Succesfull Internet Marketer

It is not uncommon for search engine marketers to find difficulties in developing successful Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising campaigns. In essence, the reason for their failures in PPC advertising is primarily a lack of experience and understanding as to how to use Google AdWords effectively.

With some basic knowledge and AdWords awareness, one can optimize their Pay Per Click campaigns for greater performance. Knowing of the intricacies of the Google AdWords platform and how organize cohesive campaigns and ad groups can lead to a much higher return on ad spend (ROAS).

PPC optimization is imperative to sustain success using Google Adwords. Below we touch upon many strategies to optimize your campaigns for better profitability.

Understand Keyword Match Types

Although an elementary concept in Pay Per Click advertising, understanding keyword match types is essential to be successful. Google breaks down keyword match types in three primary ways: Broad, [Exact], and "Phrase" match.

In Google search, a broad match can often times be extremely broad. For example, for a keyword phrase like "Kids military uniforms," under the broad match setting, your ad may be triggered for searches like "childrens army suit" or "youth navy uniform." In essence, broad match is very broad, so be sure you know what you're getting into if you choose to leave your keywords as broad (without "quotes" for phrase match or [brackets] for exact match.)

Using exact keyword matching by surrounding the keyword phrase in brackets will ensure that your ads are only triggered when search engine users submit that exact phrase, and nothing else. By using exact phrase matching, you can better minimize wasted impressions from broad searches and reduce budget-sucking click-throughs.

Because exact phrase match might fail to display your ads for searchers that you actual do want to capture, a great alternative is using modified broad matching. Modified broad is simply placing a "+" symbol directly in front of each keyword (with no space) that you want specifically mentioned in a user's search query. The "+" symbol ensures that this word, and only very close variations (such as plural and singular variations) are what trigger your ads. So if we bid on the keyword "+kids +military +uniforms" our ad will still be displayed for search queries like "kid military uniform" or "kids military uniforms for sale," not "childrens navy uniform."

Looking for an seo analyst to take care your keyword analysis, you can contact me.

Do Negative Keyword Research

Negative keyword research is the effort of pinpointing undesirable keyword variations that are resulting in unwanted ad impressions. For instance if we are an ecommerce store that selling NEW "kids military uniforms," we would want to implement negative keyword variation for "used," "how to make," or "free" kids military uniforms.

By using exact keyword matching, we have no need to worry about negative keyword research; however by using modified broad match, we will need to research those unwanted variations. For many marketers, this is a crucial step to the PPC optimization process.

One of the easiest ways to conduct negative keyword research is to open the "See search terms" feature. This is located under the "Keywords" tab of the ad group you are in. Here you can view a list of all of the search terms that have triggered your ads over a certain period of time. Taking a look at all of these search queries can be very eye-opening as well as enlightening to pinpoint negative keywords to implement into the ad group.

Once you have drilled down on the keywords that you want to add as negatives, just click the check box for the unwanted keyword and hit "Add keyword as negative," which is found above the list of search queries. This will automatically implement the full keyword phrase as an exact match to your negative keyword list for that particular ad group.

Create Tight Ad Groups (with Few Keywords)

A typical mistake that online advertisers make while developing PPC campaigns and ad groups is poor keyword grouping. In most cases, ad groups with too many keywords are destined for failure. Because only one ad can serve an entire ad group, only a few, very closely related keywords should be included.

By segmenting keywords into highly focused ad groups, marketers can write targeted ads with greater relevancy to the user. In addition to ad copy, keyword-tight ad groups allow advertisers to use better landing pages. Not only does creating more focal ad groups increase the precision of the ad and its landing page, but more narrowed ad groups can increase keyword quality scores and minimize CPC's (cost per clicks).

A solid first step to optimizing your ad groups is to analyze the nature and quality scores of each group. How many keywords are in your ad groups? What are the quality scores of your keywords? How much activity is each keyword receiving (impressions/clicks)? How closely related are the keywords in the ad group?

