Submit Blog to Blog Directories (III)

This is a continuation from the earlier list of Blog directories to which you can submit your blog for free. For completeness, it is advisable to read the earlier installments Part I and Part II before you read this.

Feel free to share comments on your experiences with these sites but refrain from posting suggestions of new blog directory sites.

Blogflux 

Other than a blog directory, the site also provides you with tools and utilities like a pinger form which can submit your feed to several websites.

Blogsearch 

Serves its purpose as a blog directory well. You can list your blog in 3 different categories to maximize the exposure to visitors.

Bloghub 

A fine blog directory which allows visitor ratings.

Findingblogs 

This is not a big directory and hence navigation is easy and fast. [Update: Site is inaccessible and link is therefore removed.]

Bloggernity 

This has been around for some time and has a large database of blogs.

Bloggernow 

Almost the same layout as Bloggernity but this carries a much smaller collection of blogs.

Weblog-index 

Simple and easy to navigate blog directory.

5starblogs 

I wonder why some blogs have screenshots while many others don't. Anyway, this is a free directory you can consider listing your blog in.

Getblogs 

I like this directory, mainly due to the sleek design and quick search speed.

Blogtree 

Rather interesting to provide a blog genealogy. For some time, the site exceeded its bandwidth and access was cut. The administrator supposedly switched to a new server host and the site seems to be working very fine now. [Update: This site has been down for quite a while and link is therefore removed.]

eBlogzilla 

Such an interesting name for a blog directory. Approval for listing didn't take long.

Search4Blogs 

The site is filled with too many advertisements, and the blog directory is a mere secondary aspect of it. Not to my liking, but it is a blog directory nevertheless.

BloggerTalk 

This is a forum for bloggers. They have a blog directory as well, although don't bang on it that your blog will be included.

LSblogs 

Another directory that is slow in approving your listing.

Be sure to click the Bookmark button below and check back here for a Part IV to this article on free Blog directories to submit your blog to.

For more visibility, you may want to submit your Blog to Feed Directories and ping your Blog every time your contents are updated. Also, submit your Blog to the various Search Engines for maximum exposure.

While you are looking at blog directories, you may also want to consider earning money while you are surfing the net. AGLOCO seems to have a nice scheme for you which you may want to take a look. You may also want to consider having AuctionAds to display an eBay auction widget which is compatible with AdSense and other ad systems. No harm trying it since it might give you an extra income.

Source : http://www.admin-seo.blogspot.com/

Submit Blog to Blog Directories (II)

This is a continued list of Blog directories to which you can submit your blog for free. If you have not read the first part, please check out Submit Blog to Blog Directories (I).

Again, I seek your understanding that while comments on your experiences with these sites are welcomed, kindly refrain from posting suggestions of new blog directory sites. As you will see, where there are voting gateways to the blog directories, visitors can either vote if they like the blog or enter the directory site without voting.

Blogvillage 

If you can direct more visitors from your blog to visit this Blog Village site, chances are that your blog will appear in the first couple of pages. There is no search function, and viewers have to browse the pages to pick the blogs they want to view.

[Update: Search feature in place on May 6, 2007. Also, beginning Aug 1, 2007, to continue to be listed in the directory, you must have at least one click every month into their site from the voting link displayed in your Blog. They ask you to vote for yourself if you have to. After that vote is cast, your ranking in their directory is based on the Hits Out, meaning to say the more people visit your Blog through their site, the higher your ranking will be. Take note of this because this is unlike other directories which will rank you highly if you can get more readers to visit their site. We encourage you to check out the new blogs through Blogvillage, but if you have a blog listed there, do yourself a favor by clicking on your own blog too to register a Hit Out.]

Blogelites 

The ranking is based on the number of unique votes from your blog visitors. The score is reset everyday. This directory is plagued by a number of inactive blogs though, and presently all you need is one visit a day to appear on the first page of the directory.

Myblogdirectory 

This directory has an interesting concept. If you can drive some of your visitors to the site, your blog can be featured as the Blog of the Day.

Blogcatalog 

The administrator was rather efficient in approving my blog. It has a huge catalog of blogs. I like the presentation and layout, simple and neat.

Blogarama 

Quite a popular blog directory but has a slow access speed most of the time.

Blogion 

Another simple and neat blog directory.

Bloggeries 

For a change, nice graphics and colors with an icon next to your listing to allow visitors to easily rate your blog. [Update: Submission for listing is no longer free.]

