Rolling to Google PR3 : My Ride (Part II)

Hello friends,

I am back with the second part of my journey to Google PR3. For those who didn’t read the first part, here it is: Part-I.

This post would be longer than usual because I don't want to leave anything untouched. It consists of almost everything you need to do while you are in the initial 3 months of your blogging career. So, do read till the end or you may miss out on some!

As a newbie you need to learn a lot and work hard. These initial months won’t be returning anything to you. They are foundation for your blog. So let’s start and know what we need to do during these 3 months.

Content:
You may have heard it many a times – content is king. Unfortunately this is the fact. You can’t ignore the content of your blog. It has to be good and in accordance with your niche. Expressionless content are not read much and you loose on your bouncing visitors. So, try posting quality contents.

Commenting:
I am not surprised by the fact that Part-I of this post series received just a couple of comments. Almost 90% of the people avoid sharing and commenting on blogs. Visitors hesitate in commenting. My experience with commenting was so-so. I used to comment on 10 different blogs daily and received back just 1 or 2. Well, it’s not useless, rather I would advice commenting as it is the first step of socializing and drawing traffic. From now on whenever you read a post, drop a comment as per 'your thoughts' avoiding use of phrases like “nice post”, etc.

Blog post layout:
This is something related to your post structure. From the very beginning, try to maintain a definite structure of posting. For example whenever I post a blog I write in paragraphs and include the concerned car pictures. I break up my paragraphs on basis of the car’s specifications and features. The point I want to make is that maintaining a format for your blog posts makes it more readable and also give it a brand.

One more thing to remember is your frequency of posting. Keep it at least once in 3 days and not more than 2 in a single day. This will keep your blog active and also let your posts live for sometime on your blog.

Ping your post:
Whenever you publish a post, a ping is sent to all the directories and search engines to which you have registered. This is not always the case. To manually ping the directories and other social media, use the following web services:
Ping-o-matic
Ping goat

Avoid ads
I am not against earning through blogging. But for the initial 3 months your earning would be negligible. I earned $0.9 in the first 3 months! So concentrate more on your blog and put aside earning for future when your blog is worth generating good revenue.

Review post before publishing:
Always review your blog before making it public. Errors are part of human tendency. So a preview of your blog would prevent those errors from getting public. Do the necessary changes and after satisfying yourself “as a reader” publish the post.

Categorize:
Making categories or applying labels to your blog posts is helpful for both the owner and the readers. Be genuine in creating categories according to your niche. Avoid including a single post in too many categories when you have less number of posts.

Add useful widgets to your blog:
You type “blog widgets” on Google and it populates you with numerous tools for your blog. All of these are not meant for your blog. Every blog must have the following widgets: popular posts, recent comments, top commenters and recent posts. You can find a list of useful widgets here: useful widgets.

Analyze blog stats:
In the initial 3 months they won’t be of much use as your blog will be drawing limited traffic. But they are of great help as your blog grows and gains the tempo. Some of the tools available for analyzing blog are:
Google webmaster
Google analyzer
Sitemeter

Driving traffic:
There are many ways of drawing traffic to your blog. But for the initial 3 months, you need to get yourself registered all over the places. I have listed the places where you need to get your blog listed. Here it goes:

Register to blog directories: list of blog directories
Search engines indexing: Google, Yahoo and Msn.
Getting social: there are a lot many but registering to Blog Catalog and MyBlogLog is a must.
Other social media: entrecard and twitter.
Link exchange: add your blog to technorati, Qassia and add Blog Roll on your blog.
Commenting: comment on other blogs and reciprocate to those who comment on you.
Sponsor contests: another great way of drawing traffic and getting backlinks.

Build relation:
Blog is not all about getting registered and then writing and earning. Socializing plays a major role in making your blog famous and provides you that extra edge over others. Make good relations with other senior bloggers as well as helping and guiding the newbie. It will not only make a reputation for you but also flourish your growth. There are long range benefits of building sound online relations.

