Google Webmaster Tools: How to use for Blog?

I guess your website is ready and awaits Google indexing! Yet, you failed to fetch link from top notch sites where your competitors get links to their websites. If you wish to start independent SEO for your site, it is a must to have Google Webmaster Tools account. Simple as that, you need Google Account to avail the service. Adding website to search console is optional. If your site is famous blog then you don't need to worry much about indexing or getting traffic through SERP. But in most of our case, the blog start with zero i.e, zero visitors! So as a blogger, it is our duty to make the world know about our new blog. You find yourself most of time marketing your blog than creating blog post. As always you is awful to perform in an empty opera! Get audience, perform your drama. All we do is advertise about your perform on that particular day! So do we do it in Search Console! It is letting Google Search Know there exist a blog.

What you got in Search console!

Well, using Google Webmaster tool must have its own purpose! Know well how to enable right options and analyze search data available from the search console.

• At dashboard, you will be greeted with important stats indicating health of your blog.

  

  Stats Indicate Health of the Website

  As the image shows, the important statistics for any website in the webmaster tool is Crawl Errors, Search Analytics, Sitemaps. Crawl error make sure your blog is healthy and free from any defects! Any error reported during crawl must be rectified in no time. Though, it may stat that particular error will not affect your search engine result ranking, it is not good to have so many errors unattended for longer time. Search Analytics, though it claims to be in beta phase, it is an important measure for website optimization. It shows for which keyword phrase your blog came up in SERP. And the Sitemap, we will come later!
• Messages: Google will send you messages regarding improving your presence on Google search engine results. It would recommend few settings and options that are handy to make it target users from country and analyse audience data. Though, recommendations made are not mandatory, yet it is good to heed advice from Google webmaster for such matters. For every update, Google Webmaster Tool will come up with new message confirming the change or update made to your blog.
• Search Appearance:
  Structured Data: Important section if you miss structured data from schema.org. Schema.org is collaboration project from major search engine indented to create standards for rich snippets in search result.

  

  Structured Data

  Data Highlighter: Well, if you are lazy enough to add microdata from schema.org, then Data Highlighter will be your friend in Google Webmaster Tools. 

  

  Data Highlighter

  You can just highlight text as you do in PDF documents to tell Google that it belongs to a property so that it can product rich snippet in SERP.
  HTML improvements: It would list the improvements needed in your blog template. If Google Webmaster Tools find any possible improvement, it will be reported in this section.
  Sitelinks: 'Sitelinks are automatically generated links that may appear under your site's search results. Learn more. If you don't want a page to appear as a sitelink, you can demote it. Only site owners and users with full permissions can demote sitelinks.' -Google Webmaster Tools

  

  Example of Sitelink

  If Google automatically creates sitelinks then, you select which sitelinks to be demoted i.e, removing them from SERP. But remember, Google must generate sitelinks so if you don't find sitelinks in SERP, don't try pushing hard!
• Search Traffic:
  Search Analytics: Here comes the stats which are most useful for optimizing your website for search engines. It provide data regarding clicks, impressions, Click through rates, position of your web page in search result

  

  Search query

  The very important metric which one must take into account is 'search queries'. It shows up for which keyword phrases web page from your blog showed up in SERP. So it is good check them often to know the keyphrase for which your web blog comes ups. Not only that! You must try optimizing your web blog for the keyword phrases and improve your SERP position.
  
  Links to your site: It will display all inbound links to your web blog! If you are planning link building as your SEO strategy, then Google Search console will produce statistics of web sites that are pointing to the web blog! It is very useful if you are planning for link quality assessment.
  Internal Links: It collects statistics regarding interlinking of web pages in web blog. Give it some time to collect stats, it will provide ample data to meddle with!
  Manual Actions: If Google Webmaster Tools reports any spammy activities in your web blog, it would mention 'action to be taken' by the corresponding web masters.
  International Targeting: It is must option if you are in marketing and looking for sale in specific country or region! Say to which part of the Globe, your blog must be listed in SERP. Not only marketers, but also who are all in PPC ad networks could target their web blog to a country which has high conversion rate!
  Mobile Usability: Whatever your blogging platform maybe, it is good to use responsive web blog template which adapts with viewport of the device. If Google Webmaster Tools finds any errors, it will be listed for rectification by the corresponding web masters.It is good to keep these metrics happy to get high ranking in Google SERP.
• Google Index: When you enter Google Webmaster Tools, your first day worry would be when will Google index my blog! Of course, most of them feel the same. At time, it would take even weeks to index web blogs. But sure, Google will crawl your blog once you have submitted your site with Webmaster Tools.
  