Bloghop 

Nice design for a blog directory. It allows you to tagsurf, pixelsurf or ratesurf, and if you'd like, you could rate this blog to see the pretty cool graphics too.

Bloggingfusion 

This is currently not a big directory, but has the makings of a good one.

Blog-search 

A simple, no-frills blog directory.

Blogpoint 

This looks like a new directory to me. The code given to you is supposed to monitor the hits by your visitors to the site.

Blogs-collection 

Text-based, simple, and neat blog directory.

Globeofblogs 

This was one of the first directories I submitted my blog to, and with their huge backlog, they seemed to be taking a really long time approving the listing. If you are linking to them using a link button, following their HTML code given on their main page will not work because they have not provided the URL of the button in the src tag. What you can do is to pick the button that you like, right-click on it and save the button onto your drive. Next, upload the button onto a free Image Host. Insert the URL into the code where src="URL of button".

Blogoriffic 

On the contrary, approval at this blog directory took a much shorter time. It is however difficult to find the relevant blogs using their search box.

This article continues at Submit Blog to Blog Directories (III).

For more visibility, you may want to submit your Blog to Feed Directories and ping your Blog every time your contents are updated. Also, submit your Blog to the various Search Engines for maximum exposure.

While you are looking at blog directories, you may also want to consider earning money while you are surfing the net. AGLOCO seems to have a nice scheme for you which you may want to take a look. You may also want to consider having AuctionAds to display an eBay auction widget which is compatible with AdSense and other ad systems. No harm trying it since it might give you an extra income.

Source : http://www.admin-seo.blogspot.com/

Blog Traffic Exchange and AdSense

After doing up nice websites with interesting contents, the webmasters' dilemma is usually one of attracting visitors to their sites. Having more visitors is gratifying; it is a reward that website owners deserve for putting time and effort into their sites.

Traffic exchange networks were designed to promote visitor traffic to websites or blogs. The idea is simple – members of the network surf each other's sites. Upon setting up an account with a traffic exchange program, you will be entitled to earn 'credits' by manually surfing other members' sites. Depending on the program, you may have anything between 0.5 to 1.0 credit for every site you visit. There is a timer at the top or bottom frame of the page to compel you to remain at the site for a period of time. This can range between 10 to 30 seconds. You are then required to click one of the images to correspond with the given image in order to proceed to the next random site. This is to prevent autosurfing hacks that may cheat the system.

With the 'credits' you earn, you can assign them to your blogs. For every visitor you get to your blog, 1 credit will be deducted until all your 'credits' are spent. In a nutshell, the more blogs you visit, the more visitors you get to your blogs.

Alas, no program is perfect. While the concept of traffic exchange sounds good, there are the negative aspects that you should consider as well. I'll summarize the good and bad points of traffic exchange.

Pros of traffic exchange

1. The programs are free, that is if you are not buying the 'credits' but earning them.

2. For some programs, you can specify the category of blogs you would like to view or the sort of visitors you would like to have. The traffic is therefore targeted.

3. While viewing other member blogs, you may come across a couple of interesting ones that you can re-visit or learn from.

4. Since the programs work well only if they have a wide network of members, the administrators often conduct mini contests and games to interest the members. You may find some fun in these communities.

Cons of traffic exchange

1. The biggest negative point is that such traffic exchanges run counter to many advertising programs, especially those that pay you based on impressions you get to your site. A notable one is Google AdSense. If your site's traffic is mainly through traffic exchanges, be prepared to receive reminders like this from the Google administrator:-

“It has come to our attention that invalid clicks or impressions have been generated on the Google ads on your site(s) through users of third-party programs paid or provided with other incentives to visit your site. Such programs may include, but are not limited to auto-surf, pay-to-surf, pay-to-read, or pay-to-click sites.”

2. A number of the sites that register with traffic exchanges are new sites and are not worth the time reading. Many of the established ones that have a good following of readers do not need such traffic exchange programs to boost their traffic.

3. After surfing for a while, you would also find yourself looking at the same sites over and over again, simply because only a fraction of the members are active users. It may be boring in that sense.

4. While I make it a point to read some sites, I believe that many people don't. They may be doing their homework or watching television, and mindlessly clicking the image after every 30 seconds or so. You may be getting more visitors but these are not the people who appreciate your blog contents.

Blog Traffic Exchange sites

If you want to have a go at it, here are the ones I think you can consider.

Blogmad 

This has a 1:1 ratio, which means that for every site you visit, someone will visit yours. The surf timer is 25 seconds and the site layout, ideas, and image icons (with the two big eyes) are pretty nice.

