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| Responsive Search box or Blogger |
Showing posts with label Blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blogging. Show all posts
Friday, August 25, 2017
How to add responsive search box for Blogger
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
Crawl Budgets. How to Stay in Google's Good Graces
There have been a number of different definitions floating around for
the term “crawl budget”, but there is not one single term that can
describe everything that a crawl budget stands for on the outside. Here,
we will try to clarify what it means, and how it relates to Googlebot.
First, it should be noted that the following description of crawl budget is not a mechanism that most publishers will ever have to be concerned about. If a new web page has the tendency to be crawled on the same day that it is published, a webmaster will not necessarily have to be concerned about crawl budget. At the same time, if a website has less than a few thousand URLs, often it will be crawled efficiently. Larger websites and websites that auto generate pages based on given URL parameters will see the importance of prioritizing what should be crawled, when it should be crawled, and how much resource should be allocated to crawling from the server hosting the website.
Also, events that occur sitewide, like a website move, can trigger an upsurge in crawl demand so that the content is indexed under the new URLs. When considering the crawl demand and crawl rate with each other, a crawl budget is defined as the amount of URLs that Googlebot can and desires to crawl.
When server resources are wasted on pages like these, it will drain crawl activity from web pages that actually hold value. This can cause a significant delay in discovering quality content on the website.
You should remove any user-specific details from the URLs. This also goes for session IDs and sort orders. As they are removed from URLs they can be applied to cookies. By doing this and then redirecting to a cleaner URL, you will retain the information that is needed and can reduce the number of URLs that point to the same content. Resulting in more efficient crawling.
You should aim to disallow actions that Googlebot cannot perform. Utilize the robots.txt file and disallow things like crawling login pages, shopping carts, contact forms, and other pages that have the purpose of doing something that is impossible for the crawler to do. It would be wise to have the crawler ignore things like that and spend their time crawling the content that actually means something to search engines.
One URL should only have one set of content. In a perfect world, there would be a one-to-one pairing of URL and content. This means that each URL would lead to a unique piece of content, and that piece of content would only be able to be accessed through that one URL. The closer that this can be done, the better, and the more streamlined that the website will be regarding crawling and indexing. If the CMS or site setup makes this hard to do, you can use the rel=canonical element that will indicate what the preferred URL is for a particular piece of content.
Control in infinite spaces. Does your website link to something like a calendar that has an infinite number of past and future dates that have their own unique URLs? Does your website have paginated data that gives a status code 200 when &page=3563 is added to the URL? Even when there are not a whole lot of pages? If this is the case, you probably have infinite crawl space on the website. Crawlers may be wasting bandwidth trying to successfully crawl it all.
When a website is made to perform faster, it will improve the user experience while simultaneously increasing the crawl rate. For Google bot, a fast website is just one sign of a healthy server, so that it may get more content through the same amount of connections. Alternatively, a high number of 5xx errors or connection timeout errors will indicate the opposite, and crawling will slow down. Any user that is concerned about this should refer to the crawl errors report within search console.
An increased crawl rate does not necessarily mean that a website will have a better position within search results. Google utilizes hundreds of signals in order to rank the results like the quality of the content and so forth. It is true that crawling is vital for showing up in the results, but it is not a ranking signal.
In general, any URL that Googlebot has crawled will count toward a website's crawl budget. Alternate URLs, including AMP or hreflang, or even embedded content, like CSS and JavaScript, will need to be crawled, that's consuming a website's crawl budget. Also, long chains of redirecting will have a negative effect on crawling. If it is not necessary to have more than one redirect, then this should not happen. It is frowned upon for users and will use up a decent amount of the crawl budget.
When considering the crawl delay directive for Google bot, it cannot be processed by Google bot, this is of no use.
Any URL that has been crawled will affect the crawl budget, so even when the page has marked a URL as nofollow, it may still be crawled if a different page on the website or on the Internet as a whole does not label the link as nofollow.
With the Crawl Budget put in place, Google will prioritize what to crawl, when to crawl it, and how much resources the server that is hosting the website can give to crawling. This is more important for websites that are larger, or for those that automatically generate pages based on URL parameters. Think of it like this. You have a filing cabinet full of documents. Some are documents with two copies or several copies, others are original documents only. You have a certain amount of time to go through all of these documents (and their copies) one by one and file them appropriately. It would take a significantly less amount of time to complete your task if there was only the original documents to sort if the copies serve no purpose. As a website might have duplicate content problems, the other content may not be crawled and indexed as accurately, meaning that it is not reflected in the search engine results.
A crawl budget should not be wasted on duplicate content or content that has little meaning. Do what you can to save it for the good stuff. This is something that might not occur to those who are new to putting content on the web—some may think that the more times that it occurs then the more likely it is to be seen. This could not be farther from the truth. Content keeps its importance when it is unique, factual, and is good quality. If the same content shows up over and over again on the web, the quality sort of thins out and it stops being unique and may lose some credibility. Knowing what a crawl budget is and how it works does not only benefit crawling and indexing. When you understand how it works and how to build a website around it, benefits will be seen for the website as a whole. Crawl rate limits can be improved by making sure that the server that the website is on is working to be as responsive as possible. One of the most recommended ways to do this is to configure page caching through the use of W3 Total Cache or a similar solution and choosing a host that uses RAM based caching like TMDHosting or SiteGround. A higher crawl rate will in fact help all of the pages in a website to be indexed, Google has made it clear that a higher crawl rate does not equate a higher ranking in search engine results pages. With that being known, it can be assumed that when these actions are taken to optimize the crawl rate, that a website may also see a slight benefit regarding ranking. This is simply due to combined factors like reducing duplicate pages, and so forth.
Knowing what a crawl budget is and how to utilize it is just one more small thing that webmasters can do to keep the health of their site the best that it can, whether it is implemented right at the conception of the website, or if it takes place during a website redesign or clean-up. Google could not care less whether or not a site is aware of a crawl budget as crawling and indexing is all automated, but the actions of a webmaster can ensure that Google bot works efficiently for their site.