  Index status: Know how many resources are indexed by Google! Once you submit sitemap, Google will crawl your blog periodically. Google may add new contents to the index and remove inappropriate contents from index. So it is continuing process.
  
  Content Keywords: It will list keywords according to the number of appearance in your web blog. And also it would provide LSI form of each keywords and occurrence such LSI.
  Blocked Resources: It will list blocked resources. To know more about blocked resources.
  
  Remove URL: You can manually remove URL from SERP.
• CRAWL: The objective of submitting web blog to Google Webmaster Tools is make Google crawl your web blog and index contents. So this option lists crawl information.

  

  Crawl Errors

  Crawl Errors: It is good to maintain an error free blog. Crawl error will state about robot.txt errors and broken links (404). It is good to fix the problem as soon as possible.
  
  Crawl Stats: It will provide data based on past 90 days. It includes how many times Google crawled your blog and web page loading speed.
  
  Fetch as Google: It is time to test your site! You could choose any of the options to test link from your web blog. You could fetch either as Desktop or mobile! You will know how Google understands your web blog.
  
  Robot.txt tester: If you have not come across robot.txt file in your life, then it is good and safe not to touch this options. Any mistake will make Google ignore your blog for good! For those who are good at creating own robot.txt file then it is the place to test your robot.txt files. Once the test is done successfully, you can update the robot.txt in your web blog! Not only texts, but also videos, images, news everything could be manipulated with your own robot.txt file.
  
  Sitemap: Do you remember? When I started this blog post, I mentioned about sitemap. It is important parameter to measure health of your web blog. So submitting sitemap make Google understand your web blog with ease. It would be like providing a map for a navigator. The Google Bot will crawl your website without missing any content that you wish to be indexed.
  
  URL Parameters: Here you can add parameters to URL of your web blog. But be sure before making any change as Google will miss many pages if found with mistakes. Learn more about URL Parameters
• Security Issues: Well, if your web blog is found with security flaws or got hacked by hackers, it will be reported here.Not just hacking issues, but also you will warned if malware activity is found in the web site.
• Other Resources: Time to explore! Not only webmaster tools, Google will provide you with other infant and beta tools to play with. If you got time, explore them.

  

  Other Resources from Google Webmaster Tools

So far made my best effort to make this simple guide on Google Webmaster Tools for Blogger blog. If you have queries, just leave them in comments. You feedback is always welcomed. Do not forget to share this.

WordPress Blogging Platform

WordPress.org

For beginner, it is good to start with Blogger platform. At some point, if you realize that having a self hosted blog is important, then it is time to move on. Most popular blogging platform is WordPress. It is an open source blogging platform which you could customize to your needs and necessities. But you need a hosting account or dedicate a computer machine. Either of the choice, you are going to use WordPress Content Management  System (CMS) for your blog. Well, if you have to start with WordPress, then visit wordpress.org not wordpress.com. Both of them are different!

Difference between wordpress.org and wordpress.com:

Making it Black and White

It would be obvious to observe similarity between the two web address. Yet, both of them are different. Wordpress.org is Open Source project website where you could download the source code of the CMS, while wordpress.com is a website which implemented wordpress open source project act like Blogger service. In wordpress.com, you can create your own blog as we do in Blogger.com. So, if you wish to create your self hosted web blog, then start from wordpress.org.

To make it simple, wordpress.org has provided preferred hosting service who will provide one click install for WordPress. Bluehost, Dreamhost, Laughing Squids are the recommended WordPress hosting service.

WordPress.com is no less, it provide premium service for a cost. You can own your own domain name for your blog in wordpress.com. So, it is your choice when it comes to selecting the right platform. But it is highly recommended to own a self hosted web blog than wordpress.com. Practically, wordpress.com premium account will charge you little bit more than hosting service. Yet, you will find no hassle of blog management with wordpress.com. All you have to worry about is just writing good quality content for your web blog. The truth is each way has its own merits and demerits.