Blog Explosion 

The surf ratio is 2:1, i.e. for every two blogs you visit, one person will visit yours. The saving grace is that they have about close to 50,000 blogs registered, although I have an inkling that only a small percentage of these are active. They do run contests like Battle of the Blogs which add to the fun of using their service.

Blog Soldiers 

Another 2:1 ratio traffic exchange. Nothing fanciful about the site, and the administrators should do more work to build up their membership base.

Blog Advance 

Their surf ratio of 1:1 sounds attractive, and like a few other programs, they throw in free bonus points when you log in or surf. What I didn't like was their lack of response. I raised a technical problem concerning adding a site and despite 2 messages, they have not replied. Such a contradiction to their statement that “at Blog Advance your voice doesn't fall on deaf ears.” Also, I received error messages on a few occasions despite having clicked the correct surfbar images and was unable to proceed to subsequent blogs. I guess there are unresolved bugs in the coding of their program. (Update: This service is no longer available and link is therefore removed.)

EasyHits4U 

This is another 1:1 traffic exchange site that seems to have more commercial sites registered with them than blogs. It has a 30-second timer giving viewers a lot of time to view the blogs. The thing that stands out is that they pay you cash for active surfing ($0.50 for 1000 sites viewed)

TrafficG 

This is not blog specific, and you will see a number of non-blog websites. The ratio of 1:1 is good, and the longer surf time of 30 seconds means that you might get more quality traffic, people who browse your blog contents.

Blogazoo 

They have a 4:3 ratio, and credit incentives to read blogs and find the 'gazoos'.(Update: This service is temporarily not available and link is removed.)

Linkreferral 

I happened to come across this site last week. Essentially, when you register your blog with them, other members can review your site, give a rating and post comments. The more sites you visit or review, the higher your blog rank will be, and the more likely that your blog will be seen by others. Unlike the other programs, you will expect visitors to go through what you write in order to review your blog.

Conclusion

If your blog is new, traffic exchange may do wonders in sending visitors to your site. Surfing other members' sites is also a good way to learn useful tips to improve on your blog. For a wider exposure, you would want to have your blog listed in Blog Directories, Feed Directories, and search engines like Google,Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com. Also, submit your Blog to the various Search Engines. Nothing beats content though, and if you have good quality writing, you can be sure that your blog will be read.

I have tried out the traffic exchange sites for the purpose of this writing. With the credits, I have bought banner and text link ads since advertising a blog is not against Google's TOS. These ads appear at the traffic exchange sites when members are surfing, and make your site more visible.

Feel free to share your experience on the above sites, but please refrain from posting suggestions of new traffic exchange sites. There are hundreds of them and if you'd like, do a keyword search and try them out. New traffic exchange sites are created practically everyday. Run an eBay search and you will see a number of them being sold too. It is alright to register with a few of them, but unless you intend to spend all your time surfing member sites, there is little reason to be registered in a hundred traffic exchange sites.

If you are ready to submit your blog to blog directories for better search engine optimization and publicity, read the articles on “Submit Blog to Blog Directories”Part (I), Part (II), and Part (III).

While you are looking at traffic exchange sites, you may also want to consider earning money while you are surfing the net. AGLOCO seems to have a nice scheme for you which you may want to take a look. You may also want to consider having AuctionAds to display an eBay auction widget which is compatible with AdSense and other ad systems. No harm trying it since it might give you an extra income.

Status Message and Older Post picture link

This tutorial covers 2 aspects. First, we shall customize the template to remove the status message “Showing posts for query link. Show all posts” appearing at the top of the posts when you enter a search word in the Blogger Navigation bar. Secondly, in the previous article, we discussed the ways to remove or hide the Newer Posts, Home, and Newer Posts links at the bottom of every post. We shall now talk about how you can change the text links to some other words or to replace these links with pictures. You will also learn how to switch the positions, to have the Older Posts link on the left and the Newer Posts link on the right.

Status Message

The status message “Showing posts for query link. Show all posts” appears at the top of the Post Body when readers perform a search of the Blog by entering the search word at the Navbar. If there is no post matching that search query, you will see a message “No posts match your query. Show all posts” instead.



Similarly, if you click a label at the sidebar, the status message “Showing posts with label. Show all posts” will be automatically displayed at the top of the Posts.



Some people may want to remove this message entirely either because it does not fit into the design of the Blog or that they think it redundant. If you do not want this message displayed, you can follow this guide to edit the template.