First, it should be noted that the following description of crawl budget is not a mechanism that most publishers will ever have to be concerned about. If a new web page has the tendency to be crawled on the same day that it is published, a webmaster will not necessarily have to be concerned about crawl budget. At the same time, if a website has less than a few thousand URLs, often it will be crawled efficiently. Larger websites and websites that auto generate pages based on given URL parameters will see the importance of prioritizing what should be crawled, when it should be crawled, and how much resource should be allocated to crawling from the server hosting the website.
The Crawl Rate Limit
Google bot has been designed to be a positive force on the web. Crawling is the main priority, while also ensuring that it does not degenerate the experience of the user that is visiting the website. This is called the crawl rate limit, which will limit the maximum fetching rate for the given site. To put it simply, this will represent the number of simultaneous parallel connections that Googlebot can use to crawl the website, in addition to the time that it has to wait between this type of fetching. The crawl rate will vary up-and-down based on a few things; if the website response quickly for a while, the limit will go up and more connections can be used to crawl. If the website slows down or gives server errors, the limit will go down and Googlebot will crawl the website less. This is the called the crawl health. Additionally, limits can be set in the search console: website owners are able to reduce the amount that a Googlebot is crawling their website. It should be noted that setting a higher limit will not automatically increase crawling frequency.The Crawl Demand
Even when the crawl rate limit has not been reached, if there has been no demand to be indexed, there will not be much activity from Google bot. Popularity and stagnation play an important role in determining the crawl demand. URLs that are seen as more popular on the Internet will be crawled more often to keep them fresh on the index. Alternatively, Google's systems aim to prevent URLs from getting stale on the index. URLs that are not updated frequently by their webmasters may not be crawled frequently, as there is no new information that Google needs to be aware of. These sites have a low crawl demand.Also, events that occur sitewide, like a website move, can trigger an upsurge in crawl demand so that the content is indexed under the new URLs. When considering the crawl demand and crawl rate with each other, a crawl budget is defined as the amount of URLs that Googlebot can and desires to crawl.
Crawl Budget Factors
Analysis has shown that having too many low value add URLs will negatively affect the crawling and indexing of a website. The analysis also found that the low value URLs will fall into these categories: on-site duplicate content, faceted navigation and session identifiers, soft error pages, infinite spaces and proxies, hacked pages, low-quality and spam content.When server resources are wasted on pages like these, it will drain crawl activity from web pages that actually hold value. This can cause a significant delay in discovering quality content on the website.
Optimization for Crawling and Indexing
There are hundreds of new websites being created on the internet each day, and Google only has a finite number of resources. As Google is faced with the near infinite number of content that is presented online, Google bot can only find and crawl a portion of that content. And of that content, only a portion can be indexed. URLs act as a bridge between a search engine's crawler and a website—crawlers need to be able to cross the bridge (find and crawl the URL) in order to be able to find the content of the website. If the URLs are too complicated or are redundant, crawlers will just end up retracing their steps unnecessarily. When URLs are neat and organized and lead directly to the intended content, crawlers will spend their allotted time accessing the content, as opposed to weeding through obsolete pages or looking at the same content over and over again on various URLs.You should remove any user-specific details from the URLs. This also goes for session IDs and sort orders. As they are removed from URLs they can be applied to cookies. By doing this and then redirecting to a cleaner URL, you will retain the information that is needed and can reduce the number of URLs that point to the same content. Resulting in more efficient crawling.
You should aim to disallow actions that Googlebot cannot perform. Utilize the robots.txt file and disallow things like crawling login pages, shopping carts, contact forms, and other pages that have the purpose of doing something that is impossible for the crawler to do. It would be wise to have the crawler ignore things like that and spend their time crawling the content that actually means something to search engines.
One URL should only have one set of content. In a perfect world, there would be a one-to-one pairing of URL and content. This means that each URL would lead to a unique piece of content, and that piece of content would only be able to be accessed through that one URL. The closer that this can be done, the better, and the more streamlined that the website will be regarding crawling and indexing. If the CMS or site setup makes this hard to do, you can use the rel=canonical element that will indicate what the preferred URL is for a particular piece of content.
Control in infinite spaces. Does your website link to something like a calendar that has an infinite number of past and future dates that have their own unique URLs? Does your website have paginated data that gives a status code 200 when &page=3563 is added to the URL? Even when there are not a whole lot of pages? If this is the case, you probably have infinite crawl space on the website. Crawlers may be wasting bandwidth trying to successfully crawl it all.
More to Know
Crawling is how websites make it into Google search results. An efficient crawl of a site will help when it is indexed in Google search. Then, when a website is properly indexed, it is able to appear correctly in the search engine results pageWhen a website is made to perform faster, it will improve the user experience while simultaneously increasing the crawl rate. For Google bot, a fast website is just one sign of a healthy server, so that it may get more content through the same amount of connections. Alternatively, a high number of 5xx errors or connection timeout errors will indicate the opposite, and crawling will slow down. Any user that is concerned about this should refer to the crawl errors report within search console.
An increased crawl rate does not necessarily mean that a website will have a better position within search results. Google utilizes hundreds of signals in order to rank the results like the quality of the content and so forth. It is true that crawling is vital for showing up in the results, but it is not a ranking signal.
In general, any URL that Googlebot has crawled will count toward a website's crawl budget. Alternate URLs, including AMP or hreflang, or even embedded content, like CSS and JavaScript, will need to be crawled, that's consuming a website's crawl budget. Also, long chains of redirecting will have a negative effect on crawling. If it is not necessary to have more than one redirect, then this should not happen. It is frowned upon for users and will use up a decent amount of the crawl budget.
When considering the crawl delay directive for Google bot, it cannot be processed by Google bot, this is of no use.
Any URL that has been crawled will affect the crawl budget, so even when the page has marked a URL as nofollow, it may still be crawled if a different page on the website or on the Internet as a whole does not label the link as nofollow.
With the Crawl Budget put in place, Google will prioritize what to crawl, when to crawl it, and how much resources the server that is hosting the website can give to crawling. This is more important for websites that are larger, or for those that automatically generate pages based on URL parameters. Think of it like this. You have a filing cabinet full of documents. Some are documents with two copies or several copies, others are original documents only. You have a certain amount of time to go through all of these documents (and their copies) one by one and file them appropriately. It would take a significantly less amount of time to complete your task if there was only the original documents to sort if the copies serve no purpose. As a website might have duplicate content problems, the other content may not be crawled and indexed as accurately, meaning that it is not reflected in the search engine results.
