Submit Your Blogspot Blog Sitemap to Google

Submit Your Blogspot Blog Sitemap to Google

I often see questions from beginner bloggers in forums about adding a sitemap of their Blogspot blog to Google. This is surprisingly easy to do although there is virtually no documentation about how to go about it. That's why I have written this tutorial with the beginner blogger in mind. It provides a set of simple step by step instructions to guide you through the process of adding a sitemap to Google. By following this tutorial you will have your Blogspot sitemap added to Google in less than 5 minutes flat.

Why Add a Sitemap to Google?
As Google owns the Blogger.com platform most sites are indexed by Google automatically. However, you might find as I have done that this process doesn't always run as smoothly or as quickly as you might like. Manually adding a sitemap to Google has some distinct advantages:

More likely to have timely indexing of your blog

More likely that all URLs on your site will be accessed

More frequent updating of your blog index in response to new posts

Increase in site traffic as a result of all your pages being indexed

Step by Step Guide to Adding Sitemap to Google
Follow this step by step walkthrough of how to add a sitemap to Google to your Blogspot Blog and begin enjoying the benefits.

1. Sign in to Google Webmaster Tools
Once set up this site will give you detailed analysis about how Google indexes your blog. Best way to get to Google Webmaster tools is to click on My Account on the Blogger Navbar and then choose Google Webmaster Tools from the list. 

2. Navigate to the Webmaster Tools Dashboard
Directly below the word "Dashboard" in the top lefthand corner you will see the option to add a site. Click once inside the box to remove the default text. Now enter the full URL of your site in the box including the prefix http:// and click on the "Add Site" button. For example to add this site "blogknowhow" you would enterhttp://blogknowhow.blogspot.com/

3. Navigate to Webmaster Tools Overview
If all is going well you will now see your site in a list below the "Add Site" box. Click on your site in the list and you will be taken to "Dashboard>>Overview." It is easy to check you are in the right place as your site name will be listed in blue below the word "Overview".

In the overview menu you will find details about Google's current indexing of your site. If Google hasn't indexed your site yet you will see the message "No pages from your site are currently included in Google's index" displayed. Alternatively if Google has already discovered your site then you will get the following message "Googlebot has successfully accessed your home page" and "Pages from your site are included in Google's index."

4. Select Method of Verifying Your Site
Whether the pages of your site have been indexed or not you will be asked to click on the "Verify Your Site" link in the yellow box. At this point you will be given 2 options: one to verify your site by uploading an HTML file and the other by inserting a meta tag into the HTML coding on your site. As you do not have access to the server on Blogspot you will need to choose the second option. To do this select "add a meta tag" in the dropdown menu entitled "Choose Verification Method."

Immediately you make your choice you will be presented with a couple of lines of text which you will need to copy to the clipboard of your computer.

5. Go to Blogger Layout Tab of Your Site in a New Window
In another window open Blogger and sign in if you are not already signed in. From the Dashboard navigate to the "Layout" menu of your blog by clicking on the Layout tab. If you have created more than one blog make sure that you click on the appropriate title of your blog.

6. Edit the Template of Your Blog in Blogger
In the Layout menu follow the “Edit HTML” link (third from left under the Layout tab). At this point you need to search through the coding in the template for the first "Head" tag. This will be somewhere between line 7 and 10 from the top. Once you have located the correct spot paste the code for the metatag you created in Step 4 directly into the template taking care not to overwrite any existing code. Click on the "Save Template" button to update your blog.

If you wish to err on the side of caution you might consider backing up your template before you make any changes to it however as long as you are careful this precaution is probably not necessary.



8. Return to Webmaster Tools and Verify Site
Once you have saved the changes to your template return to Webmaster Tools and click on the "Verify" button at the bottom of the page in the "Dashboard>>Verify a Site" screen. You will then receive coonfirmation from Google that your site has been verified.

9. Navigate to Sitemaps in Webmaster Tools
Once your site is verified you can now move on to adding your sitemap. To do this navigate to Sitemaps by following the "Sitemaps" link in the sidemenu. This will take you to "Dashboard >> Sitemaps" where you will see a box with the URL of your site already added. Next to the box will be a button labelled "Submit Sitemap."

10. Add Sitemap in Webmaster Tools
As your blog was created in Blogspot we are going to make use of the rss or atom feed. Either can be used for this purpose.