As a precautionary measure, before changing any part of the template, it is always good to backup the template. After making any change to the code, you should always preview the template before saving. In the event that you are too quick on the fingers and click Save before you confirm that you want the change, you can reload the previous template that you have backed up.

Login in to your Dashboard and go to Template -> Edit HTML. Check the “Expand Widget Templates” box. Backup your template by copying the template and saving it in an MS Notepad text file. You can also click the “Download Full Template” link that appears right after the words “Before editing your template, you may want to save a copy of it.”



With the “Expand Widget Templates” box still checked, scroll to where you see these lines and delete the line (shown in red). Preview, save and refresh the template. At any time in future if you want to reinstate the message status, simply insert this line back into the code.

<!-- posts --> <div class='blog-posts'> <b:include data='top' name='status-message'/>

Older Posts, Home, Newer Posts

These links are shown at the bottom of your Post Body. If you do not want to display these links, follow our earlier guide to Remove Older Post and Posts (Atom) Links.

1. Change the text links

If you want to change the words, for example, “Older Posts” to “Past”, “Home” to “Present”, and “Newer Posts” to “Future”, under Template -> Edit HTML, see that the “Expand Widget Templates” box is checked. Scroll to these lines:-

<b:includable id='nextprev'> <div class='blog-pager' id='blog-pager'> <b:if cond='data:newerPageUrl'> <span id='blog-pager-newer-link'> <a class='blog-pager-newer-link' expr:href='data:newerPageUrl' expr:id='data:widget.instanceId + "_blog-pager-newer-link"' expr:title='data:newerPageTitle'><data:newerPageTitle/></a> </span> </b:if> <b:if cond='data:olderPageUrl'> <span id='blog-pager-older-link'> <a class='blog-pager-older-link' expr:href='data:olderPageUrl' expr:id='data:widget.instanceId + "_blog-pager-older-link"' expr:title='data:olderPageTitle'><data:olderPageTitle/></a> </span> </b:if> <b:if cond='data:blog.homepageUrl != data:blog.url'> <a class='home-link' expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl'><data:homeMsg/></a> <b:else/> <b:if cond='data:newerPageUrl'> <a class='home-link' expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl'><data:homeMsg/></a> </b:if> </b:if> </div>

Change the colored portions of the code to this:-

<b:includable id='nextprev'> <div class='blog-pager' id='blog-pager'> <b:if cond='data:newerPageUrl'> <span id='blog-pager-newer-link'> <a class='blog-pager-newer-link' expr:href='data:newerPageUrl' expr:id='data:widget.instanceId + "_blog-pager-newer-link"' expr:title='data:newerPageTitle'>Future</a> </span> </b:if> <b:if cond='data:olderPageUrl'> <span id='blog-pager-older-link'> <a class='blog-pager-older-link' expr:href='data:olderPageUrl' expr:id='data:widget.instanceId + "_blog-pager-older-link"' expr:title='data:olderPageTitle'>Past</a> </span> </b:if> <b:if cond='data:blog.homepageUrl != data:blog.url'> <a class='home-link' expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl'>Present</a> <b:else/> <b:if cond='data:newerPageUrl'> <a class='home-link' expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl'>Present</a> </b:if> </b:if> </div>

This is what you will see:-



You can of course replace these with other words. For example, you may substitute the Older Posts (in red) with other words like Previous Rants, Yesterday's words, Lost Files. Choose your own words for Home (in blue) and Newer Posts (in green).

2. Replace with picture links

Update:

When we first wrote this article, we had no problems replacing the “Older Posts” and “Newer Posts” text links with image links. Not long after, it seemed that the link was not clickable on the home page. We had to click the bottom right corner of the image for it to work. They functioned well on the other pages though. Lately, it seemed that clicking the Older Posts image link on the home page will give an error code bX-v40b2j. This happened when the link had to check for posts before or after a certain date. Somehow, when we were viewing a posted article, the image links worked since they pointed to a definite post url. We have not found out the cause of this anomaly. In the meantime, the only icon that seemed to work is the Home Page icon. In the code below, ignore and do not change the part shown in red and green as they are images for the Older Posts and Newer Posts. The part shown in blue is for the Home Page icon and you can have that if you'd like. If the problem is resolved, we shall update this article accordingly.

You can also replace these texts with icons, cliparts, or other images and pictures. Many people use arrows to point to the previous page or next page. You should first have the pictures that you want to use.

Use photo editing softwares like Google's Picasa to crop and resize to a small picture. Upload the image onto a free image server. You can read about using free hosts like Google Page Creator and Google Groups. We also have a rather comprehensive list of free Image Hosts and File Hosting Services in our article on Manage Blogger Image Storage Space. Check out those sites and choose one that is fast, reliable and enables hotlinking to the uploaded files. Take note of theImage URL.