A crawl budget should not be wasted on duplicate content or content that has little meaning. Do what you can to save it for the good stuff. This is something that might not occur to those who are new to putting content on the web—some may think that the more times that it occurs then the more likely it is to be seen. This could not be farther from the truth. Content keeps its importance when it is unique, factual, and is good quality. If the same content shows up over and over again on the web, the quality sort of thins out and it stops being unique and may lose some credibility. Knowing what a crawl budget is and how it works does not only benefit crawling and indexing. When you understand how it works and how to build a website around it, benefits will be seen for the website as a whole. Crawl rate limits can be improved by making sure that the server that the website is on is working to be as responsive as possible. One of the most recommended ways to do this is to configure page caching through the use of W3 Total Cache or a similar solution and choosing a host that uses RAM based caching like TMDHosting or SiteGround. A higher crawl rate will in fact help all of the pages in a website to be indexed, Google has made it clear that a higher crawl rate does not equate a higher ranking in search engine results pages. With that being known, it can be assumed that when these actions are taken to optimize the crawl rate, that a website may also see a slight benefit regarding ranking. This is simply due to combined factors like reducing duplicate pages, and so forth.
Knowing what a crawl budget is and how to utilize it is just one more small thing that webmasters can do to keep the health of their site the best that it can, whether it is implemented right at the conception of the website, or if it takes place during a website redesign or clean-up. Google could not care less whether or not a site is aware of a crawl budget as crawling and indexing is all automated, but the actions of a webmaster can ensure that Google bot works efficiently for their site.
how to control Crawling and Indexing by Search Engines

Automated web crawlers are an important tool that will help to crawl and index content on the internet. Webmasters use this to their advantage as it allows them to curate their content in a way that is beneficial to their brand, and will keep the crawlers away from the irrelevant content. Here, you will find standard ways to control the crawling and indexing of your website's content. The methods described are (for the most part) supported by all of the major search engines and web crawlers. Most websites will not have default settings for restricting crawling, indexing, and serving links in search results, so to start off you will not have to really do anything with your content. If you would like all of your pages contained in a website to be indexed, you will not have to modify anything. There is no need to make a robots.txt file if you are okay with all URLs contained in the site being crawled and indexed by search engines.
Starting Off
Search engines will go through two important stages to make a website's content available in search results to users—crawling and indexing. Crawling is when the search engine's crawlers (bots) access a webpage that is available publicly. For the most part, this only means that the bot looks at the webpage and will follow the links on the page the same way that a human would. Indexing is when there is information gathered about the pages so that it can be displayed in a search results page. The difference between crawling and indexing is vital. Many people tend to be confused about the two, and it can lead to a web page either appearing or not appearing on search results. It is possible for a page to be crawled but not indexed, but only rarely is a page indexed but not crawled. Also, if you're aiming to prevent the indexing of a page, you will need to allow the URL to be crawled or at least attempted to be crawled.Here, you will find help on controlling aspects of crawling and indexing, so that you can best determine how you would prefer your own content be accessed by the bots that crawl, and how you would like your content to be presented in the search results to users.
It is possible that in a particular situation, you would not want a crawler to access a certain area of a server. Be it because of limited server resources, problems with the URL or linking structure. If this is the case there would be a never ending number of URLs, and it would be impossible for all of them to be crawled.
Other times, you'd want to control how your content is indexed, and how it is presented within search results. You might not want your pages indexed at all, or would like them to appear without a certain part of the content.
NOTE: do not use these methods when controlling access to content that is private. You should be using a more secure method to hide content that is not for the public.
ALSO: it is possible for a page to be indexed but never crawled—these processes are not dependent on one another. If a page has enough information available and is deemed relevant to users, a search engine might decide to index it in search results even if it was never crawled. That is why it is important to be able to have control over which content is crawled and indexed.
It is possible to control indexing in a way that only affects one page at a time by using some information that is contained within each page as it is crawled by a bot. You may use a specific meta tag embedded at the top of the HTML page or a specific HTTP element on the header that is served with all content on the website—both of these methods will give you some control over how your page is indexed.
Robots.txt
When using a robots.txt file, it has to be located on the top-level of the directory of the host and must be accessible via the correct protocol and port number. The most widely accepted protocol for robots.txt are http and https. Google will also accept robots.txt files with a FTP protocol, and use an anonymous login. The directives that are listed within the file will only apply to the host, protocol, and port number in which the file is hosted. Also know that the URLs for robots.txt files are case sensitive.When a robots.txt file is fetched, the outcome will be full allow, full disallow, or conditional allow. A robots.txt file can be created using almost any text editor, as long as it allows for the creation of standard ASCII or UTF-8 text files. Don't use a word processor, as they sometimes add unexpected characters and will mess up the code.
Not really sure what the robots.txt file looks like? Here are a few examples to get you familiar.
To allow all content to be crawled, you will see:
user-agent: *disallow
or you will see
user-agent: *
allow: /
While both of these entries are totally valid, if you do want all of your content to be crawled, it is not mandatory for you to create and employ a robots.txt file, and in-fact it is recommended that one isn't used.
To disallow a whole website to be crawled, you will see:
user-agent: *disallow: /
To disallow the crawling of specific parts of a website you will see something like:
user-agent: *disallow: /junk/
disallow: /calendar/
It should be noted that you should be using proper authentication if you want to block access to private content on the website, do not rely on robots.txt for this. If you do use robots.txt to block the private content, it could still be indexed but not crawled, and the robots.txt file can be seen by anyone, thus potentially exposing your private content and showing the location of it.