On the Sitemaps page in Webmaster Tools type either atom.xml orrss.xml into the box provided to extend the displayed URL and click on the "Submit Sitemap" button. Using the same example as beforehttp://blogknowhow.blogspot.com/ becomes either

http://blogknowhow.blogspot.com/atom.xml
or
http://blogknowhow.blogspot.com/rss.xml

All going well Google will then display a message indicating that your sitemap submission is pending. It can take some hours for your sitemap to be fully updated by Google. At that point you will be able to see the number of URLs identified by Google and the time of the last download. This is useful information as it will help you keep tabs on your for your Blogger.com blog site and identify any URLs that may be being missed. Now that you have your sitemap in place you can look forward to increased traffic as more visitors will now be able to find your site.




Read This If Your Feed is Being Redirected
If you are redirecting your feed because you are using Feedburner for example you will need to add a query parameter to stop the redirect so that it will act as a sitemap.

Therefore instead of adding atom.xml you will need to add atom.xml?redirect=false to the site URL in the "Submit Sitemap" box. Thushttp://blogknowhow.blogspot.com/atom.xml becomeshttp://blogknowhow.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false

If you have a lot of posts it would be worth your while adding the following parameter to have all your posts included:
atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=100

In the above example Google will index your first 100 posts. If you have more than 100 posts you can create another sitemap in which case you would start your index at 101 instead of 1.

This tutorial has guided you through the process of authenticating your Blogger blog at Google Webmaster and adding a sitemap to ensure better crawling and indexing of your website.

Create Search Engine Friendly Permalinks for Blogger

Create Search Engine Friendly Permalinks for Blogger

For any webmaster of a Blogger Blogspot blog good permalinks will help ensure that your traffic finds your site and is an important SEO consideration. Care needs to be taken to craft permalinks that are keyword rich and accurately describe your post. In this article I discuss how to manage the permalinks of each post to ensure you make the most of them.

What are Permalinks?
Permalinks are the permanent links to a post page. Blogger automatically generates a permalink based on the title of your post. Permalinks provide information to the viewer about the kind of content being pointed to.

Permalinks create permanent links to your Blogger posts which are indexed by search engines such as Google. Search engines use permalinks to categorise posts. Browsers use permalinks to help navigate to your posts. When you hover over a permalink in your browser you can read the post name in the status bar.

The permalink for this article is:

http://blogknowhow.blogspot.com/2009/02/improved-permalinks-for-blogger-posts

Tips for Working With Permalinks in Blogger
While other blogging software such as Wordpress allows the user to edit permalinks Blogger has no such feature. For this reason care needs to be taken when creating titles for your posts as the permalink generated from the title can't be changed later. The original permalink assigned at the point that the post is created remains the same no matter how many times you change the title of your post.

Another issue with Blogger is that it takes only the first 35-40 characters of your title to create the permalink so if you have a longer title you can run into problems. My suggestion is that you design your titles carefully if you want to avoid losing the end characters from your permalink. For instance a long title such as the one below would result in a shortened permalink which would lose the important fact that this post is related to working with Blogger:

http://blogknowhow.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-to-create-user-friendly-permalinks-for-your-blogger-posts

Fortunately there is a way around this problem. You will need to publish and then republish as I did with this post. The method involves creating a shorter title that will adequately summarise the content of your post (eg Improved Permalinks for Blogger Posts) and then publishing your post. Now go back and change the title to the one you prefer. In this case I changed the title to "How to Create User Friendly Permalinks For Your Blogger Posts." Now your title can be as long as you like. As you can see mine is longer than 40 characters. The permalink, however has remained the same even though the title has changed. 

You can use this trick to create eye catching and memorable titles. It will also ensure that the permalink reflects a concise title and that unnecessary details in the permalink are removed. Creating concise permalinks is important for Search Engine Optimisation. Read more about Search Engine Optimisation in this blogs tutorial Tips forSearch Engline Optimisation.

This tutorial has concentrated on crafting good permalinks as an SEO principle. It has covered ways to improve the permalinks of a Blogger blogspot blog to ensure they are keyword rich and accurately reflect the content of the post. Make sure you make the most of permalinks and see the difference in site traffic.