In the above codes, instead of replacing the red, blue and green portions with text, insert this code instead. Remember to type in the Image URL:-

<img src="Image URL" />

If you want to know more about the attributes for an image tag, you may refer to the article on Hyperlinks and Image Links (II).

We have created and uploaded some sample pictures that you can use. If you like something like this:-



You can change your template to the following:-

<b:includable id='nextprev'> <div class='blog-pager' id='blog-pager'> <b:if cond='data:newerPageUrl'> <span id='blog-pager-newer-link'> <a class='blog-pager-newer-link' expr:href='data:newerPageUrl' expr:id='data:widget.instanceId + "_blog-pager-newer-link"' expr:title='data:newerPageTitle'><img src="http://www.blogpulp.com/imagehost/images/733257041.jpg" /></a> </span> </b:if> <b:if cond='data:olderPageUrl'> <span id='blog-pager-older-link'> <a class='blog-pager-older-link' expr:href='data:olderPageUrl' expr:id='data:widget.instanceId + "_blog-pager-older-link"' expr:title='data:olderPageTitle'><img src="http://www.blogpulp.com/imagehost/images/180881814.jpg" /></a> </span> </b:if> <b:if cond='data:blog.homepageUrl != data:blog.url'> <a class='home-link' expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl'><img src="http://www.blogpulp.com/imagehost/images/139275805.jpg" /></a> <b:else/> <b:if cond='data:newerPageUrl'> <a class='home-link' expr:href='data:blog.homepageUrl'><img src="http://www.blogpulp.com/imagehost/images/139275805.jpg" /></a> </b:if> </b:if> </div>

3. Switch Position of Older and Newer Posts

You would have noticed that the “Older Posts” link is on the right whereas the “Newer Posts” link is on the left. If we are using arrows to depict the Previous article and the Next article, we may prefer to have the Previous article or Older Posts on the left instead of the right. To switch the positions, we go to these lines in the template and amend the parts (shown in red).

#blog-pager-newer-link { float: right; } #blog-pager-older-link { float: left; }

With this change, we now have the Older Posts link on the left and the Newer Posts link on the right.

Social Bookmarking Links in Blogger

In this article, we shall provide the code for you to place into the template to have a line of icon/ button links or text links to popular social bookmarking sites like Digg, Technorati, del.icio.us, Reddit, Blinklist, Furl, Yahoo, Simpy, etc. Readers can click them to add your site or your post to their bookmarks and in sharing these links with others, your Blog becomes more visible. This code when inserted into your template will automatically place these social bookmark links at thebottom of every post. There are many social bookmarking sites and new sites pop up almost every week. What we can do here is to provide you with a code that will place several of these popular sites, and update this list over time.

Social bookmarking is a popular way for users to share their personal bookmarks of useful sites with other users. Since most of the bookmarks are classified by topics, tags or categories, people around the world with interests similar to the user can easily locate these sites by viewing their online bookmarks. Just over the last couple of years, this concept has caught on with so many users that social bookmarking sites are now very popular and highly ranked by search engines. We shall discuss and list these sites in a separate article. For now, we want to provide you a code so that you can have something to work with.

Bookmarking Codes

1. AddThis

You would have noticed that we have used the free services of AddThis. They provide a simple widget code which you can place into your template. When users click it, they will be brought to a page of the most popular social bookmarking or feed reader services. Through that interface, they can submit your site or blog post to their online bookmarks or feed readers. What we like about this is the simplicity in design with only one button at the end of each post. It provides as well statistics of the popular posts that are bookmarked.



Register for a free account with them. When you are logged in, click on “My Account” and “Get the code for your widget.” You can either have a bookmarking widget or feed widget, choose a size of the button, and indicate Blogger as your blogging platform. Once you click on the “Get your free button link”, you will be shown a few codes that you can use. If you want the button to be in your sidebar, copy the code under the heading “Blog Button (New or Older Blogger).” Login to your Blogger account, go to Template -> Page Elements -> Add a Page Element in your sidebar and select “HTML/JavaScript”. Paste this code and save.

If you want the bookmark button in your Post footer use the code under the heading “Blog Post Button (New Blogger).” Follow the later section in this article explaining the different positions where you can place the code.

There are also other sites that provide similar services as AddThis. A search in Google will reveal a number of these sites. Feel free to try them out and find one that suits your needs.

