15 Reasons to Use Windows Live Writer for Posting to Blogger.

Windows Live Writer is a client software used to post to blogs on various platforms directly without using a web browser. Here wre the advantages of using it for creating posts on your blog................

1.   It is free.   You can download it here.

2.   Insert tables without coding :

A table	made with	Windows
Live	Writer	.

 

3.    Make image gallery easily by inserting images in tables :

Photo by MousyBoyWithGlasses.	Photo by Pier Biter.

 

4.  Customize hyperlinks to open in new window and add nofollow and title tags to it without coding it in the html for the link :

 

5.   Post to multiple blogs.

6.   Save bandwidth by publishing post once only instead of continuously saving posts as you make them in a web browser Post Editor.

7.  Add Technorati/ Delicious/Flickr/Live Journal/Ice Rocket etc Tags to posts.

8.   Add Labels in Blogger or Categories in Wordpress using the post properties toolbar below the main Writer window.

9.   Insert Maps/Videos/pictures in post

10.  Set the publish date for the post

11.  Publish Post as draft or as a post directly

12.  Ping as soon as post is published. Go to Tools---->Options----->Ping Servers and copy the URLs below and paste them in the box and save :

http://ping.feedburner.google.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://www.bloglines.com/ping

13.   It has plugins to enable you to add more functionality.  Be careful of third party plugins.

14.   Makes you more productive.  You can add more posts and also create your posts offline as soon as ideas strike you.

15.  Can be used to publish posts to  private blogs also. If by some reason your posts got deleted you can republish them from the copy in Windows Live Writer.

Blog and Ping to Attract the Search Spiders.

A Blog is a special type of website which has constantly updated content. Thus blogs are marked out by the search engines to be frequently crawled and indexed. Any links within blogs are also followed by the search spiders to their destination sites which are also indexed. Both these properties are made use of in the Blog and Ping technique to get websites indexed fast.............

After you start a blog or a site you want it to be indexed by the search engines so that anyone is able to find your site listed in the search engine results page when they search for it. There are millions of blogs and billions of sites out there so unless you adapt some techniques for fast indexing you will have to wait your turn till the spiders come to your site. You can submit your site to the search engines and then wait or adapt the Blog and Ping Technique.



If you already have a site then create a blog in any of the free hosted platforms like Blogger and/or Wordpress. In your blog posts or in the sidebar put in a link to your site. After publishing the post use a Multipinger site to inform (ping) all the search engines that you have updated content in your blog. These search engines will release their spiders to your blog and they will follow all the links in your blog to your site and index that as well. See the picture below :


Similarly if you create a new blog put its link on one of your older blogs and it will be indexed faster than if you just submit it to the search engines. Also submitting blog link to a blog directory helps in faster indexing since they are crawled frequently by the search spiders.

TAG AND PING

This is another marketing technique to increase traffic to your blog. A tag is a brief descriptive name given to categorize a post. They are like the tags attached to your luggage at airports. They serve to identify what is inside the post. In the New Blogger they are called 'Labels'.


The method to follow in Tag and Ping is to create a blog post and label it appropriately and then publish it. To do this just add the label in the bottom frame of the post editor in Blogger before publishing. After publishing ping Technorati.com. You can do this by setting your blog to ping Weblogs.com under Settings----->Publishing------>Send Pings. You can also paste the URL of your post here and press Enter. The spiders from Technorati will visit your post and place it under that tag on their tag page for that label. Blogger labels also double up as Technorati tags so you need not add them separately. When someone else writes a label under the same tag/label your post will move down the tag page.



When someone searches at Technorati for that tag your post will show up in the result and hence get traffic. See picture below :





Here you can see how "Tag and Ping" works. I labeled this post with the label "Increase Traffic" as you can see in the list of labels below this post. Then I published it and pinged Technorati from a Multipinger site. I then searched at Technorati for "Increase Traffic" and you can see my post at the top of the tag page for this tag. See Picture below :


Click on picture to enlarge it. If you tag/label your posts with one of the Technorati "hot tags" your post will land up on the popular tag pages and attract traffic from there. Make sure that your post is about the tag otherwise you will be guilty of spamming.

