Backlinks With Bob and Alice!

When you open a single post in any blog on Blogger you will find at the bottom two sentences which may mystify you. See picture below :


Click on picture to enlarge it. The first sentence is : "Links to this Post". The second is a link which may follow it closely : "Create a Link".


So you say to yourself "OK! Let's create a link!" and you click on the "Create a Link" link. Instantly a popup window comes up which mystifies you further. See picture below :



"Now what the #$@%&*##?" you say to yourself......................

Read More On "Backlinks with Bob and Alice!"

BLOG THIS WINDOW

This is the "Blog This" window. It opens the post editor in your blog with the Title and Link fields already filled in with the Title and the link of the post on which you clicked the link. Also a link to the post is present in the body of the post along with the correct anchor text.


All you have to do now is to type in your opinion or comment on the post and select the blog (if you have many blogs) you wish to publish the post in. Then on clicking the Publish button below the post is instantly published to your blog. You do not have to go through the usual route of login at Blogger.com and clicking on +New Post link on Dashboard.



What you have just done is put a link in your blog post instantly, instead of going through the normal route of coding it in. The advantage is that you do not have to leave the post, on the blog which has caught your interest, to blog about it on your own blog.



Now after publishing the post Google will index it and show the original blog that you have talked about him on your blog by putting a backlink on his blog. That backlink will point to your published post.



So the "Create a Link" link does indeed create a link but not on your blog. It is instead a backlink on someone else's blog pointing to your blog. The official Blogger Help page gives a nice example :

"For instance, suppose Alice writes a blog entry that Bob finds interesting. Bob then goes to his own blog and writes a post of his own about it, linking back to Alice's original post. Now Alice's post will automatically show that Bob has linked to it, and it will provide a short snippet of his text and a link to his post."

See picture below explaining the process :



Click on picture to enlarge it.


There is a difference in Blogger blogs. There is no short snippet as happens with trackbacks in Wordpress blogs. There are only Backlinks. See picture below of the current backlinks on How to put a picture in the Header post on this blog :

FACTS ABOUT BACKLINKS

1. You cannot create a backlink on your own post unless you put a link to it in another post.


2. You can add a "Blog This" link to your browser Toolbar. Drag this link to your browser's Links bar. Now you can instantly launch your Blog Post Editor from any site.



3. Backlinks are seen only after you enable them in Settings----->Comments----->Backlinks Show and also check "Backlinks Default for Posts" and Save Settings.



4. You can turn off showing backlinks for individual posts by clicking Post Options link in bottom left frame of the Post Editor.



5. Backlinks are shown after the link carrying post is indexed by Google BlogSearch. If you find that the post is not indexed by it you can ping Google Blogsearch manually. Copy and paste the URL or Permalink of the post carrying the link in the text box and click on "Submit Blog' button.



6. You can choose to delete the 'NO-FOLLOW' tag on your backlinks.



7. You can show the link of the post you link to as a separate 'Related Article' Link in your post footer.



8. You have to wait for a few seconds after the blog page is fully loaded before the backlinks will show up.



9. Snippets are seen on Trackbacks which are present in Wordpress blogs. At present Blogger has only backlinks. CORRECTION and UPDATE : Sorry Folks! My Bad! As Jose Lamas Rios has pointed out :

Backlinks in blogger do have snippets. Next to each backlink you'll see a triangle pointing to the right (the same one it's used for archive entries in the sidebar). When you click on it, the triangle will point down and a snippet will be shown.

Thanks for the correction Jose. Only thing is that in Wordpress the snippet is immediately seen and you do not have to click any arrow to expand it!! Thanks anyway. Much Obliged!








10. Lastly do not expect to be notified every time a backlink appears on your blog posts. There is NO backlink notification feature.

Link To My Blog Google Gadget.

A reader requested me to convert the "Link to My Blog" Blogger Widget into a Google Gadget. You can create a similar Google Gadget for your blog and release it into the Google Gadget directory.


Also you can create one for your blog and install it in the sidebar. If readers want to link to your blog they do not have to copy and paste any code. It is a two mouse click operation to link to your blog for the code-challenged.........


We have already seen before how to create Google Gadgets. We will be using the same method here.



First go to the Google Gadget Editor Replace the code in the Editor with the following code : (see picture below - click on picture to enlarge it)


Replace the code in red with your blog link (BLOG_URL), the link to the snapshot of your Gadget (LINK_OF_SCREENSHOT), the link to the thumbnail (LINK_OF_YOUR_THUMBNAIL), Blog Title (BLOG_TITLE) and link of your button image (LINK_OF_BUTTON_IMAGE).