My personal opinion is it would cost less to own a self hosted blog than purchasing premium package from wordpress.com.

What if you don't find one click install?

It is fine to have other hosting services, but WordPress.org will not guarantee you with one click install. Unlike bluehost service, in which you could setup web blog in 20 minutes, other hosting services need you to upload the WordPress source code to the root of the web host.

Plugins:

The thing which made WordPress a buzz is plugins. For WordPress, you will find wide array of plugins that you might find it difficult select from the choices. Large number of web developers develop WordPress plugins. WordPress developer is most sought after job for any freelancer. 

For almost anything you will find plugin to get your job done in WordPress.

Moreover, you will have find more by yourself with your WordPress blog. To try blogging experience in WordPress it is good to start with wordpress.com.

Self Hosted Web Blog

Do you have a minute? If yes, it is good enough to confess that you need at least 5 minutes to know about hosted web blog. When it comes to hosted web blog, anyone might think that I am doing WordPress marketing. Since, it is been top Content Management System (CMS) in internet web blog history, anyone who wish to start a blog will be tempted to own a WordPress hosting! Now, the question is what is hosted web blog? Time to find out.

What is Self Hosted Web Blog?

Self Hosted web blogs are either self-hosted from home or hosted through a service provider. Unlike, Blogger where you depend on Google for the service, hosted web blogs are self-dependent. It means you own your blog completely and have control over all the aspects of your web blog. You are at the liberty to decide your own policy and terms. Especially, plugins! Most blogging platform fall short when it comes to plugins. In a hosted blog, you can control the level of plugins and could install & manage your own hand coded extensions. In simple words, it is like you own your house for good unlike renting it.

Owning a Blog is not having WordPress

So now, owning a self hosted web blog is not all about WordPress. WordPress is one among the CMS in Internet history. You will be provided with lot of other CMS to manage your blog. But WordPress gained popularity as it was open source and let developers to create and install own plugins. The repository of plugins made WordPress popular to stand of the crowd. Yet, if you wish to use some other CMS, then you are good to go. The point is WordPress blogging platform is not a must have if plan for a hosted web blog!

If you are planning to setup own blog, then it is good to check with other CMS such as joomla, Drupal and so on. A simple web search going to bring a lot of information than any book could do. Most of the CMS installations are just a click away. So it worth to give it a shot.

Advantages of Owning a Web Blog:

Well, it most advantageous to own a web blog for yourself rather than using using third party service if wish to exercise full control over your blog. The following are the few advantages of self-hosted web blogs:

• Full control over the blog functions
• Personalized blog experience
• Getting trust from visitors about your seriousness in blogging
• unrestricted plugins. If you could, you can create your own
• No more black outs for policy violations

Though the above list is short, self hosted web blogs are way better than depending on third party services. Some blogging platform provide services as like to make it appear as self-hosted blog, still those services would not let you the above activities.

I am not advocating here to own a self hosted blog. But none can deny reality! Self-hosted blogs are far better than free or hosted blogging services.

Drawback of self hosted web blog:

Everything comes with a price! None could deny the fact that every best thing will have its own pitfalls. Similarly, you might encounter few problems when own a self hosted web blog!

• Hacking attempts! You have to take Guardianship of your blog. You must protect it from attacker trying to gain access to your blog machine. Pulling it down might wipe out entire blog forever.
• You need to be good webmaster. Though, every blogging platform promises one click installation, yet you will need some technical knowledge to understand the working and customization of your blog. 
• Spams! Well internet history wouldn't be complete if we miss out spams from the index. As self hosted blogger you have to take care of spammer who will otherwise push links forever in your comment area. A blog with spam comment links is not good for business.

Though, the list mentioned here is short, most of the pitfalls could be sorted out with less effort but with a premium price. Most hosting service providers offer package for safety and security of your blog. Either you can purchase the package as a whole or take care for yourself. As always, it is a self hosted web blog, you have the control to what to be done.

