From April 1st The New Blogger Dashboard Will Become Default

When checking back i was very surprised to see it was almost a year ago since Blogger introduced the new design on Blogger In Draft.April 20th 2011 to be exact as i explained in the post The New Blogger Dashboard And Design Is Live.After a few months in draft Blogger offered the option to use the new interface on the main blogger site.While some people took up the option and have become familiar with it, many including myself have continued to use the old dashboard.On the first of April however the new design will become default and we will all be using the new GUI.Over the last week I have been trying to familiarize myself with the layout and options of the new interface and it ain't been easy.

One of my main worries however is that hundreds of Blogger tutorials here on Spice Up Your Blog were wrote with instructions for the old dashboard.I have decided to edit all those posts over the next week and all future Blogger tutorials will be aimed at the new design.

On their part the Blogger team are constantly tweaking the new design and a send feedback link is placed in the bottom right of the page for your suggestions.If you remember when Facebook and Twitter changed their designs users were not happy but eventually seen the advantages I think it will be the same in this case.So whats your opinion and what changes would you like to see ?

Drop Your Comments And Questions Below.

How To Add Related Posts Widget To Blogger with Thumbnails

Now here is a wonderful hack for displaying related posts beneath each of your blog posts, along with thumbnails. The related articles are chosen from other posts in that same category/label/tag. With this hack many of your readers will remain on your site for longer periods of time when they see related posts of interest.

Related: Related Posts Widget with Thumbnails and Summaries

Adding the Related Posts Widget to Blogger/Blogspot

Step 1. Log in to your Blogger account and go to Template > Edit HTML

Step 2. Click anywhere inside the code area and press the CTRL + F keys:

Step 3. Search for this piece of code adding it inside the search box (hit Enter to find it):

Step 4. Copy and paste the below code just before/above the tag:

How to change Blogger "Post A Comment" Message

While the main secret of getting comments is to have good friends and creating good content, sometimes it is difficult getting more comments when we have a brand new blog that is not visited very often. A pretty good technique is to put images to encourage visitors to comment.

In this tutorial I want to show you how to replace the 'Post A Comment' text that appears above the comment form with an image. Also, I added a few cool images that you can use but you can as well add your own image, that depends on your tastes. So, let's start adding it!

How to replace Post a Comment with an image

In order to replace "Post A Comment" message in Blogger / Blogspot, follow the steps below:

Step 1. Log in to Blogger, go to your Blogger Dashboard and select your blog.

Step 2. Go to Template and press the Edit HTML button

Screenshot

Step 3. Click anywhere on the code area, then press the CTRL + F keys and search for this code (if you can't find the entire code, then search only for the one in red and you should see the rest of it):

...and for this one too:

Step 4. Replace with one of the below image addresses:

You can use your own image instead. Just upload your image on Blogger, switch to Edit HTML tab, copy the image code and replace  with your code.

UPDATE! Step 5. The first steps will replace the text only when there are no comments available. To show the image each time new comments are added, we should add the code of the image we want to appear after the 4th of the below code (you'll find it in more than one location):

If you want to center the picture, just put the code between the "center" tags... like this:

Image-URL"/>

Step 6. Save Your Template.

Thats it! I hope you like your new comment form!

Fundamental Link Building Practices to Boost Your Search Engine Rankings in Google

We hear the entire buzz about getting back links over the web, but why are links so important to gain higher search engine rankings? First of all, links allow the search engines to find and index your website in the search engine databases. Second, high quality links help drive direct traffic and give the search engines an indicator of the importance of your website. The amount, the quality (trust), and the relevance of back links, will reveal many important signals to the search engines to determine the order of ranking.

Obviously, Google cares first about its users, which are their utmost priority. All their technology is based on this philosophy. The more and the better they are able to satisfy their users, the more they will increase their market share (to sell more Adwords ads). They don’t want to ruin their SERPs with useless spam. This is why links from trusted websites are so important. The more trust the more and better rankings you will get.

In order to rank higher, you have to understand how Google places value on links. Each link is counted as a vote, but not all links are created equal meaning that not every link’s value is counted the same. If a link is deemed as high quality, it will pass on more link juice and therefore help your website gain higher ranking positions (compared to lower quality links). This means that getting a few links from really established and trusted websites (a.k.a. authority websites) is worth much more than a big quantity of low quality links. This brings us to the next point.

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How to optimize Images and Increase Blog Traffic

This tutorial will explain you how to optimize images before uploading them on your blog. Generally, most of people don't optimize images before uploading it to Blogger as needed. Optimizing images should be done if you want to improve the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or your blog or site. Learning the correct and proper way of optimizing images in blogger is very important as well.

Google Image search is used widely for finding quality reference images, icons or photos. A great percentage of our blog traffic depends on Image search. When we are downloading images, most of the time they are saved with odd names and we don't take any interest in modifying the name. So we should always consider two things when uploading images on our blog - the proper use of the alt tag and changing the name of our images or pictures with the proper keyword.