Hopefully the answers to these questions will enable you to pinpoint the keywords in your ad group that can be applied to a new ad group. In more extensive AdWords accounts with many campaigns, sometimes a keyword can be transferred to more relevant ad group that already exist. This is a common PPC optimization strategy referred to as the "Peel & Stick".

Split-Test Your Ad Copy & Landing Pages

AdWords allows you to run multiple ad variations for each ad group. So instead of creating just one ad for each ad group, try writing three to five ads with different ad copy. By default, AdWords will begin to display the ads that are performing the best, however, AdWords does not take into account the importance of statistical relevancy, or validity. That is, AdWords will start favoring one ad over the others only after a handful of impressions and clicks when often times more data is needed to make a valid decision on which ads are working better than others.

If you are split-testing a number of ad variations, be sure to choose the option to "Rotate to show ads evenly," which is in the settings tab for the particular campaign. This way you can let your ads run for awhile before gauging the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of the ad copy.

Equally important (if not more important) is split-testing your landing pages. This may not be an option if you are advertising an ecommerce store with specific product pages as the destination URL of the ad. However for other businesses and industries, testing various landing page designs and concepts is critical, especially for competitive keyword targets. Try testing various types of call-to-actions as well as using different landing page copy. Another great strategy is to make use of videos and images where relevant.

Users have a lot of expectations these days while browsing the Web, so be sure to optimize your Pay Per Click campaigns to their fullest potential.

If you’re a niche blogger, here are some tips that would help increase your effectiveness and productivity:

1. Choose the Right Niche
Choose a niche that you have an interest in, and are passionate about. This is essential because you will be spending a lot of your time creating content for this particular niche, and unless you have a deep interest in the said field, you will struggle to produce content (or rather quality content) on a regular basis. In addition, having a deep interest in the niche will also allow you to become an authority figure in it.

2. Define Your Niche
Or, more specifically, clearly define your niche. If there’s one thing that is essential for effective blogging or being an effective blogger, it is defining your niche! I cannot stress how important it is to do this for any and every blogger out there. Doing so allows you to identify the focus, and define the limits of your blog, and stay within the limits that you have defined. Niche blogs are ‘specialty’ blogs, and hence need to have a much more focused definition.

3. Choose to Write for an Audience
Instead of choosing a topic, choose the people that you’ll be writing for. Successful niche blogs are aimed at writing for a specific type of people, not for a specific topic. Instead of writing on ‘technology’, write for people looking for reviews of the latest gadgets, or people who want the latest news on tech. Instead of blogging on photography, write for beginner or new photographers. Topics can be extremely broad, and can encompass a large amount of sub-topics; but most importantly, making this mistake will leave you in the dark as to who you’re writing for. Identifying your target market is critical, and necessary to write well for them.

4. Have a USP
USP is short for Unique Selling Proposition (Wikipedia). It is a business term that refers to offering something that is so unique and so different from others, that people are inclined to come to you, rather than going to your competition. The same business concept can also be applied to blogs. You have to give people in your niche a reason to come to you, rather than a more well-established blog in your niche. It makes you stand-out, and sets you apart from the others. And ‘it’ could be anything – from the user-friendly interface of your blog, to its ability to provide readers with useful information, to offering a cheap alternative to a product/service at a low price, or perhaps you could simply add your own twist to things…the sky’s the limit! Remember that with niche blogs, you’re always going to be competing with others for the attention of a fairly small number of people; you have to give them a solid reason to come to you. (Additional read about USP here)

5. Define Short- and Long-term Goals
Knowing what you want your blog to achieve in a months’ time is great, but knowing where you would want your niche blog to be in a years’ time is even more important. Like any other business, your success (or your failure) will be directly related to your short-term and long-term vision. Think in terms of the content, the visitors/traffic, the design and other tangible elements. Think of where you would want your blog to be in a year’s time – would you want to establish it as an authority blog, or try selling themes, plugins or eBooks on it, or maybe even offer some kind of a service on it later on. It is important to have achievable goals that lead you to success.