To allow access for a single crawler, you will see:
user-agent: Googlebot-newsdisallow:
user-agent: *
disallow: /
To allow access to every crawler except one, you will see:
user-agent: unnecessarybotdisallow: /
user-agent: *
disallow:
Robots Meta Tag and X-Robots Tag
A robots meta tag may be added at the top of an HTML page in the
header section. It will indicate whether or not a search engine will
index a particular page on the website. This tag is applicable to all
search engines, and you have the control to change which search engines
are allowed or blocked when you specify the name of the user-agent in
place of “robots” within the code. This code would look like noindex” /> In the situation when there is content that is not HTML (like a document file) it may also be crawled and indexed by a search engine. When this happens, it is not possible to add a meta tag on individual pages, rather you will use an HTTP header to indicate the response. The header will not be able to be seen by the visitors of the website, and is actually not part of the content. An x-robots tag would be included with the header.
APIs-Google User Agent
This user-agent is specific to Google, and will deliver any push
notification messages. App developers are able to request these
notifications in order to get rid of the need for constantly polling
servers to find out if resources are different than they used to be. In
order to make sure that there is nobody abusing this service, Google
asks of developers to prove that they own the domain prior to allowing
them to register a URL with a domain as the place that they would like
to receive messages. APIs-Google will send all push notifications employing an HTTP POST request. If there is a failure here due to something that may be temporary, APIs-Google will send the notification again. If this still does not work, APIs-Google will keep trying, sometimes up to a few days.
APIs-Google accesses sites at a rate that varies by the amount of push notification requests that have been created for your site's servers, the number of retries that are occurring, and by how quickly the resources being monitored are being updated. Because of this, the traffic patterns for APIs-Google may be consistent or they can be sporadic—it all just depends.
When you are the administrator of a domain that has multiple subdomains that are owned/administered separately, one of those admins might have put in place applications that send push notifications. If you'd like to block APIs-Google, it is advised that you first contact any of the administrators that could have set up an application that applies. Also, you could use the normal robots.txt directives to block the APIs-Google from gaining access to your website. If doing this, you will need to specify APIs-Google as the user-agent in the robots.txt file. It is possible to control APIs-Google separately from Googlebot because they follow different directives.
APIs-Google uses HTTPS in order to deliver push notifications, and it requires a website to have a valid SSL certificate. A certificate that is not valid would include: a self-assigned certificate, a certificate that has been revoked, and a certificate that has been signed by a source that is not trusted. To stop requests for retry, the application should be well-designed and should respond within seconds to a notification message.
Every now and then the IP addresses utilized by APIs-Google will change, and individuals can set their user-agent to whatever they'd like. The best way to make sure that Google is accessing the site is to use a reverse DNS lookup—this is similar to the way that you would verify that a bot trying to access your server is a true Googlebot. When this is the case, you will need to look in your logs for any IP address that is associated with the APIs-Google user-agent, and the lookup will identify the domain as “googlebot.com”.
Google's Crawlers
Crawler is actually a generic term used to describe any robot or
spider program that is used to automatically scan and discover websites
through the act of following links from one web page to the next.
Googlebot is Google's main crawler and is widely used. When there are more than one user-agents in a robots.txt file, the one that is most specific is the one that Google will follow. If you prefer for all of Google to have the ability to crawl your web pages, you will actually not need a robots.txt file at all. If you aim to block or allow any of Google's crawlers from having access to any of your content, this can be done by specifying Googlebot as the user-agent.
The Wrap-Up
The amount of content contained on your website that is crawled,
indexed, and served in search results can be completely customized by
you as a webmaster. Content can be open or blocked from crawling and
indexing, and which of the multiple ways to do it are up to you. It is
vital to remember though, that any private information that is contained
within the website that is considered private (like lists of users'
information) should be kept under some sort of encryption. This is
because the bots are not always perfect, and human error with coding
does occur. The last thing that you would want to happen is to seem
untrustworthy by having your users' information available to the public.
Google provides many resources for webmasters to work on their sitemaps
and the like. On the flip side, if none of your content needs to be
blocked from crawling and indexing, there is no action that you will
need to take in editing any code for the web site or web pages. Just
know that if you take no action, all content is fair game to be crawled,
indexed, and served up to search engines.How to submit sitemaps to Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Ask.com
After successfully creating a sitemap for a website, the sitemap must
be submitted to main search engines manually. This article will provide
users with information and steps one should take to submit the sitemap
to search engine sites. Submitting to Google, Bing, and Yahoo separately
is worth it and does not take much time.
Submitting sitemaps to Google.
The first step is to verify the site. Google will not accept any sitemap without approving the site it is designated for initially.
Submitting sitemaps to Yahoo.
Submitting sitemaps to Bing.
Submitting Sitemaps to Ask.com
Currently, Ask.com does not allow one to submit URL as a site for
search engine. They do, however, give permission to submit the sitemap
of the website. The interface is not as easy to follow as major search
engines have, but one can submit the site map of a site by pasting the
URL provided below and pasting the domain name on it…
http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://<The Domain Name>/sitemapxml.aspx
Above we provided guide step-by-step on how to submit sitemaps to major search engines. We provided straightforward and efficient path on how to do it.
*** Update: Ask.com no longer allows you to submit sitemaps. Reference your sitemap location from your robots.txt so that Ask.com can index your content.
Submitting sitemaps to Google.
The first step is to verify the site. Google will not accept any sitemap without approving the site it is designated for initially.
- Sign in to Google Webmaster Tools just like you log in into other Google features.
- Press “Add a Site” and provide the URL to Google site in the pop-up box. Then press continue.
- On the page that opens afterwards, press the radio button right after “Add Meta Tag.”
- Copy the Meta tag from the instructions box. We’ll use this later.
- Open a new tab in the browser and open the site you wish to verify.
- Press “More Actions” and click “Manage the Site” from the list.
- Click the General from the tabs which is located right under Site Setting tab.
- Now the Meta tag copied from the instructions box should be pasted in the place right next to Verification.
- Save the changes.
- Go to Webmaster Tools where the Meta tag was copied from.
- Press Verify.
- Go to Webmaster Tools site.
- Select the site of the sitemap.
- Click Site Configuration-> Sitemaps.
- Click Add/Test Sitemap which is located in top right corner.
- In the box that pops up, paste the following code:
/system/feeds/sitemap - Submit the sitemap.
Submitting sitemaps to Yahoo.
- Log in to the Yahoo account.