Blogger Guide on Earning & Campaigns

Whatever may be the objective of your web blog, either it is run on Blogger service or self-hosted blog! At some time, bloggers feel the need to monetize the blog. Most of the premium web blogs which run on a niche will receive subscription either monthly or yearly to gain premium articles access. But for beginners who just starting a new web blog will find difficult to raise money through premium subscription. Most of the visitors would bounce off your web blog once they find pay for view comes up in blog. The truth is most personal blogs will not gain readership if premium subscription comes up before visitors.

So most blog webmaster prefer ads and banner instead of paid subscription to gain access to the blog. Blogger blogs are easy to monetize. Moreover, it has its own inbuilt integration with Google Adsense account. Just a click of a button will take you to Google Adsense dashboard.

Earning using Blogger blog:

Google Adsense

Blogger.com has inbuilt Google Adsense integration. For any beginners, monetizing a Blogger blog is just a click away. But, it is not easy anymore. You have to run into Sandbox mode for 6 months before signing up for adsense. Just kidding! New blog needs some age and exposure to start monetizing. Google will provide with 6 months time to build your Blogger blog. 6 Months is an ample time to generate enough content to draw attention of your audience. When the time arrives, the the Sign up button would be enable for your blog.

Sign Up for Google Adsense

Once you click on the sign up it will take you to the Google Adsense dashboard where you would keep your blog for approval from Google Adsense Team. If you application gets approval, you are good to setup ads in your blog! Visit here to know more and Troubleshoot in setting up Google Adsense for your blog.

Starting your Campaign:

Your blog is been alive for 6 months, yet to achieve your target on audience. Then campaign is one of the best way to try gaining your presence over Internet. 

Start Campaign for your Blog

Campaign? Sounds like some election work for a candidate? For those who are new to Google Adsense pay per click advertising, it is a paid ad that comes along with organic search results of Google Search engine. Paid search results are as long as good if you pay for clicks from the search results. To know more about pay per click advertising, read about pay per click advertising.

How to Create Blogger Pages

Apart from your blog post, you can manage pages which is usually used to host static pages. Yet, you are provided with ample number of pages to mess with. But remember, don't post usual blog post in blog pages. It is highly recommended to use new blog post. Pages are usually good for static contents such as About Me, Contact us, privacy policy, etc. Usually, these pages are often not edited. They remain static for the long time unless blog author wish to make a change.

Now, it is time to create blogger page if you are yet to create one.

Creating Blogger Pages:

Step #1: As usual, you need to be in your blogger.com dashboard to create your blog pages. Select the blog to which you wish to add pages. It will directly let to your blog dashboard.

Step #2: Now select 'pages' from the blog menu.

Blogger Pages

Step #3: Select 'New Page'. Like the 'create a blog post' interface, you will provided with an interface to create content of the static blogger web page.

Creating Blogger Page

The interface will provide with all the blogger pages that you have created previously. You can edit and update any changes you wish to make in your blogger blog.

Editing do not need any technical skills. Just like we do in the Word 2010, you could be able to edit content of the page like we do in the document.

Step #4: Once you complete your creating page content, you are good to publish them. Hitting 'Publish' will make it live on internet.

Blogger Page Property or settings:

Blogger Page options

Unlike blog post settings, you are limited when it comes to editing settings of your blogger blog pages. You will not find as many options as we do find in blog post creation interface. Only an 'options' setting will be available. It is as good as blog post 'options' where you specify options regarding HTML elements. If you wish to know more about the options, read how to create blog post.

Once you complete editing, hit the 'publish or update' button to save your changes and make it go live. Also with blogger pages you could be able to create static web pages to your blog form which you could create menu from those pages.

Creating Blog Post in Blogger

Well so far so good. You have your blogger blog ready. Now it awaits your first post. No blog is good without blog posts. So it is good to create first post as introduction post. Any blog must have intro blog post to make sure about the purpose of the blog. Well, when this blog is being prepared 'Blogger Guide Introduction' was published to public. To say, it is the first of the blog posts that got ready before anything. Now, lets jump to the creating your first blogger blog post.

Creating Your Blogger Blog post:

Step #1: Go to Blogger.com and login using your Google Account. It will let you to the blogger home page where you can view all your existing blogs.