6. Keyword Research if Your Friend
Keywords are the life and soul of niche blogs. Use keyword research in order to come up with a set of keywords relevant to your niche and be able to drive targeted traffic through the use of these. However don’t expect to be able to compete with the big boys when it comes to these keywords. You will certainly need to use long-tail keywords – so instead of targeting the keyword ‘iPhone’, you should be targeting phrases such as ‘restart an iPhone’ or ‘jailbreak an iPhone’ or ‘iPhone 5 specifications’, to name a few. These long-tail phrases should be closely related to your blog’s content, and will let you get targeted traffic and compete with blogs with deep pockets easily. 

7. Always Strive for Improvement
And this goes for pretty much every blog out there, but especially for niche blogs. Always look for ways through which you can improve various different elements of your blog. How can you improve your content? How can you diversify into another sub-niche? How can you cater in a better manner to the growing amount of visitors on your blog? How can you improve you blog’s design? How can you add to your roster of writers? How can you connect with your audience in a better way? (For niche blogs with a specific focus, connecting with audience is essential, and easy to do because your traffic is made up of visitors who share the same interests as you!)

A lot of businesses – big and small – are using Facebook to market their products and services, and it is quite understandable why. Facebook provides organization of all kinds with a unique platform to not only market their products, but also get more exposure and drive traffic to their blogs and websites (the latter is something that a lot of bloggers will particularly be interested in doing).

An essential part of being successful with a Facebook page is to get a large number of people to ‘like’ your page. Normally, this takes time, and/or a serious effort on your part, however here are a few tips that you can use to boost the number of likes on your Facebook page:

1. Content is king! Yes, that not only applies to your blog, it is equally applicable to your Facebook page as well! Share unique, interesting, informative, thought-provoking, and the best-possible content on Facebook, and it will tend to get a large amount of ‘likes’ as well as shares. When people share you updates on Facebook, it appears on their wall, and is put up on their newsfeed for their friends to see, maximizing your exposure and providing you with more fans. If your content is good, it may end up getting a large amount of likes and shares. My recommendation would be to use a combination of text and images.

2. Always interact with your fans. In my opinion, this is the golden rule for being successful on Facebook. The best (successful) pages on Facebook are those that promote interaction between the organization and its fans/followers (as well as among the fans and followers). Make sure that all contributors and publishers on your blog – or people in your organization, whichever’s applicable – spend a few minutes daily to speak with their Facebook fan, respond to questions, take part in the discussions, etc.

3. Network with other page owners. Once again, this is similar to networking and building strong relationships, as a blogger, with other bloggers. You should seek and look up Facebook page owners with pages related to, or similar as yours and try finding mutually-beneficial ways of promoting each other’s pages. For instance if you have a blog on tech, you might want to get in touch with other technology page-owners, to show an interest in sharing their posts on your page, and in return, ask them to do the same with yours.

4. Put the address of your Facebook page on all your products, services and any other places where your customers will be able to see it. After your page reaches a certain amount of likes (25, last time I checked), you can go into the admin panel of the page and create a custom URL (something like facebook.com/YourPageName). Put this up on all your products, services, business cards, advertisements, outlets, email signatures and any other place(s) where people will see it.

5. Add a Facebook Like Box on your blog as well as your website. You can get one for your blog here. Simply customize it – add the URL of your page and change the width, height, etc. (you’ll get a preview of the box in real-time), and add it to the sidebar of your blog. This gives you a lot of exposure, and whenever someone visits your blog/website, they’ll be able to easily go to your page in order to become a fan.

6. Promote your page through a contest. What kind of contest it is really depends on the kind of page it is. For instance a Facebook page for a photography blog could ask its fans to submit interesting photos through the page, and the best 3 entries get a prize (cash, the new Nikon lens, etc.). A computer tech page on my Facebook ran an interesting contest a few days back: all you had to do was to ‘like’ their page, and share one of their posts on your wall, and you would become eligible to win a gift worth $500! This gave them a large number of ‘likes’ and shares, instantly maximizing their exposure and bringing a lot of new fans on their page. PS. Remember that with a contest, the prize has to be valuable enough for the people in your niche.