- Navigate to Yahoo Site Explorer.
- Add your website to the Yahoo by copy-pasting site’s URL and clicking Add My Site afterwards. Make sure to validate that the owner is you. To submit a sitemap, the validation must be done prior to it, otherwise the sitemap will not be posted.
- Press your website URL and click on feed links in right columns.
- Paste your site map URL and let the drop down “Website Feed.” Click Add Feed afterwards.
- Yahoo team will check and validate the sitemap and site as well. It will begin indexing the site as soon as when they determine that the sitemap is efficient and errorless.
Submitting sitemaps to Bing.
- Login to Windows Live Account.
- Navigate to Bing Master Center.
- Add your website to Bing search engine by filling the URL bar with your sitemap’s URL. Afterwards, press Add Site.
- Bing staff will check and validate the sitemap and the site. They will begin indexing the site whenever they determine that the sitemap is errorless.
Submitting Sitemaps to Ask.com
Currently, Ask.com does not allow one to submit URL as a site for
search engine. They do, however, give permission to submit the sitemap
of the website. The interface is not as easy to follow as major search
engines have, but one can submit the site map of a site by pasting the
URL provided below and pasting the domain name on it…http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://<The Domain Name>/sitemapxml.aspx
Above we provided guide step-by-step on how to submit sitemaps to major search engines. We provided straightforward and efficient path on how to do it.
*** Update: Ask.com no longer allows you to submit sitemaps. Reference your sitemap location from your robots.txt so that Ask.com can index your content.
35 Ways To Increase Website Traffic
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| Traffic |
Earning online is simply not as comprehensive as it apparently seems to be. You may hear about your friends making money out of their blogs and others earning a living out of it, but you never hear about the kind of hard work they have put in to reach that level.
What matters more are the techniques and guidelines to follow which gain you a significant amount of traffic for your website, as it is one of the biggest challenges faced by business today. You need to stay acquainted with the constant changes in the search engine algorithm, competition and some good SEO tips to counter this challenge.
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| Web Traffic |
Today I will try my best to provide you with some good and practical ways to improve website traffic.
1) Add A Blog To Your Website
Add a self hosted blog, like WordPress blog, to your website and keep
posting regularly without any laziness interrupting your frequent posts.
2) Write Guest Posts
As many blogs allow guest posts, you should keep writing a few from time
to time for different blogs. Usually this guest post will carry an
author byline with a link to your website. Many readers might find them
re-directed to your website following your guest post.
3) Market Research
You should study the market and on the topics that are similar to your
blog's niche. Publish the research results on your website as it can
attract many banklinks and referral traffic.
4) Optimized Content
Make sure your website content is appropriate and correctly optimized
with right keywords. This will help your readers to easily find your
website on the search engines.
5) SEO Principles
Try to use more optimized Mega tags, headings, bold texts , image description and other optimization techniques.
6) Send A Newsletter
Start a newsletter with the help of services FeedBurner or Aweber and
ask your friends to recieve them via email. This way they will never
forget about your website.
7) Start An Email Series
Send your blog posts as emails to different subscribers. You do not need
to send the entire post content in the email, just send the content
title. This way they will remember your website and if the the title
seems to be catchy or of their interest, you might gain some traffic.
8) Create A Free eBook
Once you have established a blog or website with enough content on it,
you might look forward to create an eBook on the topics related to your
niche. Promote this eBook on several sources and our own website too. Do
not give the link to your website if marketing the eBook on any
external website or blog.
9) Advertise Your Website
You can make custom t-shirts, hats, laptop covers with your website
signatures over them and give out to people with or without any schemes.
This will certainly make your website come to notice.
10) Advertise Your Website On Social Media
This is a fundamental step to take when in the process of gaining
traffic for your website. You should share your website content on
social media like Facebook page. Also regularly Tweet the link to your
website on Twitter with daily posts/articles.
11) Advertising Tools
There are numerous online tools that you can find which will help you
post your website content on different social media and other websites
automatically.
12) Auto-Schedule The Posts/Articles
Use Buffer to schedule your Social media postings at times that drive that most engagement.13) Advertise Via Videos
Make short videos about your website and post them on famous websites like the You Tube.
14) Comment On Other Blogs
Do comment on other blogs that have topics relevant to your niche and
after making appreciation, provide them them the link to your website
and invite them for a visit, nicely.
15) Connect With Users On Social Media
You should try and out efforts to make a strong connection with any user
or fan of your page on the social media. Getting them to share your
blog page can earn you tons of traffic.
16) Pay Per Click Advertising
If your advertising budget permits, consider Pay per click advertising using Google Adwords.17) Share Content On Bookmarking Sites
Share website content on popular social book marking such as Digg.com and StumbleUpon.com.18) Website URL in Email Signature
It is very helpful to use your website or blog URL in the email
signature. This can earn you handsome figure of traffic as well if
rightly used.
19) Monitor You Website Uptime
Use free tools such as http://www.uptimerobot.com/ to monitor website’s uptime. Hosting downtime can lead to a reduction in traffic and negatively affects your search engine ranking.20) Constant Search About Hot Topics
Keep yourself involved in the search for hot and most read topics. Use
Google Keyword tool to identify popular key word being search, and write
about them on your website covering different topics.
21) Mobile Version Of Your Website
Having a mobile version of the website is very important. If not so , you might lose significant amount of traffic yet again.
22) Create Pages On Content Sites
Create pages on popular content sites such as Squidoo.com. Include your website link and and syndicate your blog using the RSS module available on these sites.23) Make Your Website Easy To Search
Make XML site map of your site and submit on Google so next time when somebody navigate they can search it easily.24) Avoid Java or Active X
Avoid cure technologies like java etc because they will make your website lazy.25) Avoid Paying For Adevertising
In case you think you can gain enough traffic by getting paid
advertisements, without them you can market your website better. So do
not waste money in that.
26) Study Google Analytics
Monitor Google Analytics regularly and refine your strategy continuously. Repeat this process regularly.27) Add Your Website To Wikipedia
Write about your website and contribute it to Wikipedia, it will help others to know about it more.28) User Friendly Home Page
Do not make your Home page look too complicated for the user to advance
further, if so the case, they might opt on leaving your website right
away. So keep it simple.
