So you have made your blog and have started posting about your favorite topic and then you sit back and relax and wait for someone to read your blog. It’s never going to happen. Never. This is not 1995 or even 2005. World is moving so fast and thousands of blogs with millions of posts pop up everyday. So it is very very likely that your blog becomes invisible in no time. You cannot stop other people from posting but what you can surely do is to enhance your blog superbly so that it has its own charm and attract more and more readers and ‘returning’ visitors. Yes, ‘returning’ visitors are more important than random new visitors. After much understanding the situation like these, I have listed Top 10 ways why your blog is not read by many and what are the steps to overcome that.

1) Your blog title is not eye-catchy

Making a good title of your post is the hardest and the most crucial part. It can make your readers feel excited or turn them off. Use words that contain positivity and energy to it. Make them like a ‘teaser’ to your post. Avoid long lines in the post title. Make it a clause, not necessarily a sentence.

2) You have used lot of colors in your blog template

If you ever visit popular blogs like Labnol, Mashable, etc. then you realize that those blogs are easier to read. Don’t strain your reader’s eyes by using decorative and colorful artwork unnecessarily. Follow this universal rule: Background white, text black. This is a direct hit. Successful web designers hold a strong view that a light background and dark text works far more better than vice versa. Use a few, matching colorful icons which adds to the glory but never overdo it. Your template should be smooth and pleasing to the eye.

3) You make commenting complex by using things like CAPTCHA

Those days are long gone when a reader have to provide an identity before giving his opinion. Why? What’s the need to make a reader go though a ‘Are you a human’ process? If you feel someone is spamming you then you are the master of your blog. Spare some minutes and delete such spam comments and take this task on yourself instead of authenticating genuine commenters. Let them post comments freely. [Read my related post on this topic: How to turn your blog into a ‘DO-FOLLOW’ one]

4) You don’t provide a FEED button or it is not clearly visible

Let’s say a reader got interested in your blog and wants more. He will look for a feed button but gets disappointed by not finding one. He will forget your blog soon. In order to keep your readership intact, you MUST provide a feed. Make sure you use a big and clear feed icon, preferably in the top-right corner of your blog. Use Feedburner for the purpose. It is not advisable to put a feed button in the footer region of your blog.

5) You put lot of advertisements and affiliate links

This can get you in trouble, legally. Maybe you are not knowing this but you are breaking Google’s Adsense policy if you are putting more than 3 ad units per page. Google Adsense is a great way to earn while you blog and even I implement it, but earning should NOT be your sole purpose. Provide genuine content and focus on your thoughts rather than getting clicks though your blog. Believe me, money will follow.

6) Your content is common

I can understand you gather information from other websites and put them in your blog. I can also understand that one cannot produce all information by himself. He has to gather it from somewhere. But you know what, there are tons of people who do this. So in that case the face value of your content deteriorates which was already not so good because you gathered data from elsewhere in the first place. So what to do now?

Analyze the data that you read from different websites. Remove those points which you do not support. Give your own perspective to it. Emphasize the points you like. Make bulleted points as much as possible (This one’s a direct hit. Nobody loves paragraphs). Put your own verdict in the beginning and the end. These little things will make your blog post look genuine and uncommon.

7) You don’t use social network sharing of your posts

Social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace and microblogging site Twitter have paved their way to blogs and websites. You cannot ignore them. Use widgets that are available to let users share your content on Facebook, Twitter, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon etc. Always provide such sharing links below each and every post. Don’t isolate your blog. Make it connected to such websites.

You have a bad language with poor grammar

Nothing is more annoying than this. Make less spelling and grammatical mistakes in your blog post. There are tons of spell check tools available. Use them for your own good. Re-view your blog post and read it aloud to find any hidden errors before putting it online. Avoid unnecessary capitalization of words. If you want emphasis, make them bold or italics instead. Needless to say, punctuate properly.

9) You are not taking your blog seriously / you are not making the most of your time

It is a bad thing to post infrequently. Especially when you do have readership. It annoys your readers. Make the most of your time online and keep posting useful things on your blog. There is a vast resource of information out there which you need to bring forward. Post regularly and never take your readers for granted.

10) You pay more attention to stats than the blog itself

It’s always exciting to see your visitors graph go up, a little down, a little more up… But don’t get addicted to it. Websites that provide (eg. Google Analytics such analysis are no doubt doing a wonderful job by providing each kind of statistical data about your blog but try not to watch the data every other day. Focus more on your blog and think about more ways to impress your readers.

Phew! The above list has been made after lot of self experience but it is just the tip of the iceberg. Please let me know your views about how to save your blog from getting ignored. Enjoy blogging!

Make your blogging experience better:

5 special reasons to comment on blogs

How to display Adsense ads within blog posts

How to add favicon to a Blogger blog

More…

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Have you ever noticed why blogs have gained much popularity than websites? And why many websites have adopted a blog like layout? The simple reason is, blogs have an amazing capability to let users interact with the content. Commenting and giving opinions about what’s written gives a wider perspective to the topic. There are some beautiful benefits if you interact with the websites or blogs you visit and that is why I am going to discuss why you should provide your opinion very often.

To give yourself a chance to speak up:

Why a website designer puts a comments box? You invested few minutes on reading a material and thought you know something better then why don’t to let your knowledge out. Put your views and let others (including the author) know you and let them know something beyond what’s written.