7. Use your Facebook page! One of the best ways of getting the word out is to actually use your Facebook page like you would use your personal profile. Use the page to ‘like’ and comment on other pages’ walls, or on their updates. Make it a point to log into your page at least a couple of times every day, and comment on interesting stories in your new feed, participate in a conversation, and so on.

On-page SEO refers to the changes made – aka. optimization – of different elements of your blog or website for better search engine visibility, higher SERP, better rankings and of course, not only more traffic, but a loyal, returning visitor-base that grows with the passage of time.

Before we begin, I should tell you that most of the on-page elements in discussion here can easily be created/edited/changed in Wordpress. If Wordpress doesn’t allow you to change these, get either this plugin or this one (use one of these, which one you use is up to you), and you’ll be able to do so easily every time you make a new post or a page. Theme frameworks such as Genesis or Thesis provide this functionality by default.

Right, moving on. Here is a simple and easy-to-understand guide on different element of on-page SEO:

1. Page Titles
By far the most important aspect of on-page optimization. Page titles, also referred to as title tags or meta titles, are essential because they define the title of the document (the page), and tell search engines as well as your visitors about the page. It appears in 3 places: (i) on top of your browser, right in front of the name of a website, (ii) in the SERP, whenever you website shows up in the results, and (iii) on another/external website, whenever someone links to you (and on social media as well) as link anchor text.

From an SEO perspective, title tags need to be short (should never exceed 60 characters at max), while being as relevant and descriptive to the contents of the page as possible. In addition (and this is essential), they should also include all major keywords relevant to your blog, in a natural manner (remember: no stuffing!).

2. Meta Descriptions
Anyone who’s ever used Google will instantly know what meta description is. Let me explain: meta titles are often accompanied with a text-snippet, which is essentially a few lines of text under the title itself. That is what a meta description is. Think of meta descriptions as a summary of sorts for any page. It, like titles, tells search engines and human visitors what a page is about, but unlike titles, meta descriptions can be longer in length.

Use meta descriptions to provide a brief overview of a page (avoid exceeding 160 characters) to your visitors and of course the search-engine crawlers. Include relevant keywords (especially the main keyword), write naturally, avoid using too many irrelevant words, and leverage the power of 160 characters to craft an enticing, attractive and interesting summary of the page, so that anyone who stumbles upon it is forced to click on your page and visit your blog.

3. URLs
Links are an important aspect of on-page SEO. URLs, like titles, also describe the site, as well as a page, provide an idea about its content to search engines and visitors. A URL that says ‘www.phonereviews.com’ tells me that this site is about cellphone reviews. Similarly, a URL like ‘www.SEO.com/on-page-seo-best-practices’ tells me that this website is about search engine optimization, and the page that I’m about to view is about best practices on on-site optimization.

As with other elements of on-page SEO, there are a few important things to consider when it comes to optimizing URLs and links. For starters, URLs should be descriptive of the page that they lead to. They should always include relevant keywords (refer to the second example in the paragraph above). They should give a clear idea about site structure and hierarchy to their visitors if your website is split into different pages or categories (e.g. ‘www.photographybasics.com/photography-tips/dslr-lens-guide’). And like titles, URLs need to be short (like in the second example in the paragraph above). URLs should also be relevant and/or closely related to the title of the page.

4. Images
Image optimization often gets overlooked, but the fact is that it is an essential part of on-page optimization. If your blog has images on it, any kind of images, they need to be optimized for search engines as well as human traffic.

For starters, make sure you fill out the information for all images properly – which includes the title, description, caption and above all, the ‘alt’ attribute. Use these fields to ‘describe’ the image, as it will allow Google to ‘see’ the image and rank it appropriately. Alt information in particular, is important, do your best to describe what the image is about, in as less words as possible. Doing so will allow you to get traffic from image search engines, such as Google Images.

5. Internal Linking
An essential cog in the on-page optimization machinery, internal linking refers to linking to posts within your own blog. While this can also be accomplished automatically using Wordpress plugins such as SEO Smart Links, I personally recommend linking to one or two of your blog’s relevant pages in every post, for instance.