29) Learn To Re-Purpose The Content
Reuse content as much as possible on as many sources as feasible. This will increase your reach and provide addition back-linking opportunities.30) Create Infographics
Create infographics and publish them on infographic galleries with a link to your website.
31) QR Promotion
Initiate QR code promotion to attract customers to your website e.g. by connecting it to a special offer. QR codes are becoming an increasingly popular way for businesses to drive traffic to their website.32) Acquire Sponsorship
You can look for a sports team since they can can provide you with effective sponsorship opportunities.
33) Promote By Writing
Write a review or article about your site and submit it to different article sites like MyezineArticles.com.34) Put Exciting Stuff To Download On Website
Different kinds of mp3 downloadable contents might do the job. Any other interesting thing can work too.
35) Ask Your Customers For Support & Share
Contact your customers and ask them to share your website link to their website or social media profiles. If your content adds value, it should be easy for them to participate in this initiative.![]() |
| Customers Interaction |
Note:
Gaining ample traffic for the website needs a lot and i mean A LOT of
patience. So you need to be calm while your blog or website will
gradually reach to the level of your goals, provided that you
consistently make use of the techniques mentioned above.
How to Change Address Bar Color in Mobile Browser Matching Blogger Blog
![]() |
| Color in Mobile Browser Matching Blogger Blog |
While browsing your favoiuruties sites on mobile devicse (Android) you'd have noticed how the address bar of the Google Chrome browser changes its color matching the theme of the blog. We'll that is easier that you think to implmenet on your blog.
It hardly takes 5 seconds to achieve that. Lets get started.
Demo
Once done, your blog would look like the following (different color address bar in your case) on Android devices on Google Chrome browser.
![]() |
| Color in Mobile Browser Matching Blogger Blog |
Step #1 Choose a Color
Find a hex value of the color that you'd like the address bar to change to in Android Chrome browser. Lets say, in the case of BloggingeHow, I have used #00A8BE color.
Use 'Color Pic' tool to grab color
You can use a very popular tool named 'Color Pic'
that is extremliy small to download and works better than expected. You
can pick colors from anywhere on your screen, no matter what software
you're in.
Once you've found the end of the
tag, simpliy add the following meta tag as shown in the image above.Change the highlighted color as the color you look forward the address bar to in the Chrome browser on Android mobiles.
Hope that was helpful. Stay blessed.
Top 5 Tips To Blog Through Facebook Timeline
![]() |
| Facebook timeline |
This was the reason why at that time knowledge made negligible progress but now we are in 21 century the era of information technology. We often get stuck to old way of living but as the time is running it is required to just upgrade our minds. Instead of criticizing Facebook Timeline we should look for methods which can make it lot better.
We should not feel any sort of doldrums all we need to do is to validate the truth by performing experimenting and discovering the new features of Timeline which can help us in making our community more reliable and user friendly.
Soon after the release of Facebook Timeline most of the users applied it on their profiles with some sort of hacks but at that time Facebook Timeline was still new it was yet to be published officially. This was the only reason why it had some bugs.
But when Facebook Timeline was officially released it attracted some business tycoons to transform their business pages to Timeline as it was loaded with handsome new features, all those features which a fan page demands.
If you are using Facebook Timeline and thinking of finding any ways of removing it then you can’t do it manually although you can still use some plug-in which could remove timeline for yourself but for any other user who is not using the same plug-in he will continue to still see the Timeline.
So instead of looking for how to remove timeline we should learn how to make Facebook timeline a traffic machine which could generate heaps and heaps of traffic.
What New Features are added in Facebook TimeLine?
Facebook is the number one social networking website do you still think that they would introduce a new profile/fan page interface without testing? If you are, then you are getting it all wrong. Every successful website only introduces new features after testing it again and again.Even when we publish a new post on our blog at least once we hit the preview button to check if there are any technical flaws and if it has some problems then we make sure to make it flawless and Facebook Timeline also has some glimpse features which will catch your attraction.
![]() |
| Look from a very clear perspective |
#1 Facebook Timeline Cover Photo
This feature allows you to add a large scale image of Width: 851px. Height: 315px. This appears at the top most position of your Timeline. It could be considered as a large scale Header from where you can show your true designing talent.#2 Pinto Top
This feature would allow you to stick any of your post at the top of your Facebook Timeline Feeds and it will remain there until you un-stick it. You can use it to promote your featured post which could trigger traffic to your blog.![]() |
| Understand the way it works |
#3 Highlight Your Posts
It will enable you to make any of your post featured at your Profile/Fan Page. If you highlight any of your post its appearance would be changed which makes it unique from other posts and this will make it easy for your fans to identify that it’s a spicy topic so you must check it.#4 Fan Page Admin Panel
If you are a fan page owner then Admin panel will attract you with some old and new tools. You can do any changes that you like from changing the visibility of your page to banning a certain user.#5 Fan Page Insights
This tool will give you interactive reports of your Fans, their activity, their reach, in which country/city they belonged, in which country your fan page is most popular, how many user daily visit’s your fan page and much more exciting new features.![]() |
| Implement through your understanding |
How to Pin Your Post to Top?
So if you want to stick your post i.e. old or new to the top of your Fan page timeline simply follow as mentioned.1-Go to Your Fan Page (As this feature is only for Pages).
2-Now scroll down to your posts.
3-Now you will observe a small pencil button on the top right of your every post generally is it known as Edit or Remove button.
4-Now just click on it.
5-After clicking on it a drop down list will be opened.
6-Now just select Pin to Top and your fan page will be reloaded and your post would be pinned to top.
7-Now if you want to remove the Pin follow the same steps but this time click on Unpin from Top.
How to Highlight Your Posts?
If you want to make any of your post featured at your fan page/profile follow these steps:Go to your Timeline Profile/Fan page place your mouse cursor on any of your posts and you will be able see a STAR Tool just besides the Edit or Remove (Pencil button).
Now just click on it and your post appearance will be changed and it will become featured at your profile/fan page.
