs and keywords that will dictate how you can be successful with Adsense!

Adsense_Glossary

End Your Article with a Picture

here's a great tip for increasing your Adsense conversions. Post a picture at the end of your article with a width dimension the same width or very close to that of your Adsense text banner which should be posted just below your article!

Blog Promotion Tips 2

Ok, this is a real easy tip! To help promote your blog, you need to encourage other people to link back to your blog. Sometimes you can offer to link to them in exchange for a 'reciprocal link' back to your own blog or website.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques show that this helps to show search engines that your web or blog is important. The more websites that point to your site the higher the relative importance. The more important websites that point to your site the greater the importance and relativity of your site.

So develop some relative links, and don't forget to offer a reciprocal link yourself.

If you'd like to practice, I'd be more than willing to offer reciprocal links for blogs. I run multiple blogs and multiple websites and can offer many reciprocal links!

Blog Surfing Programs and Adsense

A couple days ago, I posted an article about blog surfing programs. Its come to my attention (from Google :) that Google is not terribly fond of all of these programs.

They will not specifically identify the programs they disfavor, but there are some things to look out for and avoid if you want to avoid trouble with your adsense account.

1. avoid programs that offer the sale of impressions or credits. Even if you don't use this ( I wouldn't recommend it, I think it silly to buy impressions, unless your site is so 'sticky' that people will buy your product when they show up and the margin is greater than the cost to buy in which case you probably could care less about adsense) this function Google considers anyone that's a member to potentially be a user and thus might shut down your account.

2. avoid programs that allow you to sell your credits to others if you want to keep Google happy.

3. the only program that seems to avoid these problems is blogexplosion. Google would not verify for me that blogexplosion is or is not acceptable, but they don't seem to do any of the offending sales.

Now, I still think these services are great for drumming up traffic. here is what I'm going to do. You can follow suit if you like, but follow the leader at your own risk!

I'm going to take my google ads off of some of my blogs.

I'm going to promote the hell out of them through these services. When my traffic level gets high enough, I will slowly ad ads in, unless I've found some other great way to make money.

Now Google will miss out on my blog's rise in popularity.

They don't seem to care, and that's fine. Each unto their own self interest.

If I find some advertising firm that does what Google offers with less problems well then I may try them out and see how it goes.

I'll keep my readers posted in the meantime. . . . :)

Dropping Knowledge - BlogClicker

Dropping Knowledge is an organization trying to initiate a dialogue on the pressing issues of the day. The site offers visitors the options to post questions hoping to start a dialogue and exploration of the issues. Think of it as social networking over the issues.

Its an interesting idea and worthy of further review.

Please check out Dropping Knowledge at http://www.droppingknowledge.org/

In addition, if you have a BlogClicker account or sign up for blogclicker and get an account, Blogclicker will give you 20 credits (20 impressions) and visitors if you write an article about droppingknowledge such as this article. You can get another 10 credits if you put a banner on your blog. Mine is in my header, I haven't found a better way to install it yet.

BlogClicker is one of the easiest blogsurfing tools to use and an excellent way to generate more traffic. For more information on blog promotion check out the sidebar here for more blog surfing services or goto Blog Promotion Tools for even more information.

I haven't learned whether or not you can earn 30 credits per blog, but will let you know once I find out.

Getting Started - Part 1

1. Click on the Wide white button above labeled "Get targeted ads on your site with Google AdSense"
2. You'll arrive at the Google Adsense welcome screen
3. Click on the Grey button in the middle titled "Click Here to Apply"
4. Select an Account type : Pick Individual or Business
5. Select an appropriate Country or Territory
6. Enter the URL for your blogsite ex. http:// myblog.blogspot.com (if you don't have a blog yet, no worries, Click on the Orange B located in upper left hand corner of this blog, then click on the orange arrow labeled "create your blog now" complete the info to set up the account and then come back here to start at number 1.) Don't post anything until you apply for Adsense. There is no point in blogging for Free!
7. Select the language your blog is published in
8. Check both boxes for content and for Search
9. Complete your contact information
10. Read and agree to the Policies
11. select a login email address and a password
12. Click Submit

Warning. Never Click the ads in your own Blog site. This would be cheating and Google will know.

I want you to make money. You can't make money if Google closes your account.