Internal linking keeps link juice inside your blog (as opposed to external linking which transfers link juice to the external website).

6. Content
Goes without saying, but this is perhaps the most important aspect of your on-page SEO strategy. Think of it like this: if titles, meta information, URLs, alt information, etc are important aspects of on-page SEO, the content is its life and soul! Without high-quality, optimized content, your on-page SEO is as good as worthless.

Before I say anything about content, it is essential to know that Google HATES over-optimization, especially overly-optimized content. Having said that, produce well-written content that looks naturally-produced, and is aimed at solving the problems of the people in your niche; it should be appealing to them. This is essential.

Not only does good content serve a purpose, it also has the ability to be shared and spread over the internet. Social shares, Facebook ‘likes’, Twitter retweets, etc. are actually quite important. In addition, quality content will have the natural ability to be linked to from other blogs and websites, all on its own self.

As much as Google hates over-optimized content – and the recent algorithm update Panda even went as far as penalizing websites which stuffed keywords in their content – it is still essential to include important relevant keywords in your copy, as naturally as possible. 

Posting comments is actually quite similar to guest posting (or guest blogging) in many respects. First and foremost, it is a great way of building safe backlinks, and it can also be a great avenue for getting exposure, and getting the word out about yourself as well as your blog.

In ways though, it can be a more profitable activity than guest posting; you need time to craft a guest post – and getting a single backlink requires researching for, and then writing a great post and that can take a significant chunk of your time. However you can get the same single backlink from a high-PR blog through a simple comment on that blog – all it takes is the time to read the post (which has its own advantages in itself), and a couple of minutes to leave your feedback.

A vast majority of blogs not only allow visitors to post comments and feedback, they actually encourage it. A visitor is required to provide the URL of their website/blog, and it is put up as a link alongside the comment itself. Some blogs, such as those using the CommentLuv plugin, automatically retrieve a post from the visitor’s blog, and put it up with the comment.

However not unlike guest posting, the benefits of blog commenting go beyond simple link-building. Here are a few reasons emphasizing the importance of blog commenting:

1. It helps establish your authority.
Always, always post quality comments that help establish your authority. Give the article a good read, and post something that is actually valuable to the post author, as well as any other person (such as a visitor, or another commenter) that comes across your comment. That should be your priority. Try taking the conversation ahead by providing your insight. It will help establish you as an authority, and allow you to build credibility for yourself, as well as your business.

2. It is a representative of the beliefs of your business.
Writing a comment is like sending your personal business message. It reflects your own beliefs as an individual, and those of your business. You can provide people with a lot of value through a few simple lines of text, and if you successfully do that, it adds to your authority.

3. It is good for exposure.
Exposure is important because more exposure equals more traffic on your blog. Posting comments is essentially a free way to get valuable exposure. It is a free way to market your blog. A single comment on a blog that gets a large amount of visitors could do wonders for your exposure and allow you to get the word out to a large group of people in your niche; tap into an 'unexplored market'.

4. Comments are essentially a ‘concise’ version of a post.
Think of a comment as a smaller version of a large post. It takes time, effort and energy to create and craft a full-length post. You can get the same benefits from a comment, while saving you the trouble that usually comes with crafting a proper post.

5. It allows you to form valuable relationships, and network with others.
In a way which is similar to guest blogging, posting comments is actually a great way of networking with other authority bloggers, and developing strong relationships with them. It allows you to get noticed by people in your niche, but most importantly, it allows you to be noticed by influential and authority bloggers. If your comment is good enough, you’ll end up getting a great response, and who knows, you might even get asked to do a guest-post to expand on what you said – safe to say, it may very well lead to new business opportunities. You may even make some friends along the way, or get people to guest-post or comment on your own blog.

