How To Change Thumbnail Size for Blogger Images, Popular Posts Widget

Blogger by default assigns a 72 x 72 pixel size for thumbnails generated from your post images. You may desire to change the image thumbnail size on the Popular posts widget or even thumbnails displayed on homepage, generated from blog posts.

In your template, you'll find a couple of instances of the
"<img expr:src='data:post.thumbnailUrl'/>" tag . Using this tag, you can pick up the first image from a post and generate its thumbnail. By assigning a class/id to this tag and using a simple jquery code, we can define a custom thumbnail size for it.

Before you begin, make sure you have jquery installed in your template. If not, copy the latest version from below and paste it above the closing head tag </head>.


<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

Custom thumbnail Size for Post Images 

As mentioned in the begening, a 72 x 72 pixel size thumbnail from post image can be created using the tag: 

<img expr:src='data:post.thumbnailUrl'/> 

1. To the relevant image tag, simply add a class or id to the tag like this: 

<img class="post-thumb" expr:src='data:post.thumbnailUrl'/> 

2. Just above the closing head tag </head> in your template, paste the code below.

<script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function() {$('.post-thumb').attr('src', function(i, src) {return src.replace( 's72-c', 's120-c' );});}); <!-- helparchive.blogspot.com --> </script>

3. The "120" is your new thumbnail size. You can increase or decrease the thumbnail width by changing the "120" to any other number. Lastly, ".post-thumb" is the class you have assigned to your images.

Changing thumbnail Size In Popular Posts Widget

Changing the thumbnail size for Popular Post images is simple. Just paste the code below just above closing head tag </head> in your template.

<script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function() {$('.PopularPosts img').attr('width', '100%').attr('height', 'auto').attr('src', function(i, src) {return src.replace( 's72-c', 's120-c' );});}); <!-- helparchive.blogspot.com --> </script>

Change "120" to any other number to set the desired size for popular posts thumbnail images and you are all done.

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How to Install Google AdSense Native In-Feed Ads(Ultimate Guide)

It has been a while since I last wrote about advertising program. Well today I will be going through the Newly product from Google In-Feed Ads ' How to install Adsense In-Feed Ads'. Follow my step by step guide installation of this tool. This ad unit is very interesting because it will be installed between the list of your articles while following the customized post layout.

In-feed ads are a new format that you place inside your feed to help monetize your site and provide a better user experience to your visitors.

For instance, a feed can be an editorial feed like a list of articles or news or even a listings like a list of products, services and so on. In-feed ads are native therefore you can easily customize them to match the look and appearance of your blog content.

In-Feed Ads are place in between the content of your feed, or where your feed begins or ends. As visitors scroll down your content they encounter In-feed ads. Because In-feed ads fit seamlessly inside your feed, they're not intrusive and they don't break the user's flow.

How to install In-Feed Ads

Step 1:

First log into you google adsense account and visit your Dashboard then click the My Ads>>Content>>Ad units. The click on New Ad Unit button.

Proceed and then select the In-Feed option.

Let's go further a head and see the next step whereby you will be required to select one type of display according to your blog layout.

You will then need to customize the type of display you chose as shown below.

After you finish the customization click on the SAVE ON THE SAVE AND GET button, paste the code in your notepad for next procedure and installation,

Step 2:
Now on this step you will need to log into your blogger account the go to Dashboard>>Theme and click on HTML button then click anywhere inside the HTML section and use CTRL+F to find the code below.

<b:loop values='data:posts' var='post'>

Add index='x' in it to look like the code given below

<b:loop values='data:posts' var='post' index='x'>

NOTE: add index='x' only to the code <b:loop values='data:posts' var='post'> in this code

<b:includable id='main' var='top'>...</b:includable>

Next look for this code

<div class='post-outer'>

The add the code given below in the code shown above

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != &quot;static_page&quot; and data:blog.pageType != &quot;item&quot;'>
<b:if cond='data:x==1'>
<div class='post'>
YOUR CODE SCRIPT NATIVE ADS
</div>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:x==3'>
<div class='post'>
YOUR CODE SCRIPT NATIVE ADS
</div>
</b:if>
</b:if>

Your result should be like this

<div class='post-outer'>...</div>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != &quot;static_page&quot; and data:blog.pageType != &quot;item&quot;'>
<b:if cond='data:x==1'>
<div class='post'>
YOUR CODE SCRIPT NATIVE ADS
</div>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:x==3'>
<div class='post'>
YOUR CODE SCRIPT NATIVE ADS
</div>
</b:if>
</b:if>

You are finally done with the installation, replace YOUR CODE SCRIPT NATIVE ADS with your in-feed ad that you previously created and safe your template. Refresh your bog for result.

Below are some of the benefits of using In-feed ads:

• Better user experience: In-feed ads offer a better user experience to your visitors. They're part of the user's flow and match the look and feel of your site.
• Monetizing new ad spaces: In-feed ads offer the opportunity to further monetize your pages by placing ads in new places, i.e., inside your feeds.
• Ideal for mobile: In-feed ads are ideal for mobile as they can help you to better monetize the smaller screen spaces available on mobile devices.

Point To Note: In-feed ads are different from standard ads in the following ways:

• They're part of the user's flow
• They're highly customizable.
• They use high quality advertiser ad elements.

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How To Install (Hide/Unhide) Spoiler button In Blogger Post

This time around am gonna share with a  simple tips on how to make the spoiler which has an amazing slide effects in the blog post.

The spoiler has the function to hide and show text or images, and is very useful when trying to reduce space in the inputs or only if you want the text or image only see when pressed.

This effect displays a button with text and by clicking on the button it will expand the content and on clicking it again will hide the content. It has a simple script code and can also be used anywhere. You can hide whatever you want an image, code, text etc.