Have fun!

Don’t blog just to earn. Keep the blogging spirit alive and post what you like (under your niche). Don’t loose hope and keep up the hard work. The initial 3 months are crucial and you need to just go along regardless of the outcome. Have fun blogging.

Phoooo!!! … long one and a sigh of relief that I wrote down what all I knew. The initial months are as long as this post, but you need to read it all to get the desired! I won’t insist on commenting but if you have something to add or suggest you are most welcome.

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Unlimited Quality Backlinks : QASSIA

This is something off my niche but I find it very useful and thought of sharing it with you all. Everyone wishes that their blog(s) gets popular as soon as possible. There are subscribers in K's and a fan following of hundreds. Comments flowing in day and night!! But this all takes time and hard work.

Anyways, one of the important aspect in growing your blog is link exchanges and backlinks. You are always looking for blogs in your niche, to exchange links with. Requesting, sometimes reciprocating, sometimes not. I also went through all this and now discovered this new way of getting unlimited quality backlinks - QASSIA.




At Qassia, you can add your websites for free, and without having to add reciprocal backlinks. You'll get unlimited quality backlinks (as opposed to useless "no-follow" backlinks). Besides, there are ways of earning along with Qassia - by adding Intel(distinct posts), or commenting and others. You get the revenue generated by ads in your Intel !!! sounds great. There is nothing to loose.

So, what are you waiting for ? .. go get yourself registered and enjoy the benefits of being a Qassian. To register yourself click the Qassia logo(above) or here.

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Tag Cloud

Hi friends,

As you you know every blog we post, falls under some category or the other. We try to categorize whatever we blog about. It makes our blog more organized and also helps searching. A Tag Cloud is yet another way of displaying your labels. The widget displays the current labels of your blog and occupies less space in case you have numerous labels.

The steps for adding the widget is really simple. Here we go :

Step1: Backup your template. Its necessary so that we can revert to the original in case the widget doesn't install properly. So, Download the current template to your PC.

Step2: Click the "Expand Widget Templates" so that the full template is displayed in the box below.

Step3: Now look for the desired place to install the widget, preferably in the right sidebar. Next comes the Copy-Paste  job. Copy the code below and paste it at the desired position.

 <b:section id='tag cloud'>
<b:widget id='Label1' locked='false' title='Labels' type='Label'>
<b:includable id='main'>

<div class='widget-content'>
<script src='http://halotemplates.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-cumulus-example/swfobject.js' type='text/javascript'/>
<div id='flashcontent'>Blogumulus by <a href='http://www.roytanck.com/'>Roy Tanck</a> and <a href='http://www.bloggerbuster.com'>Amanda Fazani</a></div>
<script type='text/javascript'>
var so = new SWFObject(&quot;http://halotemplates.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-cumulus-example/tagcloud.swf&quot;, &quot;tagcloud&quot;, &quot;240&quot;, &quot;300&quot;, &quot;7&quot;, &quot;#ffffff&quot;);
// uncomment next line to enable transparency
//so.addParam(&quot;wmode&quot;, &quot;transparent&quot;);
so.addVariable(&quot;tcolor&quot;, &quot;0x333333&quot;);
so.addVariable(&quot;mode&quot;, &quot;tags&quot;);
so.addVariable(&quot;distr&quot;, &quot;true&quot;);
so.addVariable(&quot;tspeed&quot;, &quot;100&quot;);
so.addVariable(&quot;tagcloud&quot;, &quot;<tags><b:loop values='data:labels' var='label'><a expr:href='data:label.url' style='12'><data:label.name/></a></b:loop></tags>&quot;);
so.addParam(&quot;allowScriptAccess&quot;, &quot;always&quot;);
so.write(&quot;flashcontent&quot;);
</script>
<b:include name='quickedit'/>
</div>
</b:includable>
</b:widget>
</b:section>

Customization :

The default installation includes the following preset variables: 

Width is set to 240px
Height is set to 300px;
Background color is white(#ffffff)
Test color is grey(333333)
Font size is "12"

DONE!! .. your tag cloud is almost created. Just perform the required customization and save the template.