Then save the gadget and publish it. You can add the code to your blog sidebar in a Html page element where it will look like this :

Click the 'LINK TO THIS SITE' button at top to test the gadget. The Add Page Element page will open inside the gadget. You will have to scroll to select the options to add the image/button link to your blog.


Click the +Google button in the bottom frame to add this gadget to your personalized Google Homepage (iGoogle).

Count Number of Yahoo Backlinks to Any Site.

The number of backlinks to your site or blog is an important measure of the importance of your site. Google uses the number and quality of backlinks to give a Page Rank to your site. However the number of backlinks counted by Google are not updated frequently.


To have a more frequent measure of your site's performance you can count the number of Yahoo backlinks to your blog or any site. First it would be helpful to have submitted your blog to Yahoo and got it verified by putting in the new Yahoo Site Authentication metatag in your template........




To see the number of links from all pages to your entire site just type this in the address bar of your browser :

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?p=BLOG_URL&bwm=i&bwmo=&bwmf=s


Replace 'BLOG_URL' with the link of your blog excluding 'http://'. Then hit Enter key on keyboard. For example :

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?p=betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com&bwm=i&bwmo=&bwmf=s


will show links from all pages to my entire site.





To see the number of links except from this subdomain to entire site use :

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?p=BLOG_URL&bwm=i&bwmo=s&bwmf=s


Replace 'BLOG_URL' with the link of your blog excluding 'http://'. Then hit Enter key on keyboard.





To see the number of links from all pages to only this url use :

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?p=BLOG_URL&bwm=i&bwmo=&bwmf=u

Replace 'BLOG_URL' with the link of your blog excluding 'http://'. Then hit Enter key on keyboard.





To see the number of links except from this subdomain to only this url use :

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?p=BLOG_URL&bwm=i&bwmo=s&bwmf=u

Replace 'BLOG_URL' with the link of your blog excluding 'http://'. Then hit Enter key on keyboard.






To see the number of links except from this domain to entire site use :

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?p=BLOG_URL&bwm=i&bwmo=d&bwmf=s

Replace 'BLOG_URL' with the link of your blog excluding 'http://'. Then hit Enter key on keyboard.






To see the number of links except from this domain to only this url use :

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?p=BLOG_URL&bwm=i&bwmo=d&bwmf=u

Replace 'BLOG_URL' with the link of your blog excluding 'http://'. Then hit Enter key on keyboard.




This method can be used to see number of Yahoo inlinks for any site or blog.

Blog Backlinks Chart in Technorati.

Backlinks are a measure of the importance of your blog. These are links pointing to your blog or to your posts from other sites/blogs. Google considers them so important that they form the backbone of the Page Rank algorithm. Technorati also counts the number of backlinks to your blog in the last six months when calculating the Blog Authority. Here is a method to see a chart of your backlinks..........

Technorati is a search engine which specializes in blogs. Because it is localized to a smaller subset of the Internet it is faster in calculating your backlinks. Whenever a blog post is published a ping is sent to Technorati and within minutes the Technorati spiders index the post. Any links within the post are also indexed and appear as backlinks on the account of the blog they point to. You can check the number of backlinks to your blog in all the search engines.



To show backlinks in your blog you should enable backlinks under Settings------>Comments------>Backlinks------->Show-------->Save Settings. The backlinks will show up here once Google indexes the post they are on. This may take some time as Google is a search emgine for the whole Internet. You can remove the no-follow tag on these backlinks to increase traffic to your blog.



To see your or any blog backlinks in Technorati type the following URL in your browser's address bar and press Enter :

http://technorati.com/blogs/YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com?reactions

Replace YOURBLOGNAME with actual name of your blog. In the new Technorati Interface these are called 'Blog Reactions'. To see the number of backlinks type in your blog URL or any other site/blog URL in the search box at the top and click the Search button. You can also do it by entering this in address bar of your browser :

http://technorati.com/search/BLOG_URL

Replace BLOG_URL with actual url of blog and press Enter. NOTE : You can check the backlinks of any blog using this method.

CHART BLOG BACKLINKS

Technorati uses only the backlinks your blog has acquired in the last 180 days to determine your Blog Authority. This helps in maintaining relevance. Hence to maintain your Technorati Rank you have to keep adding new and relevant content to your blog so that others find it worth talking about and link to you or mention your blog in their posts. Google on the other hand counts backlinks from older sites as more important.