Follow me step by step through this tutorial ans we'll learn 'How to Add Spoiler or Hide/Show Button in Blogger'.

Always Instruction To Follow:

1. Go to Blogger Dashboard→Your Blog
2. Click Template→Click Edit HTML tab
3. Find anywhere inside template </style> or ]]></b:skin>

Step 1: Now,copy the below CSS code and put it above ]]></b:skin>

#flippy {
text-align: center;
}
#flippy button {
background: # aa65c7;
color: # fff;
text-align: center;
margin: 0 auto;
border: none;
border-radius: 3px;
padding: 8px 16px;
margin: 10px auto;
font-size: 14px;
font-weight: bold;
box-shadow: 3px 0px 0px 0px # 883da7;
vertical-align: middle;
cursor: pointer;
text-shadow: 0 1px RGBA (0, 0, 0, 0.3);
transition: background 0.1s ease-in-out;
}
#flippy button: hover, #flippy button: focus {
background: # 9e4fbf;
outline: none;
}
#flippanel {
padding: 1px;
text-align: left;
background: # f5f5f5;
border: 0px;
}
#flippanel {
padding: 24px;
display: none;
}

Step 2:  After you have Done that! proceed and copy JQuery code below and paste it just after/below </body>

<Script>
$ (Document) .ready (function () {
    $ ("# Flippy"). Click (function () {
        $ ("# Flippanel"). SlideToggle ("normal");
    });
});
</Script>

Save your template and follow the step below.

Step 3: Now whenever you want to put the spoiler button to your post just copy the below HTML code and switch to HTML POST EDITOR and the add it anywhere you want the spoiler to appear.

HTML CODE TO USE

<Div id = "Flippy"><button> Your Button Text Here </button></div>
<Div id = "flippanel">
--- Put Your Content Here ---
</Div>

I hope this tutorial has been of great help to you and also further decorate your blogs like never before by creating beautiful widgets that may engage your readers even more. If facing any difficulties let me know the the comment section below and I will glad to help you more.

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Full Guide Tutorial: How to Create Robots.txt File (Understanding & Use of robots)

Hey folks, hope you are doing great. Today in my tutorial I will showing how to create Robots.txt file, the use and understanding it for the implementation in your website/blog.

1. So what’s the robots.txt file?: 
The robot.txt file is simple a text file which should be placed on the web server and tell the web crawlers whether to access a file or not.

2. What’s the point of using robots.txt?:
The robot.txt is a very powerful file to avoid the indexing of pages without quality content. For instance, if you have two versions of a web page and let’s say the one for viewing in browsers and the other one for printing purpose. You would better prefer the printing version to be excluded from being crawled, otherwise you would risk the imposed of a duplicate content penalties.

See robots.txt examples:

N/B: For this to be applicable, the robots.txt should be placed in the top-level directory of a web server, i.e. https://yoursite.com/robots.txt for blogger blog follow this steps.

3. How to create a robots.txt file
Well don’t get scared when you hear the term robot, then you think there is something to do with building yourself a robot. Rather note that a robots.txt file is just a text file and hence you can use the Notepad or any other plain text editor also you can create it in the code editor or even “copy and paste” it from somewhere else.

Importantly don’t put much focus on the idea that you are creating a robots.txt file, just think of it like as if you are writing a simple note as they are pretty much the same procedure. Robots.txt file can be created either manually and also by using online services.

Manual method: As mentioned earlier, robots.txt file can be created using any plain text editor. You can create the content depending on your requirements then save it as a text file with the name of robots in txt format as robots.txt.

Online method: There is a great amount of online sources for robots.txt creation tools. You may choose whichever tool you prefer using but you have to be very careful and check your file if it contains some forbidden information that may risk your blog performances. Robots.txt file is somehow delicate so using online method is not very safe as a manual method.

4. How to set up a robots.txt file 
A properly robots.txt file configuration prevents the private information to be found by the search engines and displayed to the public. However, we should not forget that the robots.txt commands are not the full protection but just a guide to crawl action. It’s good to note that googlebots follow the instructions in a robots.txt but other robots can easily ignore them therefore to achieve the result, you have to understand and use  robots.txt correctly. The correct form of the robots.txt begins with the directive “User-agent” naming the robot that the certain directives are applied to.

See example below:

N/B This setting makes the robot use only the directive corresponding to user-agent’s name as shown in the examples given below:

User-agent directive provides only the task to a particular given robot. Right after the directive there are the tasks for the named robot. In the example mentioned above, you can check up the usage of the prohibited directive which are “Disallow” meaning “/*utm”  and that's how you close the pages with UTM-marks.

See example of incorrect line in robots below:

And below you get the example of correct line in robots:

As seen in the example given above, the tasks in the robots.txt are in blocks. Every block considers the instruction for the certain robot or for all the robots “*” furthermore it is very important to observe the right order of the tasks for robots.txt when using both directives “Allow” and “Disallow”

“Allow” is the permission directive while “Disallow” is the opposite directive which you restrict permission to the robot.

Here below is an example of using the both directives:

The example above forbids all the robots to index the pages beginning with “/contact”, and permits to index the pages beginning with“/contact/page”.

So let's again see the same example in the right order below:

As you can see in example above, at first we forbid the whole part and then we permit some of its parts and in below example is the other way to use both directives:

The directives “Allow” and “Disallow” can be used without switches, though it will be read opposite to the switch “/”.

Now below is an example of the directive without switches applications:

Well it’s decision on how to create the right directive since both variants are appropriate. Be attentive and don’t get confused as you put the right priorities and point the forbidden details in the switch of the directives.

