Using Google Plus Profile For Blogger

You've definitely run some google searches and seen some blog author's google plus profile picture right beside search results, right? In a bid to make this work for my blog, I tried lots of stuffs out of which none of them worked. Just today, I logged in to blogger in draft just to see the upcoming blogger features and saw this option at the top right of the screen asking me to switch my blogger profile to google plus. It sounded good and I continued, reading the benefits and everything about it.

One of the key benefit that made me proceed with the switch was the fact that my google plus profile will be associated with site on search result pages. Also, whenever I comment on my blog or any other blog supporting comments with google account, my google plus profile will be linked instead of that boring blogger profile. It's a good one coming from google though because I never like blogger profile layout, the color scheme and all.

How Do I Link My Blog To Google Plus

This feature isn't yet published officially because it's only still available in Blogger in draft where blogger's upcoming features are first tested out. To switch your blogger profile to google plus profile and associate it with your blog:

-  You need to log in to draft.blogger.com

- You should see a pop up at the top right corner asking you to make the switch.

- If you can't find this, then follow this link

- Just follow the next couple of steps and enter your google account password when prompted.

- Mark the check box at the last stage and complete the profile switch.

What Are The Benefits Of Linking Your Google Plus Profile To Blogger?

Switching your blogger profile to google plus has lots of benefits and one of the one I like most is that you have one less online profile to worry about.

-You get access to upcoming Google+ features on Blogger

-Your posts gets highlighted in Google search results for your social connections

-Maintaining one identity instead of duplicate ones

Information on your blogger profile won't automatically transferred to your google plus profile, you have to select those information you want to display on your new profile including your displayed blogs. Also, this switch will make the blogger widget on your profile display your google plus profile instead and all existing comments made with with blogger profile will automatically redirect to your google plus profile when clicked.

Though it is said that my posts gets highlighted in Google search results for social connections, I haven't been able to see this since I made google plus my default blogger profile. I made the change just a few hours ago, just hoping it's really gonna have any effect in search results.

Even if it doesn't, I still feel convenient with that ugly looking blogger profile gone. :D

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Adding A Chat Box / Shout Box To Blogger

Adding a chat box or shout box to your blog is just another way to make your blog more social. It makes you connect with your visitors even more and makes your blog engaging. A simple chatbox might make your blog visitor stay longer than normal. A chatbox / shoutbox can also serve as a guestbook where visitors can leave comments and suggestions easily without the need to create a separate page for that. If you have an entertainment blog, then you definitely must have this. Adding a chatbox to blogger is quite easy and you don't need to know much HTML, just a little copy and paste procedure and you're done with it.

There are lots of sites around where you can create a chatbox / shoutbox widget from your blog but I found three that are actually the best of all.

1. ShoutMix

This widget is quite one of the very best because it's got some features that's simply unique. You can log in to the chat system with facebook and twitter as long as you authenticate the ShoutMix app. You can also customize the look and feel of the shoutbox to match your blog's template. You need to first create an account and verify your email after which you're asked to create a shoutbox. Below is a preview of what the shoutbox looks like:

After creating the shoutbox and customizing it, click on the Embed link on the left to copy out the code which will be added to your blog. This will be explained later in the post.

2. Cbox

Cbox is one of the oldest chatbox around and I also recommend it because of its simplicity. It's easy to create and you can choose from any of the ready made themes and it's possible customize the chatbox to match your blog's template too. Cbox allows your visitors to comment using their name and website address or email as they do not offer facebook integration like ShoutMix. Below is a preview of the chatbox i created there:

After customizing the look and feel of your chat box, go to Publish to copy out the code which will be added to your blog.

3. FreeShoutBox

FreeShoutBox also gives you offers the service of giving your blog or website a chatbox / shoutbox all for free. You also need to create an acount in order to create a customized shoutbox and you can choose from any of the ready made themes or use your own custom CSS layout. Below is a preview of the shoutbox I created:




How To Add The ChatBox Code To Blogger

It's a matter of preference, you can use any of the sites listed above but I prefer the first one as it offers more features than the rest. You can use any of them though, it's a matter of choice. I believe you've copied out the code, right? Now let's add that chatbox to your blog!

1. Login to your blogger account and click on Design

2. Depending on where you want the shout ox or chatbox to appear, click on Add a Widget. ( The sidebar is the best position if you ask me :) )


3. Select HTML / JavaScript

4. Paste the shoutbox code and save.

Now, preview your template and watch the chatbox appear on your blog!