To see a chart of the backlinks of any blog type this in address bar of your browser and press Enter :

http://www.technorati.com/chartimg?q=YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com&days=180&width=460&height=200&type=url

Change YOURBLOGNAME to actual name of your blog. Notice the figure in red (180). This shows the number of backlinks accumulated in last 180 days. To see the number of backlinks in lesser or more number of days change this number. Here is a 7 Day Chart :






IMPORTANT : You can also check the backlinks to any individual page in your blog by typing this in your browser's address bar and pressing Enter :

http://www.technorati.com/chartimg?q=YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/YEAR/MONTH/POST_TITLE.HTML&days=180&width=460&height=200&type=url

Change YOURBLOGNAME, YEAR, MONTH and POST_TITLE to actual values. This will help you to see how any backlinks a post has gathered over a period of time. You can see which of your posts are evergreen and which are waning in popularity over time.

CHART SIGNIFICANCE

If there is a sudden rise in the number of your backlinks it may indicate that you have made a very popular post causing everyone to link to it. This then is the time to cash in on your new found popularity for the next six months. At the end of that period your Technorati Rank will fall as drastically as it rose. A sudden rise may also indicate a mass addition of links due to a blogroll.

GOOGLE BACKLINKS

You can also check the backlinks to your blog or posts via Google. However you must expect some delay as Google searches the whole Internet and not only blogs. To see the number of backlinks enter this in the Google Search box and press Enter :

link:BLOG_URL


link:POST_URL

Replace the Caps with actual values. You can check the backlinks to any blog or any site or any page/post in this way.

How to check your Backlinks?

Backlinks are links on other websites pointing to your blog/site. The number of backlinks are taken into account when calculating the Page Rank for your site/blog. Higher your Page Rank, higher is your site position in the Search Results returned by Google. This is important because if your blog/site is listed in the first few pages of the results returned by search engines then it has a better chance of being visited by the searcher. Hence the higher you are in Search Engine Results Page (SERP) there is increase in blog traffic. Monitoring the number of backlinks is hence important and here are the methods to check them.......

Google Webmasters Tools

To use this method first you will have to add a sitemap to your site and verify it. After doing this head over to Google Webmaster Tools and click on the link of your blog. You will get a tabbed interface. Click on the Statistics tab. Then click on Index stats link in the sidebar. You will get a table of Samples of your pages in Google. Click on the Result link. Example :

link:betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com

Google Method

This is the same method as the above but you need not go through Google Webmasters Tools. Instead enter this directly in the address bar of your browser and press Enter :

http://www.google.com/search?q=link:YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com&hl=en

Instead of YOURBLOGNAME enter the actual name of your blog. The actual name of your blog is 'YOURBLOGNAME' in the link to your blog which is : http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com. You will get the number of backlinks in the blue bar at the top of the page :

Web Results 1 - 10 of about xxxx linking to betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com. (0.39 seconds)

XXXX shows the number of backlinks to your blog.

Technorati Method

Technorati is a search engine specializing in Blogs.
First claim your blog at Technorati. Then copy and paste your blog url in the Search For box at the top. In the adjoining box click the down arrow and choose Blog Posts. Then click the Search button. You can also paste this directly in address bar of your browser and press Enter :

http://technorati.com/search/YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com

Instead of YOURBLOGNAME enter the actual name of your blog. The actual name of your blog is 'YOURBLOFNAME' in the link to your blog which is : http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com. You will get your Technorati Rank and the number of links and the number of blogs linking to you.

OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

For Yahoo, AOL, Excite and WiseNut Backlinks enter this in search box of that search engine and press Enter :

link:http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com

For MSN SEARCH and Overture enter this in search box of that search engine and press Enter :

linkdomain:http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com

For the Open directory Project simply enter the URL of your blog in the search box provided and press Enter.

QUALITY OF BACKLINKS

Your PageRank increases with the quality of your backlinks. Higher quality backlinks are :

1. Backlinks from Higher PageRank sites.

2. One-way backlinks are rated higher than reciprocal exchanged links.

3. Backlinks from sites with relevant content. If yoursite is on cars a backlink from a wildlife site is considered lower in quality than one from a car manufacturer site.

4. A backlink where the anchor text is the keyword (keyphrase) that you are trying to optimize for.

5. Too many links from one URL is considered spamming and low quality. Beware of firms trying to sell you backlinks from "link farms".