5. Robots.txt syntax 
Search engine robots execute the commands of the robots.txt and therefore every search engine can read the robots.txt syntax differently. What you need to do is to check the set of the rules to prevent the common mistakes of the robots.txt as outlined below:

• Every directive should begin from/with a new line. 
• Avoid putting more than one directive on the line. 
• Avoid putting spaces in the very start of the line. 
• The directive switch must be on one-line. 
• Do not put the directive switch in quotes. 
• Do not put a semicolon after the directive. 
• The robot.txt command must be like:- [Directive_name]:[optional space][value][optional space]. 
• The comments must be added after hash mark #. 
• The empty line should be read as the finished directive User-agent. 
• The directive “Disallow” (with a null value) is equal to “Allow: /” that means to allow everything. There is only one switch to put in the directives “Allow” or “Disallow”. 
• The file name is case sensitive therefore uppercase letters are not allowed. E.g Robots.txt or ROBOTS.TXT is not correct. 
• The robots.txt itself is not so case-sensitive, while the names of files and directories are very much case-sensitive. 
• In case the  directive switch is the directory, put slash “/” before the directory name, e.g Disallow: /category. 
• Much heavier robots.txt (exceeding 32 Kb) are read as allowed and equal to “Disallow:”. 
• Unavailable robots.txt can be read as allowed one. 
• If the robots.txt is empty, it will be read as allowed one. 
• Some listing directives “User-agent” without empty lines will be ignored, except the first one. 
• Using of national characters is not allowed in robots.txt. 

 Different search engines can read the robots.txt file syntax in their own way and therefore some rules can or may be missed. With note always try to put just necessary content to the robots.txt. The fewer lines you have, the better result will be and attend to your content quality.

6. Testing your robots.txt file 
In order to check if the syntax and file structure are correct, you may use any of online tools such as what Google provides https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/siteoverview?hl=ru 

Googlebot are used by Google for websites indexing in its search engine and so fine that it understands a few more instructions than other robots. To check tfor robots.txt file online, put the robot.txt to the root directory of the website or else, the server will not detect your robots.txt. It is recommended to check your robots.txt availability e.g: yoursite.com/robots.txt. There are many and different online robots.txt validators. It’s just depends with your own choice.

7. Robots.txt Allow 
Since Allow is opposite to Disallow. This directives has the similar syntax methods with “Disallow”.
as the example below displays:

Indexing the whole website is not allowed unless the pages beginning with /page.

Below is example of Allow and Disallow with empty value:

8. Robots.txt Disallow 
Disallow is the prohibitive directive used in the file robots.txt. “Disallow” prohibits to index the website or some of its parts. This depends with the path given in the directive switch.

See the example of forbidden website indexation:

The example above closes the access for all robots to index the website.

Special symbols * and $ are allowed in the Disallow directory switch.

* – any quantity of any symbols. For example, the switch /page* suffices /page, /page1, /page-about-me, /page/good-food.

$ – points to the switch value correspondence. The directive Disallow will prohibit /page, but the website indexation /page1, /page-about-me or /page/good-food will be allowed.

While closing website indexation, the search engines may react with “url restricted by robots.txt” error. If you need to prohibit the page indexation, you can use not just robots txt, but also the similar html-tags as show below:

• meta name=»robots» content=»noindex»/> — not to index the page content; 
• meta name=»robots» content=»nofollow»/> — not to follow the links; 
• meta name=»robots» content=»none»/> — forbidden to index the page content and follow the links; 
• meta name=»robots» content=»noindex, nofollow»/> — equal to content=»none».

9. Robots.txt sitemap 

Directive “Sitemap” is used to detect sitemap.xml location in the robots.txt file. See the example below of the robots.txt having a sitemap.xml:

The sitemap.xml points through the Sitemap in your robots.txt therefore that directive will allow the crawler to learn about the presence of a sitemap and then starts indexing it.

10. Directive Clean-Param 
“Clean-param” Directive allows excluding from indexing pages with dynamic parameters. Hence the pages give the same content but with a different URL. Here you decide if the page is available in several locations. The biggest task is to remove all the extra dynamic addresses which can be a very much and to do this, we have to eliminate all dynamic parameters using a robots.txt directive “Clean-param”. See the example shown below:

Let’s Consider the example of the page with the following URL:

11. Directive Crawl-delay 
This instruction allows the avoiding the server overload if the web crawlers are used to reach your site too often. Therefore this directive is effective mainly to the sites with a huge page size. Below is our Robots.txt “Crawl-delay” example:-

In the example above, we just requested Google robots to download the pages of our website no more than once per three seconds. Some search engines read the format with the fractional number, as a guideline parameter “Crawl-delay” robots.txt.

12. Comments in robots.txt file 
The comments in the robots.txt begin with the hash sign # and are valid until the end of the current line and ignored by robots as shown below:
User-agent: *
# Comment can start the line
Disallow: /page # Comment can also continue the line
#robots
#ignor
#comments
Host: www,yoursite.com

The Common Mistakes 

1. The mistake in syntax:

Wrong  : User-agent: /
                Disallow: Yahoo
Correct: User-agent: Yahoo
                Disallow: /

2. The several directives “Disallow” in one line:

Wrong : Disallow: /css/ /cgi-bin/ /images/
Correct: Disallow: /css/
                              /cgi-bin/
                              /images/

3. Wrong file name:

Wrong  : Robot.txt(unproper case)
                robot.txt(missing 's')
                ROBOT.TXT(Caps lock)
Correct:  robots.txt


Robots.txt file is one of the most important SEO tools, as it has a direct impact to your website indexation procedures.