2. Social bookmark text links

Text links are neat and can easily fit into the Post footer. This is what you can expect to see:-



If you like this in your Blog, we shall look at the code. Let us understand how the code works by using the example we gave in our article on Add Digg button to Blogger or Blogspot.

To submit that post to Digg, the full submission URL would be:-

http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url= http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com/2007/03/ add-digg-button-to-blogger-or-blogspot.html&title=Add%20Digg%20button%20to%20Blogger%20or%20Blogspot

The part marked in blue is the URL of your Post. This is of course assuming that you have in your Settings -> Archiving, you have chosen “Yes” to “Enable Post Pages.” In your Blog template, this Post URL is coded as data:post.url. The part in orange is the Title of the Post. This is coded as data:post.title in your Blog template.

To change the above to an automatic link for every post, such that you do not have to key in the Post URL or Post Title, the code will be this:-

<a expr:href='"http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&amp;url=" + data:post.url + "&amp;title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'>Digg</a>

If you have read our article on Hyperlinks and Image Links (I), you will know that the target='_blank' opens that link in a new window or tab. If you don't want that, you can remove this from the code.

On that understanding, the rest of the popular social bookmarking text links will be coded like this:-

<!-- Start of social bookmarks. Check http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com/ for updates --> <span style='font-size: 85%;' class='post-author'><br/> Add Post To: | <a expr:href='"http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&amp;url=" + data:post.url + "&amp;title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'>Digg</a>| <a expr:href='"http://technorati.com/faves?add=" + data:post.url' target='_blank'>Technorati</a>| <a expr:href='"http://del.icio.us/post?url=" + data:post.url + "&amp;title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'>del.icio.us</a>| <a expr:href='"http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=" + data:post.url + "&amp;title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'>Stumbleupon</a>| <a expr:href='"http://reddit.com/submit?url=" + data:post.url + "&amp;title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'>Reddit</a>| <a expr:href='"http://www.blinklist.com/index.php?Action=Blink/addblink.php&amp;Url=" + data:post.url + "&amp;Title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'>BlinkList</a>| <a expr:href='"http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?t=" + data:post.title + "&amp;u=" + data:post.url' target='_blank'>Furl</a>| <a expr:href='"http://www.spurl.net/spurl.php?url=" + data:post.url + "&amp;title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'>Spurl</a>| <a expr:href='"http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?t=" + data:post.title + "&amp;u=" + data:post.url' target='_blank'>Yahoo</a>| <a expr:href='"http://www.simpy.com/simpy/LinkAdd.do?href=" + data:post.url + "&amp;title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'>Simpy</a>| <br/></span> <!-- End of social bookmarks -->

The above is the Text Link code that you can use. We shall talk about where you can place in the later part of this article.

3. Social bookmark icon links

If you prefer images instead of text, you can have icons or buttons to represent the bookmarking sites.

The icon links will look like this in your Post footer:-



Search for the bookmarking site icons through their official sites, download them, resize them to the required size, and upload them onto a free server. You can read about using free hosts like Google Page Creator and Google Groups. We also have a rather comprehensive list of free Image Hosts and File Hosting Services in our article on Manage Blogger Image Storage Space. Check out those sites and choose one that is fast, reliable and enables hotlinking to the uploaded files.

For the purposes of this article, we have uploaded the images onto our Photobucket account. You can change the image URLs to those of your own.

<!-- Start of social bookmarks. Check http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com/ for updates --><br/> <a expr:href='"http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&amp;url=" + data:post.url + "&amp;title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'><img alt='Digg' src='http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z76/tipsfornewbloggers/digg.gif'/></a> <a expr:href='"http://technorati.com/faves?add=" + data:post.url' target='_blank'><img alt='Technorati' src='http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z76/tipsfornewbloggers/technorati.gif'/></a> <a expr:href='"http://del.icio.us/post?url=" + data:post.url + "&amp;title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'><img alt='del.icio.us' src='http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z76/tipsfornewbloggers/delicious.gif'/></a> <a expr:href='"http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=" + data:post.url + "&amp;title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'><img alt='Stumbleupon' src='http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z76/tipsfornewbloggers/stumbleupon.gif'/></a> <a expr:href='"http://reddit.com/submit?url=" + data:post.url + "&amp;title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'><img alt='Reddit' src='http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z76/tipsfornewbloggers/reddit.gif'/></a> <a expr:href='"http://www.blinklist.com/index.php?Action=Blink/addblink.php&amp;Url=" + data:post.url + "&amp;Title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'><img alt='Blinklist' src='http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z76/tipsfornewbloggers/blink.gif'/></a> <a expr:href='"http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?t=" + data:post.title + "&amp;u=" + data:post.url' target='_blank'><img alt='Furl' src='http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z76/tipsfornewbloggers/furl.gif'/></a> <a expr:href='"http://www.spurl.net/spurl.php?url=" + data:post.url + "&amp;title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'><img alt='Spurl' src='http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z76/tipsfornewbloggers/spurl.gif'/></a> <a expr:href='"http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?t=" + data:post.title + "&amp;u=" + data:post.url' target='_blank'><img alt='Yahoo' src='http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z76/tipsfornewbloggers/yahoo.gif'/></a> <a expr:href='"http://www.simpy.com/simpy/LinkAdd.do?href=" + data:post.url + "&amp;title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'><img alt='Simpy' src='http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z76/tipsfornewbloggers/simpy.gif'/></a><br/> <!-- End of social bookmarks -->