Now if you want to un-highlight your post simply click on the STAR Tool again and you post will appear normally
How to use Fan Page Insights to Track Fans Activity?
Through Insights you can track activity of users which can be accessed from the Admin Panel. By using Page insights you can track the following activities of your users.
You can keep an eye on your visitor’s activity, how many visitors you receive on daily basis, is there any loss of visitors and much more. You can track everything in just one place.
You can check which post is getting the most out of your page, which posts are attracting the visitors, how much peoples reached your posts and how many users are talking about it.
In your insight panel under Likes button you can observe activity of every single like that you had received i.e. country, state, city. You can even track either they are Male/Female, what language they speak, what was the source of their likes and much more.
Some Secrets of Facebook Timeline I observed:
While I was roaming on Facebook, in my friends profiles I observed a really unbelievable thing. At that time I was using normal profile what I saw was amazing. Those of my friend who had applied Facebook Timeline on their profile were blessed with 2 to 5 Page rank while me and my other friends who were still using normal profile we're not even selected for page rank 0.What’s next?
Well I am sure in just few months you will love Facebook Timeline as it is still very much new. It is full of new feature’s which is the biggest reason why many users do not like it because they are not aware of them.They believed these features are useless but if we work wisely it will bring fruit full experience not only for us but also for our audience. So my dearest Publishers are you still thinking Facebook Timeline is useless? If you are, then even I or anyone else will be unable to answer you.
Till then Peace, Blessing And Happy Timeline Transforming.
Sunday, October 25, 2015
How To Create CSS Expandable Button in blogger
1.Login to your blogger dashboard--> layout- -> Edit HTML
2.Scroll down to where you see ]]></b:skin> tag .
3.Copy below code and paste it just before the ]]></b:skin> tag .
.leftCol {
width: 295px;
overflow: hidden;
padding: 15px 0px 0px 0px;
margin: 0px 25px 0px 0px;
float: left;
clear: both;
}
.leftBoxHeading_Off {
width: 295px;
height: 19px;
background: url(images/left-box-heading-off.png) no-repeat;
color: #94c93d;
font-size: 100%;
padding: 8px 0px 0px 18px;
cursor: pointer;
}
.leftBoxExpander {
width: 295px;
overflow: hidden;
height: 0px;
background: url(images/left-box-expander-bg.png);
}
.leftBoxInnerPic {
width: 287px;
overflow: hidden;
background: url(images/left-box-inner-bg.png) bottom repeat-x;
margin: 0px 0px 0px 1px;
}
.leftBoxInnerPicImg {
width: 89px;
overflow: hidden;
float: left;
padding: 0px 0px 0px 18px;
}
.leftBoxInnerPicUlWrap {
width: 167px;
overflow: hidden;
float: left;
}
.leftBoxInnerPic ul {
width: 138px;
padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
margin: 0px 0px 0px 9px;
list-style: none;
}
.leftBoxInnerPic ul li {
color: #6699cc;
font-size: 110%;
width: 266px;
}
.leftBoxInnerPic ul li a {
color: #6699cc;
text-decoration: none;
display: block;
padding: 3px 0px 3px 20px;
}
.leftBoxInnerPic ul li a:hover {
color: #6699cc;
}
.leftBoxHeading_Off {
width: 295px;
height: 19px;
background: url(images/left-box-heading-off.png) no-repeat;
color: #6699cc;
font-size: 110%;
padding: 8px 0px 0px 18px;
cursor: pointer;
}
.leftBoxHeading_On {
width: 295px;
height: 19px;
background: url(images/left-box-heading-on.png) no-repeat;
color: #6699cc;
font-size: 110%;
padding: 8px 0px 0px 18px;
cursor: pointer;
}
.leftBoxFooter_Off {
width: 295px;
height: 12px;
background: url(images/left-box-footer-off.png) no-repeat;
cursor: pointer;
margin: 0px 0px 15px 0px;
}
.leftBoxFooter_On {
width: 295px;
height: 12px;
background: url(images/left-box-footer-on.png) no-repeat;
cursor: pointer;
margin: 0px 0px 15px 0px;
}
.leftBoxExpander {
width: 295px;
overflow: hidden;
height: 0px;
background: url(images/left-box-expander-bg.png);
}
.leftBoxInner {
width: 287px;
overflow: hidden;
margin: 0px 0px 0px 1px;
}
.leftBoxInner ul {
padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
margin: 0px 0px 0px 9px;
list-style:none;
}
.leftBoxInner ul li {
color: #6699cc;
font-size: 75%;
width: 266px;
}
.leftBoxInner ul li a {
text-decoration: none;
display: block;
padding: 3px 0px 3px 20px;
}
.leftBoxInner ul li a:hover {
color: #6699cc;
}
.leftBoxInnerPic {
width: 287px;
overflow: hidden;
background: url(images/left-box-inner-bg.png) bottom repeat-x;
margin: 0px 0px 0px 1px;
}
4.Now again Scroll down to where you see </head> tag .
5.Copy below code and paste it just before the </head> tag .
<script type="text/javascript" src="Javascripts/yahoo-dom-event.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="Javascripts/animation-min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="Javascripts/main-javascript.js"></script>
6.Now click on "save template".
7.Now go to layout- -> Page Elements and click on "add a gadget".
8.Choose "html /JavaScript" add the code given below and click save.
<div id="Layer1">
<div class="leftCol">
<div id="lhsHeader6" class="leftBoxHeading_Off" onclick="lhsAction('6',true,'T6_Effective_Behaviour_Change');">CSS Expandable Button</div>
<div id="lhsExpander6" class="leftBoxExpander">
<div id="lhsInner6" class="leftBoxInnerPic"> <img src="images/left-box-inner-img.png" alt="Left image" height="18" width="287" />
<ul>
<li><a href="">add your link here</a></li>
<li><a href="">add your link here</a></li>
<li><a href="">add your link here</a></li>
<li><a href="">add your link here</a></li>
<li><a href="">add your link here</a></li>
<li><a href="">add your link here</a></li>
<li><a href="">add your link here</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<div id="lhsFooter6" class="leftBoxFooter_Off" onclick="lhsAction('6',true,'false');"></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
You are done.