6. Getting a lot of links in a short time span is suspicious and low quality.

7. Links from Article Directories. Hence submit articles to them and put in a link to your blog at the bottom.

Check which post has most Backlinks

You can check which page in your blog is most linked to. For this go to Google Webmaster Tools and click on the link of your blog. Then click on the Links tab at the top. You will get a list of your posts with the number of links to each next to it. At the bottom of the table click on the Download this table link. You will get a Excel file which you can load in Excel and examine to see which of your posts is
most linked to.


You can also check who is linking to a single page on your blog. Click the 'Find a Page' link on the same page (Google Webmasters Tools----->Sitemaps----->Click blog link------>Links tab) :


Click on image to enlarge it.
Then in the blank provided enter the URL and click the See Details button.

Trackbacks in New Blogger.

Trackbacks are not implemented by Blogger which uses backlinks instead. See Pinging Simplified. Backlinks appear beneath your blog posts when someone mentions the permalink of your post on their blog. Permalinks are permanent links/URLs of your posts. For more information on permalinks see Linking to Another Article. To implement Trackbacks in Blogger you have to use another tool..........

If you want to respond to a post on a blog you can click 'Post a Comment' at the bottom and type in your response. That comment will be displayed below that post so that viewer's of that blog can read your comments. The author of that post will also read it and choose whether to respond to it or not with a return comment below your comment.


However, readers of your blog will never know whether or how that post inspired you. To inform your readers about this interesting post you choose to include an excerpt from it in your blog along with the permalink of that post. Now your readers can read the excerpt and if sufficiently interested will click on the permalink to visit that post and read it in full. But the author of that post will remain unaware that you have shown an interest in his/her post, unless your blogging software supports trackbacks.


If you have trackback support then that post is pinged and an excerpt of your post and the permalink to it will appear automatically at the foot of the source post. The owner can then visit your post and comment on it. This sets up 'conversations' throughout the blogosphere enriching and aiding the flow of ideas.


Blogger does not have trackbacks enabled so we have to use haloscan instead. For this goto Haloscan.com and register which is free. Then input your blogging username and password, click Next and choose which blog you wish to install it on. Backup your template and click Next and changes are made automatically to your template. Then login to Blogger and republish your blog.


To send a trackback publish your post in which you mention the post you are interested in and its permalink. Then login to Haloscan and click on "Send a Trackback Ping" tab. Fill the form and paste in the permalink of the source post as well as that of your post and submit. This will then appear below the source post if trackbacks have been enabled by the author.

Pinging Simplified.

Pinging is a process of attracting the search engines for indexing your blogs....

A Blog is a special type of website which has dynamic content constantly being updated as opposed to a static website. A static website's content does not renew itself constantly. Hence it is difficult to attract the search engines repeatedly to index the site. It may take upto two months for a static website to get indexed while blogs are indexed almost immediately. Blogs, because their content constantly renews itself attract the attention of search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Ping is the process by which a blog notifies a search engine that new content has been added and the search engine responds by sending its spiders which are automated bots or programs which crawl the site and index its contents. You can automate the ping proces s by going to Settings----->Publishing------->Notify Weblogs.com------->Yes------>Save Settings. You can also ping multiple search engines with one click at Autopinger.com or Pingoat.com or Pingomatic.com.

You can ping feedburner at http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/ping.

You can ping Technorati at http://www.technorati.com/ping. To get Yahoo to index you faster create a My Yahoo Account.

After publishing a post ping the search engines with the URL of your post and not the URL of your blog.

At the bottom of your My Yahoo click the Add Content link. In Find Content box clickon Add RSS by url link next to Find Button. In the next window paste your Beta blog Feed url into the text box and click Add.
The URL of your beta blog's feed is

http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full
http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Substitute your actual blog name instead of 'yourblogname' in above links. This will add the content of your blog to the My Yahoo page and Yahoo will send its spiders across faster. To ping Yahoo faster go to http://www.technobloggie.com/ping-yahoo.cfm. Type in your blog url and click on Create Yahoo ping code. A URL link is generated. The link will be of this type :

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/

Bookmark this link in your browser and at the end of publishing any post just click on this bookmark to ping Yahoo.

Pingback is a process by which Web authors request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. Blogger does not currently support pingbacks or trackbacks.

Blogger instead has the Backlinks feature which enables you to keep track of other pages on the web that link to your posts. For example if someone else posts on a topic similar to yours and links back to your post then your post will automatically show a link to the other post. To enable Backlinks go to Settings------>Comments----->Backlinks------->Show--------->Save Settings. These links are shown under the posts with the title "Links to this Post" next to the Comments link. Clicking that link takes you to the post page where all the backlinks are shown under the post and the comments.

Technorati Tags:backlinks, google, ping, search engines, technorati, yahoo