Where to place the Bookmarking Code

After you have determined what you'd like – AddThis, Text Links, or Icon Links – copy the relevant social bookmarking code and place it in the template as follows. Go to Template -> Edit HTML and check the box that says “Expand Widget Templates.”

There are several places where you can place the bookmarks.

i. You can place them just below your Posts and before the “Posted By” line as shown in the above pictures. Scroll to these lines and place the relevant code at the red portion:-

<div class='post-body'> <p><data:post.body/></p> <div style='clear: both;'/> <!-- clear for photos floats --> </div> PLACE CODE HERE <div class='post-footer'> <p class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>

ii. If you want the social bookmark links to be just above the labels like this:-



Scroll to these lines and insert the relevant code at the red portion:-

PLACE CODE HERE <p class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'> <span class='post-labels'> <b:if cond='data:post.labels'>

iii. Should you want the bookmark links to be at the bottom after the labels as shown here:-



Scroll to these lines and place the code at the red portion:-

<p class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'> <span class='post-labels'> <b:if cond='data:post.labels'> <data:postLabelsLabel/> <b:loop values='data:post.labels' var='label'> <a expr:href='data:label.url' rel='tag'> <data:label.name/> </a><b:if cond='data:label.isLast != "true"'>,</b:if> </b:loop> </b:if> </span> </p> PLACE CODE HERE

Source : http://www.admin-seo.blogspot.com/

Remove Older Post and Posts (Atom) Links

In the new default Blogger templates, you will see at the bottom of the page the words “Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)”. On every other page, you there are the words “Newer Post”, “Home” and “Older Posts”. These serve a good purpose. Nevertheless, some people may like a neater layout by removing these links and this guide will discuss the simplest method that involves minimal change to the template.

Older Post, Home and Newer Post links



When there is an older post than the post on the page, Blogger automatically displays a link to the older post. Similarly, if there is a newer post, there will be a link to that post. If you are writing a serial story, where one chapter leads to another, this is a good navigational tool for your readers. However, for many of the blogs, like ours, readers are interested in particular topics. They will look at the article list, labels or tags that you have in your site and are not likely to browse through every single article. Removing these links therefore makes sense and may make your Blog less cluttered and unsightly.

Do note that Blogger displays 20 posts on the page. If you have, for example, 30 posts bearing a certain label, people clicking that label will only see the latest 20 posts. To view the remaining 10 posts, they have to click the “Older Posts” link.

If you choose to remove these links, login to your Dashboard. Go to Template -> Edit HTML. Scroll to where you see this and add the codes (in red):-

#blog-pager-newer-link { display: none; } #blog-pager-older-link { display: none; } #blog-pager { display: none; }

What we have done is simply to tell the browser not to display these links. Should you change your mind in future, simply remove the codes (in red) and you will see the links again.

Note that these CSS styles are what you see in the new Blogger templates. If yours is an old template or a modified version, you can try looking for headings that look similar to the above. Always Preview the template before saving. In that way, if you don't like it, you can choose to Clear Edits.

Change the text or replace with pictures

Instead of removing these links, if you wish to change the text from “Older Posts” or “Newer Posts” to some other words, or to have them replaced by pictures, you may refer to the article on Status Message and Older Post picture link. In that article, we discuss as well how you can switch the positions of the links by having the Older Posts link on the left and the Newer Posts link on the right.