Adjust Blogger Title Tags to Improve SEO

Adjust Blogger Title Tags to Improve SEO

This Blogger tutorial explains how to improve search engine optimization (SEO) of your Blogger blog (Blogspot blog) by optimizing your post title tags for search engines like Google and Yahoo. How to improve search engine results by optimizing post title tags.

By default your Blogger blog (Blogspot blog) does not have search engine optimised title tags. This puts your blog at a disadvantage compared to other blogs that have inbuilt SEO or enhanced SEO modules as these sites are likely to be placed more highly in search engine results.

The title tags of your blog are ordered by blog name first followed by the title of the post. This is not ideal for popular search engines like Google and Yahoo which give more importance to the first words of a title. By way of example take a look at how the title tags of this blog were viewed in a browser before any SEO. Note the order of the tags: Blog Name | Post Name.



When this site was first indexed by Google this is the search engine results this site received. Note how the blog name is first in all the results.



Fortunately there is a simple tweak to your template which can rectify this problem. By simply reversing the position of the blog name and page title significant improvement can be gained in search engine results. See the difference in the example below:



Follow the step by step guide below to achieve higher rankings in search engine results.

Tweak of Title Tags for New Blogger (beta) Blogs

1. Login to your blog at Blogger.com and navigate to Design > Edit HTML

2. Backup your template by downloading it to your computer. This will ensure that you can upload your template before these changes in case of problems.

3. Replace the following line of code (about 5-10 lines from the top):

<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>

with (highlight code, Ctrl + C to copy)

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> |
<data:blog.title/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
</b:if>

4. Click on Save Template and then View Blog. Navigate to an individual post. You will see that your page title is now first followed by your blog title. A pipe symbol separates the two.


Below is an example of the change in search engine results since the tweak was implemented for this site. Since optimising for search engine friendly page titles there has been a significant improvement in traffic accessing the site. This didn't happen right away but if you too implement this page title tweak and continue to deliver quality content you are on your way toward higher search engine rankings.



Troubleshooting
Several readers have reported issues with the line:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>

If you experience problems try inserting this line instead which works on many blogs. Ensure you have double quote marks around item followed by a single quote mark: 

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>

For more on this please read the comments section.

UPDATE
Due to the number of readers experiencing problems with their browsers reading this post I have created a PDF file of this article which is free to download

This Blogger tutorial (Blogspot tutorial) has discussed how to adapt the title tags of a Blogger (Blogspot) blog to improve search engine optimization (SEO) by Google,Yahoo and other search engines.

Related Articles
List of Blog Know How Tutorials for Blogger Blogs
Blogspot Blogger SEO Tips and Tricks

10 Tips to Build Blogger Blogspot Site Traffic

10 Tips to Build Blogger Blogspot Site Traffic

This article discusses 10 easy ways Blogger (Blogspot) Bloggers can build site traffic and in many cases improve SEO - search engine optimization. By implementing these steps you will improve the likelihood of your site ranking more highly in search engine results of major search engine players Google, Yahoo and MSN and as a result increase the number of visitors accessing your site.

10 Easy SEO Tips for Blogspot Bloggers to Improve Search Engine Rankings

1. Make Your Title Tags Search Engine Friendly
One of the most important tweaks necessary for Blogspot Blogs is theadjustment of the title tags of your website because Blogger.com by default has not optimized these for search engines. To prove this point navigate to an individual post on your blog and you will see that the blogname appears first in the title bar at the top of your browser followed by the post name. As search engines place greater value on the first words of an entry this puts your site at a disadvantage in search engine results. Fortunately it is easy to reverse the blog name and the post name with a simple tweak. For instructions on how to change the order of these title tags please refer to my article entitledAdjust Blogger Title Tags to Improve SEO



2. Create Search Engine Friendly Permalinks
Blogger automatically generates a permalink based on the title of your post each time you make a post. For this reason it is important tocraft your title carefully. Permalinks are sometimes less than ideal especially if you have a long title. Take for example the following permalink for one of my posts:

http://blogknowhow.blogspot.com/2009/02/improved-permalinks-for-blogger-posts.html

You will see that it is search engine friendly in that in contains 2 keywords blogger and permalinks. However you may be surprised to know that How to Create Search Engine Friendly Permalinks for Blogger Posts is actually the title of this post not Improved Permalinks for Blogger Posts. I have initially used a title that is keyword rich and then after publishing gone back and entered a more descriptive title. No matter how many times I change the title the original permalink remains. If I had entered the second title straight away I may have ended up with the following permalink:

http://blogknowhow.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-to-create-search-engine-friendly.html

Not very pretty is it? And as you can see the whole point of the post is lost.