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10 Tips To Increase Your WordPress Website/Blog Security Measures From Hackers

Although known, that WordPress CMS is one of the  best easiest to use and at the same time it's the least secured. Many WordPress users install average level of protection and assuming that a few installed plugins will ensure high level of security but this is far from being the case. If your blog or website is hacked, it becomes one of the numerous spreaders of malicious code.

The list below you’ll find the most crucial tips that can save you website or blog from being hacked:-

• Update to the latest version of wordpress 
• Do not use default username “admin”. 
• Strengthen your password by making it unique and complex. 
• Protect your .htaccess and Secure wp-config.php 
• Limit login attempts. 
• Choose a high quality hosting. 
• Download themes and plugins only from official WordPress repository. 
• Backup your website. 
• Protect WordPress Admin files. 
• Limit access to the WP-content directory.

Always be careful and stay safe and do your best to prevent your WordPress website from hackers’ attacks. Failure to that can cause to vulnerability of your hard worked content.

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How To Get your Blog Indexed By Google Properly

So you have your blog ready with promising content it!! right? but you are wondering hw you gonna get indexed on search engine properly by google. Okay don't worry and get ready for this new portion of knowledge. Today I’ll tell you about how to make Google love your blog since one of the key factors influencing earnings on most monetization programs is quantity of blog's pages indexed by Google.

My main aim is to bring you knowledge, a piece of understand that will help you figure out and amend the cracks in you site. The more pages your blog possesses, the more ads you can place there and the more money you can get from them too. Therefore I recommend that you monitor your website presence in Google index as there are three main reasons why Google can decrease the number of website pages or rather remove them completely:-

#1. Non-unique content 
Well this could appear on your website both when you borrow it from other sources and also when somebody duplicates yours but how can you prevent it:-

• Create your own content or rewrite the texts taken from other sites. 
• Use plagiarism checkers to identify the uniqueness of the texts such Copyscape or Solidseotools checkland before posting your article. 
• Don’t use the same widgets structure and content for all pages of your site, especially if the page text doesn’t contain enough (2000-5000) symbols.
• Forbid indexing of page duplicates via robots.txt or add the page tag ‘link’ with attribute rel=”canonical” and set there the original page address. 
• Make sure you don’t use content such as photos and videos protected by copyrights without property owner allowance. This may lead to Google banning your site in case of property owner claim. 
• Protect your content by Google Authorship. You won’t get penalized once google notice your work is copied somewhere else.

#2. Lack of access to the site 

• Always be sure that the indexing of certain pages or access for search engines bots is not forbidden by files robots.txt and .htaccess. 
• Monitor the server performance and keep your hosting up. 

#3. Keywords spam and hidden texts 

• Do not use too many keywords on the page, especially if those keywords are not related to the topic of the content. 
• Avoid placing hidden texts, visible only for search engines, as Google can also remove site from indexing for that.

I hope that the above tips help your sites to establish a great relationship with search engines result.

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5 EXCELLENT WAYS ON HOW TO PROMOTE YOUR BLOG

Congratulations on starting your new blog! In the business world, having a voice and platform by which to reach your audience is extremely important. Blogging will give your business voice, and, if promoted properly, can increase traffic to your blog for free!

WordPress is a great way to get your blog started. A word press blog is free, easy, and extremely customizable! Writing good blog content is a great way to generate traffic from several different sources. If you utilize keyword-rich content, you will see increases in traffic not only from search engines but from clients sharing your posts on social media, not to mention link referrals from other websites!

While writing, a blog is essential to your business, you cannot expect it to be successful without the proper blog promotion. Sales will come in from your posts, but it’s all about where you spend your time marketing your blog.

How to Get People to Read Your Blog 

It’s all about the content in your posts. Blogging rule number one is that you have to have amazing content that will grab your reader and make them want to continue the article they started AND return to see additional posts. Your writing needs to be knock their socks off incredible – and there are three ways to accomplish this:

• Pick a topic that is brand new to your industry. 
• Write something new about the topic you choose, and write it better than anyone else. 
• Choose a topic that’s already been written about, and take a different approach. 

Your blog needs to fall into at least one of these categories, or blog promotion is not going to be easy. Let’s dive into each of these points a little further.

Covering Something Brand New 

Coming up with a topic that no one has covered in the past is the hardest point to accomplish. In most cases, your topic has already been covered in some way, and coming up with a fresh idea that no one has thought of, can be incredibly difficult. The best way to achieve this particular point is breaking out into a newer industry and blogging until you can’t blog anymore!
Write About Your Topic Better Than Anyone Else
It sounds pretty simple, and it can be – your content is written for you! It’s up to you to research your topic, read other blogs about your chosen topic, and make YOUR blog post better than the competition. This can be accomplished through your tone or by providing different information to your readers. Hooking your reader is key.

Taking a Different Approach to an Existing Topic 

This point goes hand in hand with point number 2. The same rules apply – take a topic that you’re familiar with, one that is extremely relevant in your industry, and reinvent the wheel. Blogging is one area where repeating content is okay, as long as you say it in a way that no one else has tried. The way to do this is by looking at the topic from a completely different point of view. Connect dots that have not been connected yet, or provide an opposite opinion from the norm! Shake things up, and driving traffic to your blog will be easy.

The main thing to remember before you put too much time into your posts is to do your research! Find out what your competition has written! Use a tool like Buzzsumo to find the popular content on your topic and read up. It will give you an idea of what is already successful in your targeted arena. Focus on making your content great, and the steps you need to make greatness a reality. This is your first step, even before you start writing.

How to Promote Your Blog 

You’ve written your content, it’s amazing, and now you’re ready to promote your blog to the masses. But where to promote your blog? There are many different ways that you can use to get people to ready your blog and increase traffic to your website.