Source: Blogger Buster

Back to Useful Widgets

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Rolling to Google PR3 : My Ride (Part I)

Hi friends,

I am not really good at giving SEO and blogging tips. But I will try my best to impart what all I gathered during my journey to Google PR3. To give the best to you, I have broken down the path into 3 parts :

Creating Blog
The initial 3 Months
The road ahead.


PART I - CREATING BLOG

I started this blog Cars On rOll, sometime in July, this year. Earlier I used to write on whatever I felt like from a latest gadget in market to prevailing social issues. But as I explored this blogging world, I realized that its better to get started with a particular niche. I chose Cars. So, the initial phase is choosing your niche. Its really confusing to decide on what to blog about, but you know there are millions of people searching for million topics/niche. So, start with anything under the sun (something in which you take interest) and you will certainly find readers!

One more thing to note is you URL(you choose at the time of creating your blog). Most of the beginners forget this aspect. The URL of your blog must be similar to your blog niche. It means that the URL, you choose/create must reflect your blog theme and give an idea of what you blog about. Like Cars On rOll sounds like something related to Cars. Although its a part of SEO, but one must know this fact at the very beginning because its easier to change at the beginning. I, too started with a different URL (perplexedvyas.blogspot.com) and then after choosing my niche shifted over to the current one. If you can afford a domain name, its much better.

Now comes the template. Google blogspot provides some default templates. You can either choose from the default templates or get your own from the web. Search out for the best design, which suits your blog and implement the same. Here are some sites which provides the XML templates for blogspot :

eblog templates
blogger templates

Next on the list comes your content. The content has to be good. It must be different and unique in its own manner. But you can't get everything different like I can't change the specifications of the cars I write about. But then you can add your views, compare them with other cars and fondle with words. Enhance your writing skills - thats the secret. The way you write a post and the information you share matters a lot. While writing a post, add some personal touch. Be humble. Enhancing your writing skills takes time (I am also trying hard at it). Do read blogs of experienced and professional blogger to get an idea of the same.

DONE!! Your blog is created. Here is a quick review of all the key points :

Choose a blogging domain (blogspot/wordpress).
Decide on a niche for your blog.
Get the URL correct.
Choose a Template according to your requirements.
Keep the Content good.
Add a personal touch and be humble in your writing.
Enhance your writing skills.

This was the first part of my experience with blogging. I don't want you to repeat the mistakes I committed. Remember these whenever you begin with a new blog or else you can always visit mine :) Feel free to add your experience or tips, by commenting below. It will be useful for all the newbies in blogging.

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Add Tabbed Menu

Hi friends, you must have seen many blogs with an array of tabs at the top, giving their blog a more professional look. Now you too can add these tabs and give your blog that professional look and feel.

This post will help you add a tabed menu to your blog (as you can see mine - Home, Concept Cars,.. etc). This widget, was a default feature to my present template. To make it better, you need to have a bit knowledge of CSS and HTML.

To add Tabbed Menu to your blog, just go through the following steps.

Step 1 :
Go to your template-> Edit HTML and "expand widget template" [select the check box].

Step 2:
Before making any changes save a copy of your template. To save it to your desktop, just click the link 'Download Full Template' (at the top).