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Google Adsense Approval Trick Through Third Party Sites?

Quite a lot of new bloggers still find it difficult getting their google adsense account approved due to one reason or the other. Lots of people get desperate typing search queries in google such as google adsense approval trick, 24hrs google adsense approval and so on. Lots of people even paid some individuals in a bid to buy an already approved google adsense account. It's undisputed that google adsense remains the easiest way to monetize a blog and for this reason, there's so much clamor just to get an approval from google. In recent times, google adsense team even tightens up the approval thingy by making it a two-stage process.


Just of recent, thousands of publishers were banned from the adsense program and lots of hopes were dashed. Some of my friends in bloggers lab on facebook were affected by the massive ban. Relating closely with some of them made me realize most of the banned accounts were approved through third party sites. You can apply through some third party sites and get your google adsense account approved but I never wrote about any of these sites once. I'm quite aware of them but i never considered them a good option because it all looks shady. Some of these sites include:

1. Fixya
2. Hubpages
3. Docstoc
4. Indyarocks

They are all independent publishing platforms where you can get your google adsense account approved in 24 hours, or even less, and I'm not implying that all accounts approved through third party sites always get banned eventually, I'm only saying it's not such a good idea getting your adsense approved via third party sites. The adsense team always review sites from time to time and any discrepancy might make your already approved account get suspended.

To get your blog approved by google directly, you can follow these guidelines:

1. Give your blog some time to grow, I suggest three months and be sure you have a decent traffic. A couple of hundred pageviews daily gives you a better chance

2. If you're on blogspot, you have a better chance of getting approved with a custom domain but that doesn't mean you won't get approved with a blogspot sub domain either.

3. You should have up to 20-30 original posts/pages. Copying contents from other blogs won't get you anywhere.

4. Your design also matters. Be sure your blog's is designed in a way to make it look attractive. A blog with poorly arranged widgets scattered everywhere doesn't stand much chance.

5. I suggest you shouldn't have ads from other advertising companies like bidvertiser or chikita running on your blog when google comes to certify your blog. It's only a suggested precaution though.

6. Be sure your blog complies with google's terms of service. Your blog posts must not be based on topics not allowed by google such as, hacking, pornography, drugs, ammunition, warez, cracks, keygens and so on.

With the tips above taken into practice, I'm sure your adsense account will be approved and in case they reject your application, you can always try again. I know those who applied up to five times before getting approved. Good luck!

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Nofollow & Dofollow Backlinks: A Guide To Blog Commenting

Link building is an important part of search engine optimization and some bloggers do this at all costs, even to the point of spamming on other blogs. Having quality, one-way backlinks pointing to your site does a lot in increasing your google page rank, thereby increasing the chance of your blog appearing in google search results. What most people fail to know is that only the quality of the backlinks matter, not necessarily the quantity. It's quite possible to have just a hundred backlinks and rank higher than sites with thousands of backlinks.

Now, don't get it twisted, a high google pagerank doesn't always equal to your traffic but it's still good to have it anyway. It's one of the algorithms google checks when sorting out search results. It's always been said that original contents matters a great deal and you must take this even more serious than link building but that is not the main topic here. There's a more comprehensive post I recently wrote on how to increase your google page rank and alexa traffic rank, you should try reading through it.


There are several ways to get quality backlinks pointing to your blog and one of the most effective is commenting on blogs relating to your niche. I've seen quite a lot of bloggers commenting here even to the point of spamming but most do not realize that google will never index or follow those links because there are ways to make blog commenting work to your advantage.

DoFollow And NoFollow Backlinks

What are dofollow and nofollow links? Did you know you can comment on 100 blogs without google recognizing any of those precious backlinks you worked hard to get? In a bid to reduce spamming for the sake of SEO, google devised the nofolow and dofollow tags. A link with nofollow tag added has no SEO benefit for the destination site and a link with dofollow or none of the tags will be indexed and counted as a backlink for the destination site


By default, all comments posted on blogs hosted on blogspot are nofollow links. Google doesn't index links on most blogger blogs, you probably would have noticed that in google webmaster tools and wondered why.

How To Differentiate Between Nofollow And Dofollow Links

Before you go about commenting on just any blog, you should know whether the blog you're commenting on has any SEO value for you. There's a firefox extension that highlight links in a page according to nofollow / dofollow status.