6. It is a good way to build backlinks.
And then of course, there’s the added advantage – or ‘bonus’ I should say – that posting comments is a great way to build backlinks; one of the safest ways to do so in fact. As I mentioned above, almost every blog allows you to post a link to your blog, and some even retrieve a post from your blog and display it along with your comment. This can actually be quite beneficial for your website/blog’s Google PR and ranking. And it also provides you with an opportunity to get more traffic.

Conclusion
I strongly suggest anyone reading this to set aside a small chunk of their time every day for the purpose of blog commenting, and make it a part of their blog promotion/marketing strategy. Use Google to look up authority and high page-rank blogs in your niche, and leverage the power of the comments system on these blogs to your advantage. Remember that the blog you choose to comment on needs to be relevant to your own blog. Always make it a point to post constructive, quality and valuable comments.

Guest posting is fantastic. The best part about it is that its benefits go far and beyond simply link-building.

Yes, one of the biggest advantages of guest posting is it’s amazing ability to easily give you safe and Google-friendly backlinks. For free! High-PR backlinks are usually a pain to get; they certainly are not easy to get, and even though Google frowns upon buying links, high-PR backlinks from authority websites will usually cost you a dime or two.

Which is one of the biggest advantages of guest blogging; you get use it to build authority backlinks for nothing! But like I said, its advantages go beyond the ability to give you a valuable backlink.

For one, guest blogging allows you to build authority, and position yourself as an authority figure in your niche. If you follow the best practices mentioned later on in this post, you could actually build a name for yourself.

Secondly, guest blogging allows you to get more exposure and drive in traffic to your blog easily. 

And then there are plenty of other advantages, such as building your influence, your portfolio and increasing your credibility, higher SERPs, the chance to improve your writing skills, the chance to network and build relationships with authority bloggers and some of the best minds out there, increase your sales, increase your subscribers, and of course, enhancing your social media profile.

Here’s a list of a few best practices to follow in order to real all the benefits guest posting has to offer, and become the best guest blogger out there:

1. Don’t fear rejection: When it comes to becoming the best guest-blogger out there, it is essential to understand that rejection or getting rejected will be a part of the process. Most guest bloggers fear rejection. It might be a good idea to start small, i.e. start off with a small blog which has a relatively-lenient criterion for submitting guest posts, and slowly build your authority by ‘climbing up the ladder’.

2. Always give it your best shot: Think of the guest post as a post on your own blog, and give it your best effort. Do not skimp out on quality, or try ‘saving the best stuff for your own website’. Remember that your post might be checked for quality before it goes up, and when it does, it will be seen and read by hundreds of people. A quality post will leave a good impression on its readers, play a part in establishing your authority on the matter, and will also be a fair reflection of the quality of your own blog.  

3. Always put up a ‘guest-bio’ for yourself: And be comprehensive, without being too long. A good bio would start off with your name, a little about where you work and what you do/your profession, including some of your responsibilities – all this is essential to establishing your authority. Also include a few lines about your hobbies or something interesting about yourself, and throw in a link to your blog, as well as your Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter profiles. All this information will probably end up in the author-box on the blog – usually placed at the beginning or at the end of blogs. Here is a good example of what one of these author bio-boxes look like.

4. Devise a posting system: This includes a number of things, such as developing a schedule (e.g. one guest-post a week), developing a certain method of writing your guest posts which suits you the best. Make sure that you plan your posts in advance, and adhere to any rules that you might be asked to follow for submitting a post on the blog. As a blogger, you should already have a posting system for yourself in place, but if you don’t, developing one now might be a good idea.

5. Always respond to comments: Depending on the blog you post on, you may get anywhere between a couple of comments, to hundreds of them. It is very important to reply to all comments whenever possible, and be prompt when doing so. In most cases, the blog owner will expect you to do this, even if he/she hasn’t explicitly asked you to do it. If you’re busy, make it a point to log in at least once-a-day to respond to comments, even if it’s just a simple ‘thanks for your feedback’ reply.

6. Always thank the blog owner for the opportunity: Send in an email, thanking the publisher for the opportunity to allow you to put up a post on their blog. This is essential, as it leaves a good impression on them, allows you to stay on good terms with them, and could even lead to recommendation or a request to do more posts on their blog. Above all, you end up looking like a true professional.