Step 3:
Now first, we need to add the required CSS. Find the tag :
]]></b:skin>

Just before this tag (i.e. above this tag) Copy-Paste the following code :


/* Tabbed Bar               */
    .tabbed-bar{
        background:url() top left no-repeat;
        height:26px;
        line-height:26px;
        float:left;
        display:block;
        width:auto;
        padding-left:8px;
}
    * html .tabbed-bar, * html .tabbed-bar div{display:block; float:left;}
    .tabbed-bar div{
        background:url() top right no-repeat;
        height:26px;
        line-height:26px;
        padding-right:8px;
    }
    .tabbed-bar a:link, .tabbed-bar a:visited{
        color:#ca0002; text-decoration:none;
    }
    .tabbed-bar a:hover, .tabbed-bar a:hover{
        text-decoration:underline;;
    }


Step 4:   
Now we need to place the tags. Find this code in your blog :

<div id='header-inner'>
      <div class='titlewrapper'>
        <h1 class='title'>
          <b:include name='title'/>
        </h1>
      </div>
      <b:include name='description'/>
    </div>

Every template (except default blogger templates) may or may not have this code. The point is that the tags need to be just below your Header. But you can always place it according to your choice.

Just below the above mentioned code, paste the following code :


<div style='font-size:15px;'>

<a class='tabbed-bar' href='http://carsonroll.blogspot.com'><div>Home</div></a>
<a class='tabbed-bar' href='tab2'><div>tab2 name</div></a>
<a class='tabbed-bar' href='tab3'><div>tab3 name</div></a>

</div>


The tags can be added and removed according to your choice.

You can Preview your template and customize it accordingly. After making it your way, Save the template and view the new look of your blog.

You are DONE.

Go to Useful widgets.

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New Template Look

Hi!
after much await, I have got what i was eagerly looking for - a template, which suits my blog and liking. This template is more soothing to your eyes and has a lot many features. You enjoy more freedom with this format of blogger design.

The blog template is designed by woork. It is free to download and works for blogger as well. The necessary customization can be done very easily with little changes here and there. Overall a good change from the default templates provided by blogger.

I would like your comments and suggestions to help improve my blog. All those who have uploaded this template can share their experience here.

Download this template

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Useful widgets

Hi friends, every blogger wishes to make his blog more popular and most read. Although there are a lot many things to try, I provide you here with some useful widgets which can help make your blog a better place. These are collected from different sources.

• Recent Comments Widget - Customized

• Moving Images widget

• Add text Caption to Images

• Recent Posts Widget

• Top Commentators widget

• Add Tabbed Menu

• Tag Cloud

• A Simple Search widget

The list will be updated regularly as i come across useful widgets, so keep checking this post for new entries.

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Recent Post Widget

Hi friends, you can create a Recent Post widget very easily. All you need to have is a feed. Read the following simple steps to add the widget :

Step 1:
Log in to your feedburner account

Step2:
Go to my feeds and select your feed

Step 3:
go to Publicize tab

Step 4:
Add BuzzBoost to your blog by following the steps given at the site and customize it according to your needs.

Step 5:
Activate the BuzzBoost and copy-paste the code in your blog. You are done.

Source : Create Recent Post Widget

Go to Useful widgets

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Add text caption to Image

Hello friends you can now, add caption to your images (web/blog). With simple CSS and HTML, you can quickly add text captions to images. Just read the following steps to add this feature to your site.

The image will look something like the pic below.

Step 1:
Add the following CSS code to an external CSS file or to your blog template under the <HEAD> section.

 <style type="text/css">
.picture { background-color: #F9F9F9;
border: 1px solid #CCCCCC; padding: 3px;
font: 11px/1.4em Arial, sans-serif; }
.picture img { border: 1px solid #CCCCCC;
vertical-align:middle; margin-bottom: 3px; }
.right { margin: 0.5em 0pt 0.5em 0.8em; float:right; }
.left { margin: 0.5em 0.8em 0.5em 0; float:left; }
</style>

Step 2:
Now insert the following HTML code anywhere in the web page, where you want to display the image. The process is exactly the same as inserting regular images but we have just enclosed that inside a <DIV> tag.