There's an easier way to do this though, just highlight an existing comment using firefox, right click and select view selection source. Below is an example of a nofollow link as shown in page source:

<a class="comments-autor-name" href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/05279327145715289304" rel="nofollow">Don Caprio</a>
<a class="says">says:</a>

I'm not saying you should only comment on blogs with dofollow links, commenting on a few blogs with nofollow tag creates what looks like a natural profile in google's view.

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How To Attach Files For Downloads On Blogspot

It's not possible to attach files with your blog posts on blogger except you're only dealing with images and videos. Unlike wordpress where you can freely attach files of all formats with your blog posts, you have to find an external file host to do this on blogspot. Maybe you have some games, softwares, zip files or some files in an uncommon format you intend to share with your blog readers, there are still alternative sites to use that provide free space to host these files.
There are so many file sharing/hosting sites you can use and these include hotfile, mediafire, rapidshare, megaupload and so on. I do use hotfile because they allow remote uploading. This means uploading files through file URL. With hotfile, I only need to have the download link of the file i intend to upload and the file gets copied to my hotfile file manager. Below is a complete list of file sharing sites I found you can use on your blog:

-Hotfile
-4shared
-Mediafire
-DropBox
-Box
-BigUpload
-Sendspace
-Files2U
-WikiUpload
-Filehosting

Though the service provided by these sites are free, there are certain conditions you must adhere to and if you fail to do this, your files will be deleted without informing you.

Hosting Your Files On Google

Unknown to many, everyone with a google account is entitled to a free space to upload files which can be used on their blogs. Just like the picassa web album which is linked to your blogger account to upload pictures to be used on your blog, Google sites can also be used to host files on blogspot. The space you're allocated (100MB) is quite very small unlike the file sharing sites listed above but you still have control over your files and you can be rest assured no one is going to delete your files. It's quite useful if you're hosting some light weight files and javascripts to use on your blog.

Another added advantage is that your file can be hotlinked, this means you can link directly to the file on your blog without showing your visitor any download page.

How To Upload Files To Google Sites

I wasn't used to google sites at first and it took me some time to figure out how to upload files there and use it here on blogger. You need to create a Google Sites account account and create your first site.

-After this, go to the created site and click on the drop down menu at the top right of the page.


-Click on Manage Site

-Select Attachment from the links on the left side of the page

-Click on Upload, select the file and that's it.

- When you're done uploading, right click on the download link to copy it our. It might look like this:

https://sites.google.com/site/capriofiles/DonCaprioBloggerTemplate.zip?attredirects=0&d=1

Just delete the rest stuff after the file name to make it look like this.

https://sites.google.com/site/capriofiles/DonCaprioBloggerTemplate.zip

You can as well mask the link as shown below:

Download Here

You can now attach the direct link to the file with your blog posts. Like I said, Google Sites file hosting is only for small files. if you intend to host large files, try using the file sharing sites earlier mentioned.

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Quick Search Engine Optimization Results With Free Trial

There are so many factors affecting your search engine ranking and even if you try to get to google's first page all by yourself, there are still some opportunities you'll be missing without an expert analysis. Apart from using the right keywords and having as much backlinks as possible, there might still be some things or two you probably won't know about because the rules on which search engines operate keep changing and hence, the need to have professionals handle your search engine optimization worries.

QuickSEOResults is a reputed search engine optimization company that has a unique offer you can hardly find anywhere else, a free trial SEO you can enjoy for good thirty days without paying a dime. Yes, your site is optimized for thirty days all for free and you can decide to continue with their service after thirty days whether you're satisfied with the trial or not but I bet you will.

Maybe you own a new website in a very competitive niche or you already have an existing site that shows up on google once in a while when someone types a weird search query, you can still make it to the first page within a very reasonable time as the results is quite quick as the name suggests.

QuickSEOResults strictly uses white hat search engine optimization concepts which stands the test of time and approved by major search engines as opposed to most SEO companies using black hat methods which got slammed by google's last Panda update. All their link building services are built on PR 6-9 authority websites and pinged out to 30-40 services which enables quick indexation. In order to ensure effectiveness, your site is also submitted to about 50 social bookmarking sites and close to 100 RSS aggregators.

If you have an idea on what basic search engine optimization and link building is all about, you will understand the stategic method employed by QuickSEOResults and like I mentioned earlier, you don't need to pay a dime till you see what they can do within thirty days, so I suggest you go for the free trial SEO first.

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