Social Media

Like it or not, blog promotion is connected to social media. Start thinking of blogging as an arm to your social media marketing strategy. Every time you write and post a new blog post, share it on your social media accounts. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn are your friends. Don’t just utilize your business accounts, either! Make sure that your personal account is following your business account and SHARE your business posts with friends and family. They are a guaranteed audience that will like, and possible share, your posts to their network! Free marketing! Remember that sharing once is not where social media stops. Keep sharing your content regularly. Change up the title of your post, the image that goes with it… and your posts will stay fresh in the eyes of your audience.

Email Marketing 

Start gathering email addresses NOW. If you don’t already have an email sign up on your website, get one. Email is an easy way to share your blog content with an audience that has already shown interest in what you have to say! Once website visitors give you their email address, they’re looking to you for information. This comes in many forms, and keeping your audience updated on your blog (which is an extension of your business voice) is a great way to show your industry knowledge. There are a few different ways that you can use email marketing to your advantage:

• Send out an email each time you write a new blog post. Simple, but effective. Bring the content to your readers, don’t make them seek it out. 
• Send a newsletter. Bi-weekly or monthly is a great way to stay in touch with your readers. Again, you’re delivering the content directly to your readers instead of depending on them to seek out the information. Keep the content of the newsletter short and concise, and link articles directly to your blog, thus driving traffic to your website! 
• Social Shares.

Enable social sharing on your emails. Make it easy for your audience to send your blog posts directly to their social media accounts. Stats don’t lie – within a few hours of publishing your blog posts, posts are shared on social media around 12 times alone. The great thing about word press blog is that they also offer an easy plugin that will automatically add social sites do all of your posts. No work on your part – they’re just ready to share!

RECOMNENDED: MONETIZE YOU BLOG WITH MAGENET

Get Traffic to Your Blog

If you don’t already have a social media audience, it Is time to get one. It takes work but building an email, and social audience is extremely important to building your brand and driving traffic to your blog, resulting in more sales!

Do outreach. Go to your competitor’s Facebook page. Take a look at the audience that’s engaging with them. Look to people that are in your industry that area is already running a successful blog. Ask them to share your content – the worst that they can say is no!

Create a list of people that may be interested in your content. This can be competitors, other writers, and industry leaders. Send an email asking them for a quick shout out on social media or in their blog posts. Don’t be shy – the worst that can happen is they say no! There’s also a good chance they’ll say yes – but not asking kills your chances.

Create Link Bait 

As you are creating your blog content, think about those that have included you while you built your business, or those whose advice you still refer back to. Put their names, blog posts, social media, etc. in your post and link to the specific site! This is called link bait, and not only does it help drive traffic to the person you’re talking about, it is an AMAZING way to get your name out there to top influencers in the industry. It also increases your chances that they will take your post and share it on their blog, which will tap into an audience that you can market to! Remember – flattery gets you everywhere!

Guest Posts 

Remember this for the duration of your blog – ask for promotional space. If you know a top influencer in the industry, REACH OUT and ask for a guest spot on their blog. While it may not happen immediately (they may want you to prove that you know what you’re talking about!), it shows that you’re serious about your topic and that you see this person as someone that can help you move through the industry.

Comment on Blogs 

Be active in your industry. Comment on blogs that you read, and on social posts. Always include your business name and a link back to your website in your post. This is a great way to stay in front of your audience, and if people continuously see your name in comments, they’re going to start recognizing you as someone of importance in the community.

Run a Contest 

Who doesn’t like free stuff? Running a contest to promptreaders to share your blog posts, read your blog, AND comment on your posts is a great way to build your audience. As they share your post about the contest, your audience will continue to grow! The best part – the prize doesn’t have to be huge. Give away your product – or something related to it!

Participate in Forums 

This goes right along with commenting on blogs – forums are an amazing place to showcase your knowledge, AND to promote your additional industry content. People post in forums for answer to questions, and keeping your name in front of them, while providing relevant information (and correct answers!) is the best way to get name recognition in the marketplace! Most forums will allow you to customize your signature, which is where you want to add a link to your blog.

Using a Social Locker 

Social lockers are a great way to make sure that people are sharing your content on their social media feeds. By providing only a portion of your blog post, enough to really hook the reader and providing a reason for them to read to the end, and then locking out remaining content until they share the post on Facebook et la, ensures your post makes it to the masses! To sweeten the deal, make a PDF or other relevant downloadable only available when the person shares this particular post.
Using Paid Promotion to Get Traffic to Your Blog
The above options were all free ways for you to use for blog promotion. Now, let’s look at paid ways to get traffic to your blog.

Using Re-marketing to Re-Engage Your Visitors 

Retargeting, Remarketing (either term works) is the art of showing ads to people who have already been on your site. Think about when you shop on Amazon – and the next time you visit a website for entertainment, the item you searched for will appear in an ad in the sidebar. This is retargeting.

Remarketing can help you reach 84% of people who have already visited your site. Let that number sink in for a moment. 84%. The numbers break out further into sites and days – 84% of your audience on 5 – 10 websites within 10 – 18 days are the actual statistics for remarketing. However, you look at it – 84% is a huge portion of your already engaged audience!

Remarketing is great to get visitors to keep coming back to your blog and build the trust needed to get them further and further down the sales path. Remember – all of this blogging is for one purpose. To promote and increase sales! A few remarketing tools to look into are Adroll and marketing 360. There are several tools that can assist with your retargeting – it’s all a matter of what works for you and your budget.

Paid Search Engine Marketing 

We all want to be number one on Google. Every business strives for this, and few achieve it. And those that DO achieve it are using paid advertising. There are several ways to use Google Adwords to get traffic to your blog, or increase your numbers!
Again, the cost varies based on your budget, so do your research! Purchasing keywords can get intense, and understand the terms your target audience searches for regularly will give you a better understand of where to put your marketing money.

