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Thursday 7 October 2010

How to increase traffic to your blog with Google searches

OK guys, so although this post may not be directly related to travelling, in this post I'm going to tell you one way, that successfully worked for me, to increase traffic to your blog.

Now, this certainly isn't going to bring you 5000 million viewers over night, but if done correctly, you will see a steady rise in your traffic.

Ok I'm going to try and make this as simple to follow as possible as it can be quite confusing.



Now, I know a lot of you are having trouble with making your blog Google searchable. The computer and coding literate amongst have tried added Meta tags to your blog in order to increase traffic. Although I have tried this myself, I haven't noticed much on an increase and have been told that Google no longer uses Meta tags to make it searchable.


Step one. The first thing you need to do is to visit http://www.google.co.uk/addurl/ and add your blog page URL into the URL box. Underneath this box there is a comment box. Now here I just wrote a simple description of what my blog was about. Keep it short and sweet. No need for more than one sentence.
After filling in the Captcha click submit and you're blog will have been added to a list for Google to crawl.


1) Next up we need to open http://www.google.com/webmasters/ 



2) Then sign in with your Google account.

3) Next you need to click the ADD A SITE... button which looks like this:


4) A small box will appear - Enter your URL here.

5) After clicking Continue,we have to verify that we are the owner of this blog.

6) Here there will be 4 options in which we can choose how we want to verify our site. However, the only option we are interested in is the META TAG. Now we should see a code which looks a little something like this:


Picture of code


<meta name="verify-v1" content="z6MLWEMxLvMFcoVNvGPKOMvAn1oJBKem+eTEpZ1F/DU=">

                                                                                                Actual code ^


7) Now after we have copied this code (DOUBLE CHECK YOU HAVE THE ENTIRE CODE COPIED) we need to go to the Dashboard of our Blogger, then select Design > Edit HTML.

Now, we nee to look for the <head> tag. This is only a few lines down in the coding so shouldn't be too difficult to find. The easiest way to find it is to bring up the Search function, with Ctrl + f and type <head>.

The Meta code needs to be pasted IMMEDIATELY AFTER the <head> tag.

Once you've pasted this code, simply Save the Template and go back to the Webmasters Account, and click Verify to Complete the verification process.

8) If you've done everything right, you'll see that your site is now verified. HOWEVER, KEEP READING as we're not done just yet.

SIDE NOTE - DON'T REMOVE THE META CODE AFTER VERIFICATION. IT MAY BE USED BY GOOGLE AT A LATER DATE.

9) Now you should see a list of verified sites (Most likely just one, your blog) on your Webmaster tools homepage.



10) Click on your site, and you'll be taken to a dashboard of that site.


11) From here you need to click Site configuration, then Sitemaps.

12) On this page you need to click Submit a Sitemap and it will ask you to enter the sitemap of your blog. As you can probably see, the first part of your blog is already there and you only need to enter the second bit;



feeds/posts/default?max-results=500


Overal all, it should look something like this


http://www.yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?max-results=500

13) So Submit your sitemap there and within the next 24 hous, Google will start to index the contents of your blog!


Now, give it several hours (I gave it 24 hours) and return to your Webmaster tools. On your dashboard, on the left hand side there should be a Your Site on the Web button. Expand this and you can see data gathered from Google searches! For example, Google will crawl your site and show you the keywords found on your blog!

If you've found this helpful and used it guys, simply Tweet this The button is located below the post title.

66 comments:

  1. @Anontcotrol - Added my guide to your blog? Or added your blog to the webmasters tools?

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  2. Thanks for this man, very useful. Will do it soon ;)

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  3. Thanks for that. Really awesome post. I did have to do some tinkering around your instruction, but for the most part it's all 'insert rod A into slot B' (that's what she said).

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  4. @Chill You're welcome! Did you tinker around because it was hard to follow or just didn't work for you? Looking for feedback so I can help others and make the guide easier to follow.

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  5. aha that is interesting

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  6. Thanks, adding it to mine.

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  7. this is too intelligent for me

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  8. So how does this actually benifit me? I mean, it was easy enough to do but I don't understand the point exactly...

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  9. @Senior - Basically it allows you to be found a LOT easier via Google search. So if people are searching Google for a specific question or topic, your blog may come up as an answer if it is relevant enough

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  10. Thanks for the advice, I'll be trying to do this later.

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  11. lost on step 6 i dont see meta tag anywhere

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  12. going to try this later! thanks!

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  13. Hmm, is this worth doing if I can already find my blog on google?

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  14. Ah, just trying this out and I can't find a meta tag listing either.

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  15. @LazyGeog What exactly do you mean? The only meta code you need is already in the post

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  16. Step 6 makes it sound like after adding a website link the Webmaster Tools page will then display a page that provides a unique meta tag for that site.

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  17. Figured it out. The site was already verified, so I just had to skip down to 9

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  18. doing this now. thanks for that brosif

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  19. I can't find a button with 'meta tag'. Could you point me in the right direction?

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  20. @Sebastian You don't need a Meta tag button. The only meta coding you need is posted above. Have I worded it poorly?

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  21. I need to get websavvy real quick, real talk.

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  22. thats very good informative tip.

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  23. thanks very much for the informations man supp you

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  24. Great guide man! Really helpful!

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  25. I'm going to look into this. But it's a possibility I'll be using it.

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  26. Gonna give this a try, thanks for the help!

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  27. Impressive! I'll try this later on...

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  28. After a setback i managed to get through this. Thanks

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  29. @Totalit

    Setback? Was it was because instructions were not clear enough or it was a different method on your computer? Please let me know if I need to update the guide. Cheers

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  30. I just copied and pasted your sitemap thing...
    feeds/posts/default?max-results=500...is that what i was supposed to do?

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  31. @Captive Audience. The sitemap goes onto the end of your already verified URL. So on the dashboard, click your website, then on the left, site configuration > submite a sitemap, and add the feeds/posts/default?max-results=500 to end of the URL.

    (The the first part of the URL, your blog, should already be there)

    Hope that helped

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  32. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  33. yeah, i think i did that before actually. idk, its working i think.
    ___________________
    purpma.blogspot.com

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  34. hmm weird, it has a red X under status, i'm guessing it didn't work then!
    ____________________
    purpma.blogspot.com

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  35. Thanks dude, this was very easy to understand.

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  36. thanks ad to my list of tutorials

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  37. Tell me something i dont know...

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  38. I learned a lot off of this post - I appreciate the knowledge

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  39. i dont think i can edit the html on my blog. only the css and i have to pay to upgrade to do that.

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  40. Done it!Thanks rats, we need more like this!

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  41. Great tips, is there any advantage to verifying via meta tags vs other methods?

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  42. Thank you so much!!!! very helpful and complete!!!!

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  43. extremely helpful.. thank you very much!

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  44. Just did this. Can't wait to see what happens as a result!

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  45. Great Article, only just found it mate. Cheers for the heads up

    And my donaim www.totallysick.co.uk costs £7 a year not a month :D

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  46. Thanks, I will be adding this to my blog pretty soon :D

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  47. great info, will thy this later for sure!

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  48. I'm trying this out now, thanks for the advice.

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  49. This is a great, I just added it. Thanks a bunch bro

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  50. I try to do it but i cannot access! please help

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  51. @DAS SOLO - Cannot access what? Please be more clear with what you need help with.

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