Blogger Settings - Managing the Blog

Is anyone interested in a car without engine? Almost everyone of us wish to have best possible engine for the car. Similarly, every blog needs settings to manage the blog's overall functions and abilities. So do the Blogger dashboard provide settings for each blog hosted on Blogger service.

Blogger Settings

As usual, settings manage all the basic functions of the blog. Lets us see one by one to what Blogger has provided with us. 

Basic Settings

Basic: These are the very basic settings! Most of them are editable. Title is the Blog title which you have provided at the time of creating the blog. If you wish to add description, you could add few lines of text which will be appended after the blog title. 

Privacy, the very setting decide how you intent to use the blog. The default is 'listed on Blogger. Visible to search engine'. You blog will be indexed by Google and will be provided in the organic search results. 

Blog address! Yes, it is the address through which people identify your blog in internet. As a user of Blogger platform, you will be entitled to create unique sub-domain which would act as blog address. Further, you can setup custom domain name for blogger blog!

Permissions deal with adding, removing blog admins and authors. Click on the '+ Add authors' link and enter email address of the person whom you wish to add as an author in the blog.

Next, of course, your blog readership! Whom do you wish to read your blog post? Public is the best choice if you wish to include more readers. 

Post and comments: Do you mind if I say it has been already discussed in this blog! Managing Blogger comments has all the information about managing comments.

Managing Posts

You can made choice about how many blog post could be display in your home page? How images showcased in your blog! 

Post using Mobile and Email

Mobile and email: Interested in posting on the go! Then Mobile and email is the best method to post blog from various devices. For those who wish to post using SMS/MMS, you could add mobile devices from which you could post.

Next most useful option for any blogger is posting using email. Just fill up the 'secretwords' text box and you will start posting your blog post from your email. The format would be ksguruprasadh.<secretwords>@blogger.com. Send email to this address, you blog will be posted. The subject of your email will be placed as Blog Post title. To effective blog using email, check out How to post Blogger post from email?

Note: Be sure about 'secretwords' usage! Never share your secretwords with others. Anyone with 'secretwords' could post into your blog. It is your obligation to keep it secret! Blogger will not take any responsibility if someone post a blog with your secretwords. Better follow above link on how to post Blogger post from email.

Comment Notification Email: It is optional! If you wish to receive any comment notification email when someone leaves any comment in your blog post, then enter email to which you wish to receive such comment notification email.

Language and Formatting

Language and Formatting: Setup the language of your blog and transliteration. Transliteration could be of any language specific to any country. Of course, it is personal choice. Setting up a language will not make any change to search results.

Formatting will help to setup Time Zone, Date & Timestamp format along with comment timestamps. Though they are not functionally important, it helps providing customized personal experience.

Search Preferences

Search Preferences: If you are planning for SEO Blogger blog post, then each settings in search preferences play vital role. It helps setting up Meta tags, redirects, error messages. And you could set custom robot.txt file. 

Note: If you are not in SEO business, never touch these options. Any mistake in robot.txt file, your blog will be ignored by Google. So if you wish to add custom robot.txt to Blogger, follow the link.
These are the essential Blogger settings every new blogger must get acquainted with to start blogging! Make sure you have the right settings for your web blog before making it public.

Blogger Template Introduction

Editing a Blogger Layout is simply different from applying a Template. Template is non functional unlike Layout which carry functional Gadgets/widgets. To the Blogger beginners, template is an .xml file contains HTML, Javascript and xml code in one document. Blogger has some default stock templates which you can either apply them as such or customize them to your liking.

Blogger Template customization

Good news! With new updates to Google mobile friendly algorithm, Blogger supports responsive web design. So no added cost towards to web design. Each Blogger template has its own respective equivalent mobile friendly template which load for mobile users. With Smartphone penetration, mobile friendliness increases your presence in search engine. But customizing mobile layout is a different story. If you are interested in editing mobile layout, check on how to edit Blogger template for mobile view.

Blogger Template Customization

Let's responsive web design be aside, you are free to customize your blogger template. You can edit Background, width, layout in the customization menu. You will be provided with preview of customized template. Like with the layout, Template is your creativity. Play with it to explore new possibilities.

Editing Blogger Blog Layout

Now comes the interesting part in your Blogger blog, customizing blog layout. Layout is arranging Blogger widgets in your blog to make it easy read for visitors. The default layout will have minimum widgets like About me, blog archives, attribution.

New Blogger Layout Design Interface

The advantage of Blogger layout customization is that it takes no skill to create a widget. So managing your content need no programming skill except for using your mouse! Clicking 'Add a Gadget' link will open up Gadget dialog box where you can select a predefined gadgets. This tutorial is good to explain how to add gadgets in blogger. 