To let people know you exist:

This one’s important. On the web, it is all about your presence. You need to leave your mark on the web in one way or the other. Because a simple comment will be the only way to let the author and other people know you actually read their post leaving your identity on a website is really important.

To expand your ideas / business:

If you read about something you deal with everyday or something that closely resembles your idea then the first thing you should do is to put your opinion. I cannot tell you how much beneficial this is. Don’t bother about your perspective, good or bad, just put it. You will then have a chance to expand your thoughts and may be tweak them as suggested by author or other commenters.

To develop a professional attitude:

Professional people give opinions. They always have something constructive to say. You will develop an professional attitude if you provide crucial comments to the article. Assuming you a nice blogger and you see another blogger writing same content as you with a different perspective then you can extend a hand and develop a professional relationship for the betterment of both.

To get more traffic to YOUR site:

Many bloggers have embraced the ‘DO-FOLLOW’ policy. So you have a chance to post a comment on their article and gain a ‘link back’ to your site. Experts of SEO says that it is very beneficial to get a link from other sites to yours as it increases your blog’s popularity.

So that’s what I personally believe and I strongly recommend people not to be a silent spectator but to come forward and speak your word out. However, I would also like to state that putting random and irrelevant comments may harm your online identity. So don’t ever think about spamming every blog you encounter but always remember to be precise, polite and ‘to the point’ while commenting.

Make your blogging experience better:

How to turn your blog into a ‘DO-FOLLOW’ one

6 points to consider before following someone on Twitter

How to make a ‘sticky’ post in Blogger

How to add favicon to a Blogger blog

More…

If you enjoyed your read, subscribe to my feeds.

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If you own a blog for quite a while, you must be knowing about Adsense and how it works. Simply put, Adsense is a way to earn from your blog by putting advertisements provided by Google in a way that will earn you most revenue. Today I am going to discuss how you can display Adsense ads in your blog posts. The only reason we choose to display them in blog posts because it is the most viewed region of your blog. This increases the chances for an ad to be clicked. But along with it, your ad should not be a hurdle to the reader. doing so may enrage the reader and he won’t visit your blog again. So we will try to put ads in a decent manner which will help you and the reader as well.

It is advisable to use these ad formats in blog post:

1. Before your post begins (i.e. between blog post title and blog post content) : 468 x 15 link ad unit
2. After the content of your blog post : 250 x 250 square ad unit

The Procedure:

1) First copy your 468×15 code from adsense website and paste into notepad.

2) Now be a little careful because we will replace some text between (I repeat, between <script type=’text/javascript’> and the first occurrence of </script>

3) Using Find/Replace utility (Ctrl+H), replace:

&lt; in place of <&gt; in place of >&quot; in place of "

So this is what your final code should look like:

4) Follow same steps as above for the 250×250 ad unit also. Now you will have two modified Adsense codes, ready to be put at a precise place in your blog html.

5) Go to ‘Edit HTML’ sub-section of your blog and check-mark ‘Expand Widgets Templates’ and search for the following code*:

<data:post.body/>

* = You may find two instances of the above code instead of one. In that case, consider the last one.

6) Put your 468×15 link ad unit before the above code and 250×250 square ad unit after the above code. This way, your link ad unit will be displayed before the content and the square ad unit will be displayed after it.

7) Save your template. Enjoy!

If you have any questions regarding this post, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.

Make your blogging experience better:

How to remove nav-bar from Blogger blog

How to make a ‘sticky’ post in Blogger

How to add favicon to a Blogger blog

Top 10 reasons your blog is ignored

More…

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Technorati Tags: adsense,adsense within blog posts,adsense inside blog posts

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I thought of finding ways to backup my blog posts when I really messed up my blog while making changes to HTML. I forgot to back up my template and I lost many settings. Then I thought this can happen to my blog posts too which is way worse than losing widget settings. So I discovered 2 nice ways to backup your blog and I promise you it wont take less than 60 seconds to back up ALL your posts. I am sure you can spare that much time when you have invested months behind those posts. Without much ado, I will show you two ways by which you can backup your posts.

1) Using Blogger’s inbuilt backup utility: (For beginners)

Go to your blog settings and into the ‘Basic’ section. Here the very first option is to Export/Import your blog posts along with the comments that your posts received. To backup your blog posts, just click ‘Export’ and you will be able to save a file in XML format which will contain all your posts. To restore it, just click ‘Import’ and you will be able to browse to the saved XML file and your blog posts will get restored. This method is very quick, without much to do and hence perfect for beginners. If you prefer more control and customizability while backing up your blog, read on.

 

2) Using ‘Blogger Backup Utility’: (For professionals)

This method involves a open source utility called ‘Blogger Backup’ which will provide you customization options for your Blogger posts backup. Install this utility on your computer and run it. You will see that most of the things are pretty self explanatory.

Features of Blogger Backup Utility:

→ You can add as many blogs as you wish.

→ You have the option whether or not you want to save comments too.

→ You can save your posts either in one single XML file or individual file per post.

→ You can retrieve either all posts or posts published after the specified date. This is a very good facility as sometimes you don’t want to back up all your posts.

→ You can restore your posts from the utility itself.

So now you have two quick and easy ways to save your valuable Blogger posts. Happy blogging.

Make your blogging experience better by more of these blogging tips on my blog.

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