Blogging Isn’t a Passive Activity 

We’ve reviewed a lot of information on promoting your blog in this post. The best thing to remember when you’re starting your blog, or working on blog promotion is that a blog is not a passive marketing tool. It takes research and dedication to ensure that your posts reach your intended audience, and that they continue to be shared throughout many months to come.

Be engaging, be active in your posts, and be PROUD of the work you’ve put into your blog. It’s important for you to WANT to share your words with your audience. If you are excited about your content, that will come across loud and clear to your audience, and make THEM excited to read your posts!

Blog promotion takes time, but as long as you are patient and work consistently to promote and build your brand, you can run a successful blog that will help you drive and increase sales!

RECOMNENDED: MONETIZE YOU BLOG WITH MAGENET

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How To Enable HTTPS Over HTTP For Blogger / Blogspot

Enabling HTTPS availability for blogspot blog is a lot easier than you may think. Google has already encrypted Gmail, Search, Drive and many other products by default and now they have expanded HTTPS support to their Blogspot domain blogs. But befor we go to the benefit let's understand that choosing HTTPS over HTTP mean that you will be sending/receiving data to whover visit your blog in much safer way-therefore your data will always be encrypted. Okay let's see what are the benefits of using HTTPS over HTTP to access your blogspot blog:

• It helps check that your visitors open the correct website and aren’t being redirected to a malicious site.
• It helps detect if an attacker tries to change any data sent from Blogger to the visitor.
• It adds security measures that makes it harder for other people to listen to your visitors’ conversations, track their activities, or ever dare to steal their information.

When HTTPS is enabled, visitors can access the encrypted version of your blog by typing https://yourblog.blogspot.com not the change in the domains http://yourblog.blogspot.com.

Also most important to note, HTTPS can not be used on blogs that are already custom domain, like this blog (e.g yourblog.com) you have to purchase the security certificate from your domain provider.

How to enable HTTPS on Blog?

Don't get scare it's not hard setting up HTTPS:

• Login to Blogger
• Select Blogs to change from HTPP to HTTPS
• On the left menu, click Settings >> Basic >> HTTPS Settings 
• Under HTTPS Settings, for HTTPS Availability, select Yes

To disable HTTPS, follow the steps above and select 'No' on HTTPS Availability.

If you disable HTTPS, visitors will be redirected to an unencrypted version of your blog's HTTP. All the bookmarks pointing to your blog will still work.

Use the photo below for more understanding.

Issues with switching to HTTPS

Google advices ” Blogspot authors should be aware that if they choose to encrypt at this time, some of the current functionality of their blog may not work over HTTPS. This can be a result of template, gadgets, and blog post content, and is often caused by mixed content errors, some of which may be fixable by the author themselves. “

Am done now, share with you friend if you love them...lol and see you on the next post.

You can also visit Blogger buzz post to read Google’s announcement and Blogger help for more information.

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Seo Friendly and Valid HTML5 Meta Tags

How to create a powerful SEO meta tag for blogspot - meta tags? Most bloggers wouldn't know what meta tags means and their important but just make you understand, actually the function of meta tags is generally to provide information in form of metadata associated with html and xhtml based on its functions. Let's go a head and break things down a little better for more understanding.

Meta tags is one of optimization methods used to identify blog posts and articles in search engine. n other words you posts will be more easily traced in the browser/search engine such as Google, Bing, or other search tool and therefore will be more easily sorted in the SERP (search engine results page).

The function of the meta tag basically consists of several key elements such as:

• Meta tag description Meta description tag is used to give a general overview of the contents of your blog page. The characters should not be more than 200 characters. See code below.

<meta content='Enter Your Blog Description Here'  name='description'/>

• Meta tag keywords meta tag keywords are very important to define and determine what keywords can be found on your page in search engines. It also good for Adsense optimization.

<meta content="Enter Keywords Here'' name="keywords"/>

• Meta tag robots The main function of robots tag use is to determine which and where the blog pages will be indexed in search engines. This tag is very useful especially if a blog uses frames for navigation.

<meta content="index follow" name="robots"/>

Now combining the three code component mentioned above you get the one shown below:

<meta content='Enter Your Blog Description' name='description'/>
<meta content='Enter Keywords Here' name='keywords'/>
<meta content='index, follow' name='robots'/>

Okay with that well noted. Let's see how we can deal with the 'xxxx' value that you normally see in your blog template.

Meta Tags Seo Friendly and Valid HTML5

Since nowaday we have newly modified template, I will be using the example below to show you to change the code in your template, note that not all blog template will have the same feature but at least you should get an idea how to do it. Do not worry I will answer you questions when needed. The below code are installed after the opening tag <head> or before </head>