Step #2: Now select the blog to which you wish to add blog post.  You can create new blog post in multiple ways

Blogger Home Page

 You can simple click on the create new post icon in your blogger home page dashboard to create new blogger blog post. It would directly lead you to create new post interface. Just enter your title and content body. OR

Blog Home page

The previous method is to create new post from Blogger dashboard. Now, if you are in your blog home page. You could either of the icon to start create a new post.

The subject content could be your interest. Make sure that each blog post are inter-related in subject matter. Just creating mixer of subjects will make your readers tired of searching relevant posts. 

Blog Post Settings:

Just posting a blog post ain't enough, each blog post has its own properties to manage with. 

Blog Post Settings

Labels: In other words, it may be called as categories. It is helpful in categorizing blog post in blogger blog. In this case I have created two label, 'Blogger Guide' & 'creating blog post'. You can have up to 500 labels in blogger.

Schedule: Handy property while you are away from your desk. You complete finishing a blog post but it could wait till the time you mention in the schedule to get published. Few bloggers have habit of publishing blog post on particular days in a week. If you have any posting schedule, then you can make blog post get published on that particular day.

Permalink: It is the ending part of the blog post URL. Usually, it is generated automatically based on the title of the blog post. But if you wish you could set 'custom Blog URL' to each blog post.

Location: Blogger can indicate the location from which blog is posted. Yet, it is not exact location. You can add New York, USA as location from a desk located in Singapore. But adding location adds value to the blog.

Options

Options: Bloggers could decide how HTML is interpreted in the document. Few bloggers who blog about coding are good with 'Show HTML literally' as nothing indicates to add code to be viewed by the blog readers.

If you enable 'Interpret typed HTML', you could just add any HTML code that you wish to be part of blog post. You can add HTML tags on the go.

Description: You may not find this option initially. Blog Post Description is nothing but meta-description of the blog. It is one of the option available to SEO your blog which is not topic of this blog post. Also it is good to know how to enable Blog Description.

Once you finish writing your blog post, hit 'Publish' button to make it go live in Internet. 

Blogger Guide Introduction

Blogger Guide is a web blog aimed at helping fellow blogger to create a valuable and highly relevant web blogs for target audience. Most blogger who start blogging are beginners who find it tedious editing layout and templates without any technical knowledge. When a new blogger start his web blog, he will be one man company managing all the affairs of the web blog. So as a web blogger, who is getting started with blogger, has to be a good manager at first. Merely writing good blog post, will not attract attention. The blog author must be one who is capable of steering the blog post towards targeted audience to make it live and running. Running a successful blog will take lot of hard work. No blog will get stardom overnight. So keep working consistently will pay the reward.

Patience is the key:

Patience is the key. Most of them get curious the day two when blog goes online. How many visitors did I get? That's what satisfy a blogger. But their exist too many metric each blogger must understand. Just visitors alone make it all. Even I do own other blogs, where most visitors are nothing but bots. How hard I try, bots never relents. They just create some 100 to 150 page views per day. Does it mean, I receive good web traffic? Definitely, not! Even if you get 5 real readers of your blog post, then you have achieved making some one read your blog post.

Few bloggers rush for web traffic, try black hat SEO to get huge web traffic from search engine results. This may be good in short run. But your blog must aim to cater the need of your readers in long run. Blogger blog must be like a teak wood class chair where you use it for generation rather than a plastic chair which break within years of usage. Black hat SEO would give you plastic chair comfort. So patience is the key. Even today, you may not get your audience. But one day your blog will reach them.

Creating a blog will take time. Not just one or two blog post will create interest in your blog. So need have some warehouse of post to make readers and other fellow blogger to gain interest. So make sure you create enough content to draw attention.

Personalize Reader Experience:

Blogger Guide will help you make your blogger blog personal to your readers and audience. 

Design is how it work not how it looks - Steve Jobs

Your blogger blog design must be satisfy the convenience of the users. Design is not just how enticing your blog looks but how it projects content to the audience. Personalized user experience will get lot of social shares. So increased presence in social media.

Blogger guide is one stop solution to make your blogging right! Having cluttered blog is not a design. Your blog design must make readers get access to content in the intended way.