You will find no problem when it comes to adding predefined blogger gadgets in your blog. But that is not the end of customization. You could just create your own gadgets in blogger with pure HTML and Javascript. If you got some code from any repository to implement in your blog then it is good to add 'HTML/javascript' gadgets to add your own code.

While it comes to arranging the placement of gadgets, you will find it similar to using visual IDE. In other words, if you are good at mouse, you are good to go with customization of Blogger layout. Just drag and drop your gadgets to your required place. No more editing CSS and HTML. In this sample tutorial, it is explained how to create your own social media share gadget in blogger. It is not just easy to explain Blogger layout customization in single blog post. Without any paid or free blogger theme, you could just create your own theme for yourself.

Editing Blogger Layout is up to you. Your creativity will create the design of your blog. The design does not mean just arrangement. It is something which make your blog personal with your readers. If you are blogger, who is interested in creating theme for yourself out of stock blogger theme, then I is highly recommended to subscribe this blog for more updates.

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.

Blogger.com inbuilt analytic features

So far how many blog post did you publish? If you have done publishing 3 blog post a day on average then in a week you would have some 21 to 25 blog post to your record. But the problem is getting visitors to your blog post. Creating content would not be a problem for new bloggers. If you spend some one hour per day, you could have good number of post to your name, sorry, to your Google+ profile, provided you shared all the post you wrote from day one. But how would measure your success as a blogger? 

That's the point! From being a blogger, just writing blog posts often doesn't qualify you to the podium. You know? Some millions of people own web blogs. But the said part only few reach the success and find place in SERP. Most people lose track of the progress and achievements. From my personal experience, I find most people abandon their blog. Mostly in blogger.com, I find often orphan blogs. Most blog writers just abandon once they find green pastures somewhere. The sub-domain owned by those bloggers are just doing nothing but parking in it for nothing. Simply, domain parking is done in Blogger platform. But that's different story we don't have to worry about now! 

I guess if you are reading this blog, then you are determined to make your blog complete. Success blogging is creating your own benchmark and targets. And of course, achieving them on time. Blogging had turned into a commitment. You have set target for yourself and achieve in on time.

Blogger Stats:

Stats Blogger Menu

So, you are setting up your targets, ain't you? If not, start setting monthly and weekly targets for your blog. Creating quality content is your goal. But with out any audience for your blog, it would like you are performing in an opera without visitors. So try targeting visitors who would like your blog. Unlike wordpress.com blog, your blog post will sit in new pressed category. Each blogger blog seems isolated except for the navigation bar, which usually brings up others blog.

Overview of Blogger Stats

Overview: Now, stats menu is easy to acquaint with. Overview shows up Post Entry and page views for your blog. Geographical location of the blog visitors. It is overall stats for your blog to make rough estimate out of the metrics collected by the blogger.

Posts: It will provide metrics on pageviews on blogger blog post and blogger page views. You could know about the top blog post which gets visit often from this option.

Traffic sources: This is important metric to measure your success in Blogger. You could learn about sites that are providing entry in to the blog post. 'Referring URL' keeps tab on the web site that provide backlink to your blog. More over 'search keywords' shows the search query for which your blog shows up in search result. This metric is as good as gold if you plan for SEO in your blog. Any search query for which your blog shows up then it is good to optimize your web page for such terms to rank higher. To know more about keywords research, you could find SEO your blogger blog post useful.

Audience: This tab will make you know more about Geographical location of your blog audience. It will provide insight into the Country on which you get page views from your blog and the browser from which blogger blog is accessed along with the Operating system or devices used by audience. It is good to know the OS which frequently appear in this stat. If you audience prefer mobile views, then it is good to optimize your blog for mobile. Interested in mobile optimization, visit to know more about responsive web design.

With Google rolling out mobile search algorithm, followed by anticipated Bing mobile search algorithm update, mobile optimization play vital role. Know the reason for optimizing web blog for mobile and tablets.

Drawback of Blogger inbuilt analytic:

Every tools comes with its own drawbacks! Blogger analytic provided with your blogger blog dashboard has its own drawbacks and pitfalls. 

Blogger stats are not real-time. In other words, you can see live updates over the stats as you do in other web analytic tools. The stats are updated with some delay. So it is good to use some professional analytic service if you prefer to have real time updates. For those, who are critical about the target audience, real time analytic service is way to go. Most of the web bloggers prefer Google Analytic service, yet even that service is not real time.

Further, Page views will count the bot visits. I run words of guru, a web blog running on blogger service. I receive an aggregate of 150 page visits from bots. Most of them are not quality links. Referring web sites would be some unrated website, not safe for audience of all ages. Most of these web sites, try to gain attention of beginners in Blogger who are new to blogging. Most beginners tend to click on those links i.e, referring URL to know about the website which provide link back to the blog and end up landing in page mostly compromising your security and privacy. So make sure, you or other author of your blog don't click on those links which you are uncertain about.