<!-- [ Meta Tag SEO ] -->
<include expiration='7d' path='*.css'/>
<include expiration='7d' path='*.js'/>
<include expiration='3d' path='*.gif'/>
<include expiration='3d' path='*.jpeg'/>
<include expiration='3d' path='*.jpg'/>
<include expiration='3d' path='*.png'/>
<meta content='sat, 02 jun 2020 00:00:00 GMT' http-equiv='expires'/>
<meta charset='utf-8'/>
<meta content='width=device-width, initial-scale=1' name='viewport'/>
<meta content='blogger' name='generator'/>
<meta content='text/html; charset=UTF-8' http-equiv='Content-Type'/>
<link href='http://www.blogger.com/openid-server.g' rel='openid.server'/>
<link expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl' rel='openid.delegate'/>
<link expr:href='data:blog.url' rel='canonical'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;index&quot;'>
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
<b:else/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != &quot;error_page&quot;'>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> - <data:blog.title/></title>
</b:if></b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;error_page&quot;'>
<title>Page Not Found - <data:blog.title/></title>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;archive&quot;'>
<meta content='noindex' name='robots'/>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.searchLabel'>
<meta content='noindex,nofollow' name='robots'/>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.isMobile'>
<meta content='noindex,nofollow' name='robots'/>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != &quot;error_page&quot;'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription' name='description'/>
<script type='application/ld+json'>{ &quot;@context&quot;: &quot;http://schema.org&quot;, &quot;@type&quot;: &quot;WebSite&quot;, &quot;url&quot;: &quot;<data:blog.homepageUrl/>&quot;, &quot;potentialAction&quot;: { &quot;@type&quot;: &quot;SearchAction&quot;, &quot;target&quot;: &quot;<data:blog.homepageUrl/>?q={search_term}&quot;, &quot;query-input&quot;: &quot;required name=search_term&quot; } }</script>
<b:if cond='data:blog.homepageUrl != data:blog.url'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.pageName + &quot;, &quot; + data:blog.pageTitle + &quot;, &quot; + data:blog.title' name='keywords'/>
</b:if></b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'>
<meta content='BLOG-DESCRIPTION' name='keywords'/></b:if>
<link expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl + &quot;feeds/posts/default&quot;' expr:title='data:blog.title + &quot; - Atom&quot;' rel='alternate' type='application/atom+xml'/>
<link expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl + &quot;feeds/posts/default?alt=rss&quot;' expr:title='data:blog.title + &quot; - RSS&quot;' rel='alternate' type='application/rss+xml'/>
<link expr:href='&quot;http://www.blogger.com/feeds/&quot; + data:blog.blogId + &quot;/posts/default&quot;' expr:title='data:blog.title + &quot; - Atom&quot;' rel='alternate' type='application/atom+xml'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.postImageThumbnailUrl'>
<link expr:href='data:blog.postImageThumbnailUrl' rel='image_src'/>
</b:if></b:if>
<link expr:href='data:blog.url' hreflang='x-default' rel='alternate'/>
<link href='/favicon.ico' rel='icon' type='image/x-icon'/>
<link href='https://plus.google.com/GOOGLE-PLUS-USER/posts' rel='publisher'/>
<link href='https://plus.google.com/GOOGLE-PLUS-USER/about' rel='author'/>
<link href='https://plus.google.com/GOOGLE-PLUS-USER' rel='me'/>
<meta content='GOOGLE-WEBMASTER-VALIDATION-CODE' name='google-site-verification'/>
<meta content='BING=WEBMASTER-VALIDATION-CODE' name='msvalidate.01'/>
<meta content='Tanzania' name='geo.placename'/>
<meta content='ADMIN-NAME' name='Author'/>
<meta content='general' name='rating'/>
<meta content='tz' name='geo.country'/>
<!-- [ Social Media Meta Tag ] -->
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.pageName' property='og:title'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.canonicalUrl' property='og:url'/>
<meta content='article' property='og:type'/>
</b:if>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.title' property='og:site_name'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription' name='description'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.title' property='og:title'/>
<meta content='website' property='og:type'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.metaDescription'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription' property='og:description'/>
<b:else/>
<meta expr:content='&quot;Silakan kunjungi &quot; + data:blog.pageTitle + &quot; Untuk membaca postingan menarik.&quot;' property='og:description'/>
</b:if>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.postImageUrl'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.postImageUrl' property='og:image'/>
<b:else/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.postImageThumbnailUrl'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.postThumbnailUrl' property='og:image'/>
<b:else/>
<meta content='Put URL address of you blog logo here' property='og:image'/>
</b:if>
</b:if>
<meta content='https://www.facebook.com/FACEBOOK-PROFILE' property='article:author'/>
<meta content='https://www.facebook.com/FB-FUN-PAGE' property='article:publisher'/>
<meta content='FB-APP-CODE' property='fb:app_id'/>
<meta content='FB-ADMIN-CODE' property='fb:admins'/>
<meta content='en_US' property='og:locale'/>
<meta content='en_GB' property='og:locale:alternate'/>
<meta content='id_ID' property='og:locale:alternate'/>
<meta content='summary' name='twitter:card'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.pageTitle' name='twitter:title'/>
<meta content='USER-TWITTER' name='twitter:site'/>
<meta content='USER-TWITTER' name='twitter:creator'/>

Information- Use the table below to learn how to make changes in the meta tags

DETAILS TO CHANGE	DESCRPITION EXPLAINED
BLOG-DISCRIPTION	Decription or Keyword of your blog
GOOGLE-PLUS-USER	Your Google+ admin link e.g +amsamuel
GOOGLE-WEBMASTER-VALIDATION-CODE	Your google validation code obtained from Search Console
BING=WEBMASTER-VALIDATION-CODE	Fill in your Bing validation code
ADMIN-NAME	Fill the author's name
tz	fill the country abbreviation code of where the blog is being published from. eg for Kenya is ke, Tanzania is tz.
FACEBOOK-PROFILE	Fill you facebook profile link
FB-FUN-PAGE	Fill you facebook fun page
FB-APP-CODE	Fil with facebook Application code: get it from https://developers.facebook.com
FB-ADMIN-CODE	Fill in with your facebook profile code: use http://findmyfbid.com
USER-TWITTER	Fill in with your twitter user name

N/B Delete the meta tag if not in use(optional) 

Re-customize the 'xxxx' value with your own value following the examples in the table above. Now that you are done and all set, tell me how you are doing I will be there to guide you step by step untill you get it right. Okay don't forget to share with friends too.