In this post I want to illustrate some tips which can help you to improve your Blogger template to design a professional layout for your blog.


1. Start creating a custom template
A nice template is important for the success of your blog in terms of visits and return of money using AdSense. Before to start your custom template, writing code from zero, I suggest you to download a simple basic Blogger template, for example "Minima": so, copy and past on your preferred HTML editor HTML source (remeber to check "expand widget models" option) and remove everything is contained within b:skin tag. This is the only code which have to remain:


...and, below the previous line, add this code into the <head> tag to create your custom CSS style. I suggest you to use the following CSS structure:



In this way CSS code will be simpler to manage and update. This is a screenshot of a part of CSS code I used to design my blog:


At this point you can start writing HTML code, adding layer, sections and other elements to your template. When your template is ready, copy the code and paste it on Blogger Layout editor and save it. If you need more info about Blogger customization, I suggest you to take a look at BloggerBuster a "Blogger-dedicated" site mantained for my friend Amanda which provides useful templates, tips and tricks for Blogger users.


2. Create single custom pages on Blogger
Using Blogger you can create single custom pages like on WordPress. How do you do it? Simply creating a post which you will use like a web page for example adding links or in general contents organized for category. On my blog I created some pages (Tutorials, Showcases, Freebies) and, for each page, I added a link on navigation bar:


...and each page contains links organized for topic (take a look at the page Tutorials). When you have to modify the content of the pages you have simply modify the related post directly from Blogger Post editor.


3. Display some HTML elements only on home page
Sometimes it's usefult to display some page elements only on home page and not on each single post. To do it, you have to use Blogger <b:if> statement, adding the following code on your Blogger template:


In this way, if the current page isn't an "item" page (but for example it's your home page) , will be displayed all code within <b:if> tag.


5. Page title and meta tag description
For a better indexing of your blog on Google I suggest you to make these simple changes on your template. Change this line (blog title):


...with the following code:



...and add Meta tag description below the previous <b:if> statement.


For example on my template I added: "Woork is a popular tech blog mantained by from Antonio Lupetti. Topics focus on web design, tutorials, resources and inspiration", so when someone looking for my blog on Google, search results display the following description:




4. Design custom categories section
By default, categories on Blogger are displayed on one column. If you want to modify the default layout showing labels on two columns instead one column, you have manage manually your labels using this simple trick: adding on your template, for each labels, a link like this:


For example, to design my categories section I used this code:


...and how you can see on my sidebar the result is:


I know, the process is not automatic and each time you add new categories, you have to udate your template manually... but this solutions renders more flexible template design.


5. Republish Feed RSS to manage recent entries and comments
Personally I don't like Blogger default archive widget. So, on my template I used FeedBurner BuzzBoost service to add a section with recent entries and recent comments. If you have a FeedBurner account login, clik on "Publicize" tab and select "BuzzBoost" service:



Follow instructions on the page and copy and paste BuzzBoost code on your Blogger template, within a new layer with class property = "recentPost" (you can insert this layer, for example, within sidebar):


To customize recent entries section add a CSS class (recentPost) using, for example, the following code:


Final result is something like this:


You can repeat the same process to add a new section which contains links to recent comments, simply changing the feed URL.


6. Add custom subtitle to your posts
If you want to add a subtitle to your Blogger post you can use a simple "trick" using CSS. On your Blogger template, create a custom class ".subtitle" (for example, I used this code for Woork's subtitles style):


Now, when you add a new post, to add a subtitle, add a div layer with class property = "subtitle" before the post content:


This is a screenshot of Blogger Post Editor:



So, add the rest of your post below the div layer and the result is:



7. Add social web buttons
Social web buttons are a extraordinary solution to share and make popular content you write on your blog. Delicious, StumbleUpon and Digg are my preferred social network which drive on my site a lot of traffic but also Mixx, Reddit, Yahoo Buzz!, DZone can help you to increase your visitors. For more info about how to add social buttons on your site take a look at this post for the full list.