For more information on crafting permalinks please refer to my article How to Create Search Engine Friendly Permalinks for Blogger Posts


3. Add a Social Networking Button to Your Blog
By adding a Social Bookmarking button to your website you will enable visitors to your blog to create links to popular social bookmarking sites such as Google, Technorati, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Stumble Upon, Reddit, Delicious, Furl, Yahoo etc. This means that visitors to your site will be able share these links with others thereby helping you attract more traffic to your site and encourage return visits.

Another benefit of a social bookmarking button is that you will be able to identify visitor trends and social bookmarking behaviour on your site. For more information on how to add a free Add This Social Bookmarking button to your Blogger blog please refer to my articleAdd a Social Bookmarking Button to Your Blog. 



4. Submit a Sitemap of Your Blog to Popular Search Engines
If attracting traffic to your site is important to you then it is imperative that you ensure that your Blogger (Blogspot) blog isproperly indexed by popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. One way to expedite this is to submit a sitemap to each of three major search engines. Please refer to my tutorials on website submission, authenticating your site and adding your site feed to Yahoo Site Explorer, Google Webmaster Tools and MSN Tools.

Google - Submit Your Blogspot Blog Sitemap to Google

Yahoo - Submit Your Blogspot Blog to Yahoo

MSN - Submit Blogger Sitemap to MSN Live Search

Also take a look at my tutorial on submitting your blog to major search engines

5. Build Quality Links
If you want to rank highly in Google and other search engines then you need to generate quality in-bound links. That doesn't mean exchanging links with everything and everyone as I see some new webmasters do. A few quality links from authoritative sites will boost your page rankings quickly and are far superior to a bunch of links from low ranking sites.

There are several good ways to generate links to your blog. One easy way is to to submit your site to blog directories. For more information on recommended blog directories please see my articleSubmit Your Blogger Blog to Blog Directories. Another way to cultivate in-bound links is to submit your best articles to article directories. A third possibility is to actively participate in forums and on other related blogs where commenting affords you the option of adding a link to your site.

I would recommend linking to DMOZ (Open Directory Project). Care needs to be taken to submit your site to the correct subject area. Becoming listed can take awhile so patience is needed. 


6. Write Quality Content and Post Frequently
If you have read any articles on the subject of Blogging and SEO you will no doubt have observed writers emphasising the importance ofquality content. I can't stress enough how much return visits depend on providing inducements to visitors to come back. If your site content is well written and informative half the battle is won. Make sure you post frequently so that visitors can see the value of subscribing in a reader. Take some care with the presentation of your content and images as this will present a professional image. Avoid common pitfalls like bad grammar and spelling mistakes which stand out like a sore toe and detract from a visitor's overall positive experience of your site.

One leading professional blogger Yaro Starak recommends the use ofpillar articles. These are articles that don't change over time and continue to attract visitors. The best pillar articles explain some concept, provide definitions, give advice or present some argument. Your site needs to have at least 5 pillar articles and more if you can manage it. Pillar articles need to be more than 500 words long, crafted to generate interest and provide a welcome resource to your visitors. 

7. Ensure Your Content is Keyword Rich
Apart from the quality of your content there is the question ofkeyword density. The more keyword rich your posts are the greater the likelihood they will appear higher in search engine results. This means it is worth the effort of crafting your content in such a way that you make use of important keywords and keyword phrasesfrequently used. Don't go overboard however as Google is smart enough to recognise if your pages are littered with keywords and nothing much else. A useful free SEO tool to help you optimise your site using keywords and labels is Google Adwords. Another good tool to help you quickly craft keyword rich material is Live Keyword Analysis which assesses the keyword density of keywords and keyword phrases of any post you paste into the analysis box.

When writing posts make sure your opening sentence describes what the article is about and contains your keywords and keyword phrases. It is important that your first sentence is keyword rich as search engines like Google give more emphasis to content at the beginning of the post. Also it is worth including a short ending statement about the content of the post as there is some evidence that Google also places value on the content at the end of the post.