1. Change Image Name with Keyword

When we are downloading images from the internet, generally they are saved in local drive with some very odd names like untitled.png, img.png etc. So changing these names with appropriate keywords is always helpful. For instance, if I want to add img or untitled in this post, then I would definitely change these name with those words - or keywords - that would describe the best my content; thus, if I want to add an image to a post about seo topics, then I would name it something like SEO.png or optimize-image.png so that it would be relevant to the post content.

2. Use alt attribute

Search robots cannot read multimedia, be it graphic images or flash. An image is meaningless for search spiders if it is not defined (tagged). Therefore, in order to tell the search robots what the image is about, we can add an alt tag to our image code - when we upload a photo inside the post editor, click on the image and below it, click on the Properties link:

After clicking on the Properties link, the Image properties box will popup. Inside the Title text section, type a relevant title for your image and below, and in the Alt text section, type a short description of your image... then press OK.

It is recommended to write short sentences to describe your pics and to keep the description limited to 4-5 words. Less is better. Also, make sure you don't use the same words, try to mix up your image keywords.

These are simple tips for SEO image optimization which are not only effective for your SEO but can also boost your traffic. If you are wondering how to get images for your blog, please read this tutorial: How to upload images and get the url of your pics

How To SEO Optimize Your Blogger Blog Titles For Higher Search Results

This is called "Blogger/blogspot Title Swapping". Swapping blogs title can help boost your position in search engine results page listing and also increase clickthroughs. From an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) perspective, page title is the most important element in your blog in terms of ranking well in search engines. If you look at your browser's title bar you will notice that Blogger's default templates display your blog title in front of each page or post title. So page title would normally be displayed as:

After swapping the blog title, it will be appearing like this:

This kind of placement will be also appearing in google search results. The reason why you should put post titles at the beginning is because users are more likely to search for specific post content rather than the actual name of your blog. So having the post titles at the beginning increases your chances of being found.

How to optimize blogger post titles

Step 1. Log in to your Blogger Dashboard and go to Template > Edit HTML

Step 2. Click anywhere inside the code area and press the CTRL + F keys to open the Blogger' search box

Step 3. Type or paste the code below inside the search box to find it:

Step 4. You need to replace the code above with this one:

Step 5. Click Save Template and you are done!

Blogger Introduce Great New SEO Options

Blogger have upped the game in regards to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) by introducing a number of options to make Blogger hosted blogs perform better in search results.The big changes include the option to easily add a blog description that search engines will crawl allowing you to tell them what your blog is about, even better is the option to add a short description to each individual post.Adding tags to your images has been made easier so they will perform better in search results and there is also a few more complicated options.

Blogger now provides web savvy users with the option to manage search engine preferences. SEO -- an acronym for Search Engine Optimization -- helps increase traffic to your blog and connect your content with the intended audience. For more background on SEO, read through this article in the Webmasters Help Center, and be sure check out their SEO Starter Guide (pdf).

Here is a run down of all the new SEO features
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How To Remove Blogger Attribution Gadget

The Attribution gadget is the gadget in the footer that says "Powered By Blogger". If you have tried to remove this then you may of noticed this gadget is locked into you blog. To unlock it, follow the next steps:

Step 1. Log in to your Dashboard, go to Template > Edit HTML

Step 2. Click anywhere inside the code area and press the CTRL + F keys to open the Blogger' search box

Step 3. Type or paste the following tag inside the search box then hit Enter to find it:

Step 4. Just above add this code:

Step 5. Click on the Save Template button to save the changes.

That was all !

How to add a gadget/widget inside your Blogger Blog header

Some of you have noticed that many blogs have AdSense Units or other ads and widgets in the header section of the blog, one of the most popular format being the AdSense 468x60 ad unit.

Unfortunately, we are not always able to add a widget inside the blogger header as a Blogspot user. The reason is that if we are using the Blogger default template, or any other customized template available on the internet, the header may be locked and have no option to Add a gadget inside it or just next to the blog title.

The reason why some bloggers are using AdSense ads or different widgets in a blog header is because of its maximum of number of impressions. For instance, when a visitor goes to a page, this will be the first place where he would give a first look and this makes it one of the hottest spots in our blog.
But how we can add something inside blogger header - be it a Adsense unit, a search bar, social sharing buttons, or a widget? By simply adding a section in the blog's header. First off, to give space for the extra gadget to fit in, our blogger header should be resized.

Important!
Before anything, we need to make a back-up of our Blogger template so that if we do make any major errors, we can easily restore the original working template to our blog.

To make a back-up, go to Template and on the right side - click on the "Backup/Restore" button.

Clicking on this button, will prompt you to save your existing template as an XML file to your hard drive. You can change the name of the file and choose the location to ensure it is easy to find if you need to use this later.