Download java script files and images
Thats all...Hope it helps.. Share with others...
How To Make Your Blog Name Scrolling
1.Log in to your dashboard--> layout- -> Edit HTML
2.Scroll down to where you see this:</head>
3.Now copy below code and paste it before above code.
<script type='text/javascript'>
var txt="Enter Your blog name and little description about your site ";
var espera=200;
var refresco=null;
function rotulo_title()
{
document.title=txt;
txt=txt.substring(1,txt.length)+txt.charAt(0); refresco=setTimeout("rotulo_title()",espera);
}
rotulo_title();
</script>
Note : You must replace 'Enter Your blog name and little description about your site' with your site details.
4.Now save your template and you are done.
Keep Sharing...THANKS.
How To Add jQuery Scroll To Top Button To Blogger
1.Login to your blogger dashboard--> layout- -> Edit HTML
2.Scroll down to where you see </head> tag .
3.Copy below code and paste it just before the </head> tag .
<script src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.1/jquery.min.js' type='text/javascript'/>
<script type='text/javascript'>
//<![CDATA[
$(function(){
$('a[href*=#top]').click(function() {
if (location.pathname.replace(/^\//,'') == this.pathname.replace(/^\//,'')
&& location.hostname == this.hostname) {
var $target = $(this.hash);
$target = $target.length && $target || $('[name=' + this.hash.slice(1) +']');
if ($target.length) {
var targetOffset = $target.offset().top;
$('html,body').animate({scrollTop: targetOffset}, 1000);
return false;
}
}
});
});
//]]>
</script>
<!-- end scrolltop -->
4.Now scroll down where you see <body> tag .
5.Replace <body> tag with <body id='top'> .
6.Now again scroll down where you see </body> tag .
7.Copy below code and paste it just before </body> tag:
<div id='goingtop'>
<a href='#top' title='Go Top'><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS2i_jr4i02AScO8jQMJUpfWFzQsgr2q2Lz6rbsz7657xcFGBOY6uQeZEMet2rTunBzw9ccJOiTYJHMTCGP1uPBpZXdppJgF-1lnsvlJx6V9aExX-Z6QfSib3dWHPCNGWdohw93FyyXk6E/' style='right:20px; bottom:20px; position: fixed;'/></a></div>
Note: You can use any image instead of above image.
8.Click on save template and you are done.
How To Add jQuery Scroll To Top Button To Blogger
1.Login to your blogger dashboard--> layout- -> Edit HTML
2.Scroll down to where you see </head> tag .
3.Copy below code and paste it just before the </head> tag .
<script src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.1/jquery.min.js' type='text/javascript'/>
<script type='text/javascript'>
//<![CDATA[
$(function(){
$('a[href*=#top]').click(function() {
if (location.pathname.replace(/^\//,'') == this.pathname.replace(/^\//,'')
&& location.hostname == this.hostname) {
var $target = $(this.hash);
$target = $target.length && $target || $('[name=' + this.hash.slice(1) +']');
if ($target.length) {
var targetOffset = $target.offset().top;
$('html,body').animate({scrollTop: targetOffset}, 1000);
return false;
}
}
});
});
//]]>
</script>
<!-- end scrolltop -->
4.Now scroll down where you see <body> tag .
5.Replace <body> tag with <body id='top'> .
6.Now again scroll down where you see </body> tag .
7.Copy below code and paste it just before </body> tag:
<div id='goingtop'>
<a href='#top' title='Go Top'><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS2i_jr4i02AScO8jQMJUpfWFzQsgr2q2Lz6rbsz7657xcFGBOY6uQeZEMet2rTunBzw9ccJOiTYJHMTCGP1uPBpZXdppJgF-1lnsvlJx6V9aExX-Z6QfSib3dWHPCNGWdohw93FyyXk6E/' style='right:20px; bottom:20px; position: fixed;'/></a></div>
Note: You can use any image instead of above image.
8.Click on save template and you are done.
How To Add Search Box to Search in Your Blogsite(Website)
1.Login to your blogger account.Go Layout --> Add a Gadget --> Select “HTML/JavaScript”.
2.Copy below code and paste it.Click save and refresh your site.
<p align="left">
<form id="searchthis" action="YOUR BLOG URL/search" style="display:inline;" method="get">
<strong>NAME OF YOUR BLOG<br/></strong>
<input id="b-query" maxlength="255" name="q" size="20" type="text"/>
<input id="b-searchbtn" value="Search" type="submit"/>
</form></p>
<form id="searchthis" action="YOUR BLOG URL/search" style="display:inline;" method="get">
<strong>NAME OF YOUR BLOG<br/></strong>
<input id="b-query" maxlength="255" name="q" size="20" type="text"/>
<input id="b-searchbtn" value="Search" type="submit"/>
</form></p>
Note:Remember to replace "YOUR BLOG URL" and "NAME OF YOUR BLOG" with your
details.
If you want to change the size of your search box than just change the value 20 to 35(any
value you like to get a bigger search box.
You can also change the “Search” button to say, “Hit” or “Go” or "Enter" or "Read more",
by changing the Value in the above html code.
details.
If you want to change the size of your search box than just change the value 20 to 35(any
value you like to get a bigger search box.
You can also change the “Search” button to say, “Hit” or “Go” or "Enter" or "Read more",
by changing the Value in the above html code.
3.You can see search box like below one.
Blogger Tips And Tricks
You can also remove the button "search" from the above search box and place an image for better look. The html code will be:
<p align="left">
<form id="searchthis" action="YOUR BLOG URL/search" style="display:inline;" method="get">
<strong>NAME OF YOUR BLOG<br/></strong>
<input id="b-query" maxlength="255" name="q" size="20" type="text"/>
<input id="b-searchbtn" type="image" src="IMAGE URL" align="top"/>
</form></p>
<form id="searchthis" action="YOUR BLOG URL/search" style="display:inline;" method="get">
<strong>NAME OF YOUR BLOG<br/></strong>
<input id="b-query" maxlength="255" name="q" size="20" type="text"/>
<input id="b-searchbtn" type="image" src="IMAGE URL" align="top"/>
</form></p>
You can see search box like below one.
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