Posts (Atom) links



Under Settings -> Site Feed, when you click the “Advanced Mode”, you are able to determine the settings for your Blog Posts feed and Comment feeds. You may syndicate a Short or Full version of your contents, but it is not advisable to select None for your Blog Posts feed. Depending on your settings, there will be a feed link at the bottom of your Blog Posts for readers to Subscribe to: Posts (Atom) and/or Comments (Atom).



While this link is useful, readers can easily subscribe to your feed via their browsers. Also, if you have signed up with feed aggregator services like Feedburner which we use, they will provide you with better landing pages for your would-be subscribers in addition to nicer chicklets which you can place on your Blog for readers to add the Blog feed. As you can see on this page, putting the feed subscription tools on the sidebar may catch more attention than a link right at the bottom of the page.

Should you wish to remove this feed link, go to Template -> Edit HTML, scroll to this style definition and add the code (in red):-

.feed-links { display: none; }

Again, note that we are merely telling the browser not to display the feed link. Other sites may suggest different methods like deleting the detailed style definitions or adding comment tags to “b:include name='feedLinks'”. They do work, but we think that it is better not to mess around with the template too much. The above code is simple enough and can be easily reversed if you wish to show the feed link.

Post Footer – Customize Template (II)

We continue from where we left off in Post Footer – Customize Template (I). In the first part, we went through how you can change and customize the appearance of the “Posted by author” link and replace it with another name or picture. You could also remove the timestamp if you want. In this part, we continue with customization of the “Comments”, “Labels” and other icons shown in the Blogger Post Footer.

Comments

1. Settings

If you simply want to enable or disable Comments, login into your Dashboard and under Settings -> Comments, you will see the options for “Comments”. You can either “Show” or “Hide”. You can choose “Hide” so as not to show the Comment link, without deleting existing comments.

2. Change the word “Comments”

Should you want to retain the Comment link but change the word “Comments” to something else, scroll to this part of the template:-

<b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'> <a class='comment-link' expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr:onclick='data:post.addCommentOnclick'><b:if cond='data:post.numComments == 1'>1<data:top.commentLabel/> <b:else/><data:post.numComments/><data:top.commentLabelPlural/> </b:if></a> </b:if> </b:if> </span>

In my spiderman example, I wanted to use the phrase “Friendly Neighbors”. Where the blue code is, I replaced it with the phrase “Friendly Neighbor”, the singular form when there is only 1 comment. At the red part of the code, I replaced it with the plural form “Friendly Neighbors” when there are 2 comments or more. The resulting code is:-

<b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'> <a class='comment-link' expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr:onclick='data:post.addCommentOnclick'><b:if cond='data:post.numComments == 1'>1 Friendly Neighbor<b:else/><data:post.numComments/>Friendly Neighbors</b:if></a> </b:if> </b:if> </span>

And this is what you will see:-



Links to Post

If you do not want this in your Post Footer, go to Dashboard, under Settings -> Comments, you can choose to “Show” or “Hide” the “Backlinks”. If you select “Hide”, the backlinks to your Post and the words “Links to this Post” will not be displayed.

Email Post icon

In your Dashboard, under Settings -> Basic, you can see a query “Show Email Post links?” If you choose “Yes”, you will see the little envelope image for viewers to click to email the Post to other people. Should you choose “No”, that image will not be displayed.

Labels

1. Change “Labels” name

To suit the theme of your Blog, you may want to change the word “Labels” to something else, like “Subjects”, “Topics”, “Categories”, “Genre”, etc. Scroll to this part of the template:-

<p class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'> <span class='post-labels'> <b:if cond='data:post.labels'> <data:postLabelsLabel/> <b:loop values='data:post.labels' var='label'> <a expr:href='data:label.url' rel='tag'><data:label.name/></a><b:if cond='data:label.isLast != "true"'>,</b:if> </b:loop> </b:if> </span> </p>

Substitute the part of the code (shown in red) with the word that you want to use. The result is this:-



2. Image instead of name

In Part I of this article, we went into details on how you can use an image to replace the author's name. If you want to have a picture to replace the word “Labels”, the procedure is the same. Instead of the name to replace the part of the above code (shown in red), insert the image code. The resulting code would appear like this:-

<p class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-2'> <span class='post-labels'> <b:if cond='data:post.labels'> <a href="URL of your Blog"><img src="Image URL" /></a> <b:loop values='data:post.labels' var='label'> <a expr:href='data:label.url' rel='tag'><data:label.name/></a><b:if cond='data:label.isLast != "true"'>,</b:if> </b:loop> </b:if> </span> </p>

Further reading:-

Remove Older Post and Posts (Atom) Links

Source : http://www.admin-seo.blogspot.com/