 <div class="picture left" style="width:278px;"> <img src="google.gif" width="276" height="120" alt="Google Logo" /> <br />Image Caption goes here. </div>


In the above example, we add the file google.gif left aligned and the image has dimensions 276×120.
Replace left with right if you want to right align the image box. You’ll also need to modify the style:width of the <DIV> tag such it is equal to image width + 2.

You can also fiddle with the CSS to change the font name, size, border colors, background, margins, etc.

Source : Add text caption to your web image

Go back to Useful widgets

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Simple Search Widget

I found a wonderfully simple search widget which operates in a similar way to the "Search this blog" feature found in the navbar. You can easily implement this widget into your blog by using the widget installer below:

1. Go to Template>Layout in your Blogger Dashboard.
2. Create a new HTML/Javascript element in your sidebar.
3. Insert the following code into the widget:

<p align="center"><form id="searchthis" action="/search" style="display:inline;" method="get"> <input id="search-box" name="q" size="25" type="text"/> <input id="search-btn" value="Search" type="submit"/> </form></p>

4. Give your widget a title if you like (eg: "Search this Blog"), and click save. You should now have a fully functional search box in your blog's sidebar!

So, your widget is ready to use.
Go back to Useful Widgets

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Top Commentators Widget

Would you like to display a list of the top commentators in your blog? This widget will enable you to do exactly that!

If you install this widget, a list of the top ten people who have commented most in your blog will be displayed with along with the count of comments they have made.

This is a great way of thanking readers who comment regularly and is very easy to add to your blog layout using the one click widget installer

Adding this widget is really simple. Just follow the given steps :

1st Step :
Go to your template - Add page element - Add HTML element

2nd Step:
Copy - paste the following code in the HTML element

<script type="text/javascript">
function pipeCallback(obj) {
 document.write('<ol>');
 var i;
 for (i = 0; i < obj.count ; i++)
 {
 var href = "'" + obj.value.items[i].link + "'";
 var item = "<li>" + "<a href=" + href + ">" + obj.value.items[i].title + "</a> </li>";
 document.write(item);
 }
 document.write('</ol>');
 }
 </script>
<script src="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_render=json&_callback=pipeCallback&_id=720a4578c7b83dfce64615cb0ad3c642&url=http%3A%2F%2Fyourblogname.yourdomain.com&num=10&filter=yourName" type="text/javascript"></script>


Changes :

change yourblogname.yourdomain.com  to your blog name, for e.g carsonroll.blogspot.com 
change num=10  to the number of comments you wish to show, for e.g. num=5 
change filter=yourName to filter your name out of the top commentators, for e.g filter=@_raj 

After performing the necessary changes, save the widget and then your template. Now view your blog, you can see the list of top commentators along with the number of comments they have done on your blog.

Go back to Useful Widgets

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Moving Images Widget

You must have noticed the Featured Posts section on my Home page. This section consists of a group of link images scrolling from right to left. In this posts I will show  how you can also add this feature.

1st step:
Create a division like this :

<div>
--- code ---
</div>

at the position you want to place the widget.

If you are having a <table> format in the template, then you can create a new table like this :

<table>
<tr><td>
--- code ---
</td></tr>
</table>



2nd Step:
After you have created a division(div) at your desired place, you need to paste the following code :

<MARQUEE behavior='alternate' id='marquee2'>
<LI>
<a href='your image url'><img height='90' src='your image source' width='120'/></a>
</LI>
</MARQUEE>

behavior values can be : alternate(as on my blog) , slide , scroll
href : it is the blog link to which you want the image to refer.
src: it is the source of the image (picasa,flickr or your own web space)



3rd Step:
Now to add multiple images just add more of the following :

<a href='your image url'><img height='90' src='your image source' width='120'/></a>

between the <LI> tags. Like this:

<MARQUEE behavior='alternate' id='marquee2'>
<LI>
<a href='your image url'><img height='90' src='your image source' width='120'/></a>
<a href='your image url'><img height='90' src='your image source' width='120'/></a>
<a href='your image url'><img height='90' src='your image source' width='120'/></a>
<a href='your image url'><img height='90' src='your image source' width='120'/></a>
<a href='your image url'><img height='90' src='your image source' width='120'/></a>
</LI>
</MARQUEE>

Change the height and width according to your need.

