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.

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Things I've learned about France and the French

Ok guys so I've been here for two weeks to the day and basically just thought I'd give you a little update on how it's all going and what I've learnt about France and the people here in general.


Quick note; this isn't meant to offend anyone! Just pointing out my observations! And it'd be interesting to hear back from you guys whether the rest of France is like this, or whether it just applies to Strasbourg or the Alsace region!

Another quick note; As an Englishman, these seemed strange to me and the culture I grew up with. These may be relatively common for the rest of the world!

Ok so here we go:

- Everyone here smokes

- Relating to the point above, it's not uncommon to see people using a pipe to smoke

- Everyone cycles

- People who ride motorbikes/mopeds/Vespas are insane. Cutting up cars, speeding down pavements, and   EVERYTIME two people on a motorbike meet, they see who can wheelie the longest. I see this a LOT

- Here the French, similar to the Spanish, have a sort of Siesta, and most shops open around 8:00, but will close at midday and re-open at 14:00

- The people here seem to partially fit the stereotypical image of a French person. Seen a lot of berets and nearly everyone (whether it's just the students because is cheap,) eats baguettes

- It's expensive as hell. Some pubs ask for 7Euros for a whiskey, where as a single Whiskey in my home town is around £2.50, or 3.60Euros

- People drink half pints a lot more than pints

- Public transport is ALWAYS on time

- People are very helpful; approaching me and asking if I need help (An obvious student with a map out)

- Juice is extremely common, and it isn't as easy as I thought it would be buy regular, justaddwater style squash

- It's clean. Although graffiti still exists, it exists more as an art form than scribbled names. Litter isn't a problem here

- They LOVE their cheese here. So many varieties.

- A lot of people pay using cheques. Not sure if this is just England being different, but it is rare to find a place that still accepts cheques as a form of payment

- The French don't mind a beer, at 10am

- One of the most bizarre for me, when the 'green man' is displayed when crossing a road, it is not unusual for cars to still drive over the crossing, but simply wait for pedestrians to cross. The fact they can still drive with the green man there is what's a little foreign to me. This point is kinda hard to explain, but in England,   if the red man is showing. Pedestrians can't walk, and cars can drive. Here, if the green man is showing, cars can still drive, as long as they are no pedestrians.

- One for just as UK people, still not use to other side of the road driving. Although I don't drive, crossing a road is still daunting as I'm not used to looking to my right hand side first!



That's all I got at the moment! Just a bit of an update on the culture shock really. Love it here though so don't take this as a a 'Things I hate about France' post!

Like I said earlier, be interesting to see if anyone else agrees and whether this is the same throughout France, or just Strasbourg.
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