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Powered Free Blogging WordPress Theme

Want a better blog? Powered is a completely free blog style WordPress theme we coded right here at WPExplorer. We wanted to create a practical theme that could be used by any type of blog – business, technology, beauty, lifestyle, travel, foodie and more. The clean and minimal layout of this theme makes it very easy to navigate and read. Yes, there are many nice free blogging theme’s out there but Powered is a well coded theme using WordPress coding standards, offers some premium-like features (choose between hundreds of Google fonts, custom set your widths, select your menu colors) doesn’t have any spam links or encrypted code, is extremely fast, easy to use and designed for the modern age.

• LIVE DEMO
• FREE DOWNLOAD

Minimal, Responsive & Fast Design

The Powered theme is coded with a minimal grid style design that allows you showcase your recent posts in a very easy to navigate fashion and much like many popular blogs. Simply go to the WordPress Customizer to choose between 1, 2, 3 or 4 columns for your grid. Also you can choose between no sidebar, left sidebar or right sidebar for your archives, posts and pages independently. The optional “Featured Post” displays the first post of your grid in a large format which adds to the theme design but will also increase exposure on your latest articles. And the optional “Popular Posts” section before your widgetized footer will allow you to showcase some of your most viewed posts.

Customizer Settings & Image Sizes

Powered includes many useful customizer settings so you can change the default site widths, mobile menu breakpoint, add a custom logo, alter your entry excerpt length, enable/disable various parts of the theme, select your grid columns (1,2,3 or 4), select your layouts (right sidebar, left sidebar, no sidebar), alter your related posts query and select how many to display, select your preferred number of footer widget columns, enter your custom copyright text, select your default theme font-family (choose from hundreds of Google Fonts), enter your custom image cropping sizes and more!

Translations & RTL Support

The Powered WordPress theme is fully localized for translation and includes a Powered.pot file in the languages folder. It also includes 2 functions to add support for WPML and Polylang for translating some Customizer settings such as your custom logo if you want a different logo for each site language.

An RTL CSS file is also included to provide right-to-left language support without having to do anything! Simply select your RTL language in the WordPress settings and the file will be automatically loaded moving various theme elements automatically.

No More Conflicts!

Forget about conflicts with 3rd party plugins! Powered is coded with every single PHP function, class and HTML Id’s and classes uniquely prefixed to avoid any possible conflicts with other plugins. Plus we use only core WordPress functionality we don’t use any sort of 3rd party theme panels or image resizing scripts that could slow things down or break things.

Social Media Integration

Just because the design is simple that doesn’t mean that this free theme isn’t full of beautiful premium features. Powered includes built-in social media sharing on all your posts for Facebook, Twitter and Google+. All your readers have to do is click a button to share your articles (just be sure to setup Open Graph correctly on your site via a plugin).

The theme also includes a custom social media widget that you can use on your sidebar or footer. Simply add the widget to your sidebar widget area, paste in your social media links and save. You can easily drag and drop to re-order the social links as well as choose to open the links in the same or new tab.

Powerful Blogging

Most importantly Powered makes blogging easy. There aren’t any gimmicks, simply publish your posts like you normally do in WordPress and if you want you can insert an oEmbed compatible video or audio URL. Your posts will automatically display the featured image at the top (or video/audio) and your content below.  Posts also display an optional author box with bio and social links (enter your social links via your user settings), next & previous articles links, as well as a related articles section that displays other posts from the same category or at random (based on your Customizer settings).

Powered is a great option for any blog and we really hope you’ll give it a try! You can see more theme features below, or just download the theme to make your blog awesome today!

Powered WordPress Theme Features

• Completely FREE GPL theme!
• Responsive design
• 1-4 Column layouts for your entries
• Left, right or no sidebar options
• Clean & minimal grid – choose between masonry or fit-rows
• Custom image logo upload
• Some styling and typography settings
• Custom social media widget
• Custom Recent posts with thumbnails widget
• Style author box with social links
• Standard, audio and video posts
• Related posts
• Popular posts section
• Threaded comments
• Numbered pagination
• Custom footer copyright text
• Back to top arrow
• Clean & valid code
• And more!

Powered WordPress Theme Documentation

Getting started with the Powered WordPress theme should be fairly easy, but here are a few tips for using the theme.

Installation: Install this theme just like you would any other WordPress theme. Simply download the zip file. Then use the WordPress importer to install and activate the theme.

Customizer Options: Options for your custom logo, site widths, columns, custom colors and more can be found in the live WordPress Customizer. Navigate to Appearance >> Customize >> General Theme Settings to alter the default theme settings. There are also some built-in styling/color options you can access at Appearance >> Customize >> Styling.

Image Sizes: By default the Powered theme does not crop or resize any images but you can define your custom cropping at Appearance >> Customize >> Image Sizes. Here you can enter the width, height and cropping location for the various images on the site. Once done be sure to run a regenerate thumbnails plugin.

Blog Posts: Create blog posts just like normal by selecting Posts >> Add New. This theme supports featured images, video and audio style posts as well. Simply enter your embed compatible links in the current meta fields displayed under the post editor.

Popular Posts Section: The optional popular posts section displays right before the footer area and can be disabled in the Customizer under the “footer” tab. By default it will display in order of most commented posts but you can also install the Post Views Counter plugin to display your most viewed posts instead.

Report a Bug: If you find an issue with the theme you can use the form located on the Bug Report page to let us know. This should be used exclusively to report bugs/issues only. This should not be used to ask for customization or usage related questions.

Updates: Updates are provided automatically. If there is an update to the theme it should display in your WordPress dashboard. If you notice there is an update available but you don’t see the update notice you can always re-download the theme and update via FTP.

• LIVE DEMO
• FREE DOWNLOAD

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