8. Manage Your Feeds Carefully
Feeds help your visitors find your site so they need to be managed carefully in order to make the most of them. Your site feeds are an important way to create backlinks too. Backlinks from authoritative sites are highly valuable and can boost your page ranking. For information about showing backlinks please refer to the Blogger Help Article About Backlinks

Ensure you have your RSS feed icons clearly visible for visitors to see. The most superior positioning of the feed icons on your site is in the header. Watch out for coming tutorials on how to improve positioning of RSS feed links.

You can redirect your feed to a feedburning service like Feedburnerand then add a chicklet to your site (orange RSS feed button) so that the feed is instantly available on click. Please refer to my tutorials about Blogger feeds:Burn a Blogger RSS Feed at Feedburner andBlogger RSS Feeds and Feedburner. To add a FeedFlare to your burned feed check out my tutorial. 

If you haven't burnt your feed you can try adding a Subscription Links widget to a sidebar too to encourage visitors to subscribe to your site in popular on-line readers such as Google Reader. You will find the Subscription Links widget available under the list of gadgets.


Display your most recent posts by configuring a feed widget. UnderLayout > Page Elements add a feed gadget to a sidebar. Enter the URL of the default feed of your site which will be:

http://yoursitename.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Enter Recent Posts in the title and then Save. For more information about adding a posts feed widget to a sidebar please refer to my article Add a Recent Posts Feed to a Blogger Blog 

You can do the same for comments if you wish to have a list ofrecent comments displayed in your sidebar. In this case you would enter:

http://yoursitename.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default

For more in depth coverage about adding a comments feed to your sidebar please see my article Add a Recent Comments Feed to a Blogger Sidebar

Ensure you set up your site feeds to show the full text. To check this navigate to Settings > Site Feeds and select yes from the dropdown box for all three feeds.

Consider having a feed specifically for a popular label if it contains 20 or more posts.


9. Optimize Your Use of Images
Chances are you don't give a thought to images when you insert them into your posts but images can be optimized by careful use offilenames and the alt attribute. When naming images avoid long names. Instead give your images distinctive filenames rather than something generic like 00045.jpg which has no meaning. 

The alt attribute allows you to specify what text is displayed when a visitor's mouse hovers over an image. The alt attribute also gets displayed if the image is not available for some reason. By optimizing your alt attributes you are increasing the likelihood of your images appearing in Google Image Searches.

Optimizing your alt attributes is easy. Every time you insert an image into a post look for the alt attribute which will be empty by default

style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 122px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt=""src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/abcdeefgBxA/4560/sidebar-add-this-bookmark-button.JPG" border="0" />

Fill in the alt attribute with a useful description of your image 

style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 122px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="Blog Know How Sidebar Showing Add This Bookmark Button" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/abcdeefgBxA/4560/sidebar-add-this-bookmark-button.JPG" border="0" />

Depending on the subject of your site you can gain a lot of traffic from the images you post on your site. The more unique the content of your site the greater the likelihood that your traffic will stem from images. Without going overboard ensure you have a good mix of images to support your articles.


10. Take Advantage of Web Analytics Services
Having implemented some strategies to improve crawling and indexing of your site by search engine giants Google, Yahoo and MSN chances are you will want to see how these changes have impacted on the traffic reaching your site. Web Analytics programs are a valuable tool for gaining insight into visitor behaviour and trends. The kind of information that a program like Google Analytics will provide is:

how users reach and behave on your site

the most popular content on your site

the impact of optimizations you make to your site (e.g. by how much did changing the order of title tags improve traffic from search engines?)

To integrate Google Analytics into your Blogger (Blogspot) blog please refer to my articles Track Visitors to Your Blogger Blog and Add Google Analytics to Blogger Blog

This article has discussed 10 easy ways to build site traffic and improve SEO for Blogger (Blogspot) Bloggers by addressing the following areas: feeds, images, social bookmarking, title tags, permalinks, content, analytics, submitting your blog to search engines.

Related Articles
Blogger Guide to Google Adsense Placement
Avoid 6 Common Blogger Mistakes
Add Meta Tags to Blogger for Better SEO
List of Blog Know How Tutorials for Blogger Blogs