Resize blogger header

Step 1. Go to Blogger Dashboard, click on Template > Edit HTML

Step 2. Click anywhere inside the code area and open the search box by using the CTRL + F keys:

Step 3. Add this code inside the search box, then hit Enter to find it:

class='header' id='header' maxwidgets=

Note: If you can't find it, make sure that you have no space at the beginning of it.

Step 4. Replace class='header' with class='header header-left'.

Step 5. Now we need to find - CTRL + F - the following line of code:

And just above this line, we should see two div tags:

How to Burn Blogger RSS Feeds at Feedburner

What is RSS?

A RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed is a XML-based format for your content. Most blogging platforms, for example, will have an RSS feed built in. Whenever you start publishing posts, your latest posts will be updated in the RSS feed. Visitors to your website can subscribe to your blog’s RSS feed in an RSS reader such as Google Reader.

What is FeedBurner?

Most blogs have RSS feed which is detected automatically by commonly used feed readers when the blog URL is added to the reader.

However, if you want to make it more obvious and easier for readers to subscribe using RSS, or want to know exactly how many people subscribe to your blog then the best option is to add a Feedburner RSS feed and email subscription to your blog.

Feedburner is a free web service which enhances bloggers and podcasters ability to manage their RSS feeds and track usage of their subscribers.

How to create a feed with feedburner

1. Go to Feedburner and sign in to Feedburner with your Google Account (create a Google Account first if you don’t have one).

2. To set up your RSS feed with Feedburner, simply copy the URL of your RSS feed and paste it into the “Burn a feed right this instant” box. Then click Next >>

3. On the next screen, choose the second options - RSS.

4. On the next screen you will be given your RSS feed’s new URL on Feedburner. You will want to use this URL anywhere you reference your RSS feed on your blog. Change the feed title and address with your own.

5. When you click on Next, you will be given the options to setup tracking features for your RSS feed.
Check "Clickthroughs" and "I want more!..." options.

Adding Your Feedburner Feed To Your Blog

This is used to add the RSS icon and easy subscribe options to your blog side bar using a text widget as explained below:

1. Click on the Publicize Tab > Chicklet Chooser in your Feedburner account and copy the HTML code.

2. Go to Blogger Dashboard > Design > Page Elements and add a new gadget

3. Select HTML/JavaScript from the pop-up window and paste the html code in the box.

Adding a FeedBurner Email Subscription

After you have set up your feed, you will want to consider giving visitors the option to subscribe to your content via email. If so, you will want to go to the Publicize tab and click on Email Subscriptions. Click on the Activate button to start email subscription service for your RSS feed.

You will then want to click on Communication Preferences in the left sidebar menu. This will allow you to customize the activation email subscribers receive to confirm their subscription.

Once customized, click Save. The next options you will want to configure are under Email Branding in the left sidebar menu. This is where you can upload a logo, customize the Email Subject line, and change the font styles, colors, and sizes to format the email subscribers will receive. Click Save when finished.
The last (and most important) setting for your email subscription is the Delivery Options. This is where you will tell Feedburner what time to deliver new RSS feed updates to subscribers.

Once saved, click on the Subscription Management link. Here, you can get the code to add a subscription form on your blog or you can get a link to your take visitors to the opt-in form for subscribing via email.

To add it on your blog:

1. Go to Blogger Dashboard > Design > Page Elements

2. Add a new Gadget

3. Select HTML/JavaScript & paste the code in the box.

Redirecting All Your Blog Feed To Feedburner

Unless you redirect all your blog feed to Feedburner you won’t get accurate subscriber numbers because some of your readers subscribe using your original blog feed.

To do this:

1. Go to Settings > Site Feed in your blog dashboard

2. Add your Feedburner address to Post Feed Redirect URL and click Save Changes.

3. Now all your feeds is automatically redirected through FeedBurner and you’ll be able to track subscribers.

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing!

Add Facebook Like Button Below Post Titles

This Facebook Like button will allow visitors to Like your post and share it to their Facebook friends. In this post we will see how we can add a Like button for each individual Blogger post, and not a Facebook fan box for the entire blog (which is also a good idea to have in your sidebar). Having a Facebook Like button below your post titles makes easier for Facebook users to like specific posts on your blog, which in turn displays the liked content on their profile (and potentially on their friend's feeds).
If you want to add the Facebook Like Button below your blogger post title, then follow these steps:

Adding Facebook Like Button Below Post Titles

Step 1. Go To Blogger Dashboard > Template > Edit HTML 

Screenshot 

Step 2. Click anywhere inside the code area and search - using CTRL + F keys - for this piece of code:

Note: you might find it more than 3 times, stop to the second one (or third one in case it won't show up after applying the code from step 3)

Step 3.  Just above it, paste this code:

Instructions

Paste your Adsense code or any HTML in the empty box and then press the Convert button.