Done : After adding all the images between the <LI> tag, you are DONE. Save the template and view your blog to see the changes.

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Recent Comments Widget - Customized

Usually Blogger's feed widget is used to display recent comments but it is slow and sometimes unable to display your recent comments. Also we can only show very few words of the comment (too few to comprehend) and upto 5 comments only.
Now we have a solution that allows the blog author to customize both these. You can see the new widget in my footer, showing selected comment within alphabetic range.

With this widget,
1. You can specify how many comments you want to display in your blog (defaults to 10)
2. You can specify the maximum number of letters that should be displayed in each comment (defaults to 100).

Here is how you add this widget to your blog.

Step 1: Goto Template --> Edit HTML tab. Find the "</head>" tag in your template and add all the code given below before it and save the template.

<script type='text/javascript'> function commentDisplay(json) { for (var i = 0; i &lt; numcomments; i++) { var entry = json.feed.entry[i]; var alturl; if (i == json.feed.entry.length) break; for (var k = 0; k &lt; entry.link.length; k++) { if (entry.link[k].rel == 'alternate') { alturl = entry.link[k].href; break; } } alturl = alturl.replace("#", "#comment-"); if (entry.content) { comment = entry.content.$t; } else if (entry.summary) { comment = entry.summary.$t; } var re = /&lt;\S[^&gt;]*&gt;/g; comment = comment.replace(re, ""); document.write('&lt;a href="' + alturl + '"&gt;' + entry.author[0].name.$t + '&lt;/a&gt; commented:&lt;br/&gt;'); if (comment.length &lt; numchars) document.write(comment + '&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;'); else document.write(comment.substring(0, numchars) + '...&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;'); } } </script> 


Step 2: Goto Template --> Page elements tab and click on "Add a page element" in your sidebar. Choose HTML/Javascript element. Give an appropriate title and copy/paste this code.

<br/><script language="javascript">
var numcomments = 10;
var numchars = 100;
</script>
<script src="http://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?
alt=json-in-script&callback=commentDisplay"></script>

You need to change the blog URL to yours. You could also change the number of comments/letters per comment to whatever fits your blog. Then, save the changes and move the widget to wherever you want. There, you have a customized recent comments widget!!

The widget is originally designed by hackosphere.

Back to Useful Widgets

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What is RSS ?

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication". It is a way to easily distribute a list of headlines, update notices, and sometimes content to a wide number of people. It is used by computer programs that organize those headlines and notices for easy reading.

What problem does RSS solve?

Most people are interested in many websites whose content changes on an unpredictable schedule. Examples of such websites are news sites, community and religious organization information pages, product information pages, medical websites, and weblogs. Repeatedly checking each website to see if there is any new content can be very tedious.

Email notification of changes was an early solution to this problem. Unfortunately, when you receive email notifications from multiple websites they are usually disorganized and can get overwhelming, and are often mistaken for spam.

RSS is a better way to be notified of new and changed content. Notifications of changes to multiple websites are handled easily, and the results are presented to you well organized and distinct from email.


How does RSS work?

RSS works by having the website author maintain a list of notifications on their website in a standard way. This list of notifications is called an "RSS Feed". People who are interested in finding out the latest headlines or changes can check this list. Special computer programs called "RSS aggregators" have been developed that automatically access the RSS feeds of websites you care about on your behalf and organize the results for you. (RSS feeds and aggregators are also sometimes called "RSS Channels" and "RSS Readers".)

Producing an RSS feed is very simple and hundreds of thousands of websites now provide this feature, including major news organizations like the New York Times, the BBC, and Reuters, as well as many weblogs.

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