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.

Multi-Pinging Tools Compared.

Everytime you make a post to your blog or update it you have to ping the search engines to notify them of the changes you have made. I have dealt with this in an earlier post : Pinging Simplified. There are some sites which can ping multiple engines for you in one click. Here I have compared several such tools......

There are several sites where you can submit your blog url and click the Ping button to notify the search engines and directories of new content. These are :

1. Autopinger.com
2. Pingoat.com
3. Pingomatic.com
4. Blogflux Pinger.
5. Feedburner Pingshot.
6. Feedping.com

Except for Feedburner just go to the respective site and paste your blog url and click on the Ping button after publishing a new post. For feedburner login to your account click on your blogname (You should have claimed your blog first as shown in Feedburner and Blog feeds.) and click on Publicize tab at top. Then click on Pingshot in the sidebar. Choose the services you wish to ping and click Save. Now these services are automatically pinged on publishing a new post.


I have shown all the sites pinged by each site in the table below

Technorati Tags:ping, blog and ping, multipingers

Feedburner and Blog Feeds.

Blog Feeds are a method by which viewers can view your blog and updated content without visiting your blog. Their importance is further enhanced by Google's frequent indexing of feed content........

To make sure that your blog content appears in the Search Engine results turn on your feeds. For this go to Settings------->Site Feed------>Select Short or Full Feeds and Save Settings.

Your blog feeds once turned on are accessed using their feed URLs. The URLs for your beta/new blog's feed is

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

Substitute actual blog name in place of yourblogname. For example the feeds for my blog can be accessed by clicking on :

http://betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/summary
http://betabloggerfordummies.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Click on the above links to see the result. To view a blog's feeds in a Feed reader such as Bloglines or Google Reader simply add these URLs to it.

PUBLICIZE FEEDS

:To ensure that your viewers can easily subscribe to your blog content you have to put these URLs in a place easily seen on your blog. Blogger provides a link to them at the end of the posts. See What is Subscribe to Posts Atom.



Login to Feedburner and click on name of your blog. Then click on Publicize tab on top. Then click on Chicklet Chooser in sidebar. Choose the new standard feed icon by clicking its radio button. Scroll down and choose Use as a Widget in Blogger. Then click Go and follow instructions.

FEEDBURNER.COM

Feedburner.com provides a standard method of sending your feeds out. Your Blog feeds are taken by Feedburner and sent out. If you turn off your blog feeds then Feedburner will also give you error. To 'burn' your feed at feedburner goto feedburner.com and paste your blog URL into the text box provided and click on Next.


There is no actual burning involved. Feedburner takes blog feeds modifies them according to the settings you specify and passes them onto the readers. To make the actual connection with a blogfeed you have to first submit or burn it at feedburner. It is a once only process. Feedburner being separate from Blogger cannot connect with your feed unless you submit it to them. They prefer to call it burning in accordance with their name and probably to invest it with some portent!



Feedburner will show you what feeds are available (Atom and RSS) and ask you to choose one. Choose anyone and click on Next. Feedburner will give your feed a title and a new URL which you can copy and save for personal reference. Click on Activate Feed. The feed is now activated and you have to put the link for it in a prominent place on your site. Click on Skip directly to feed management beside the Next button at the bottom.

PUBLICIZE FEED

Buzzboost is the first option here. This takes your feed URL and turns it into Javascript code which you can embed into any other website you own which will then show the contents of your blog on that site. As an example I have added it to this Googlepages site : http://betabloggerfordummies.googlepages.com/bbd
This gives your content more exposure automatically.

Headline Animator is the second option. This displays rotating headlines from your blog. You can customize its appearance. See the left column of my blog where there is a seasonal Headline Animator. You can add this to the foot of your Emails also. Place this on another of your sites to promote your content.

FeedCount is another way to promote your feed. It is a dynamic graphic that always displays your feed's current circulation, as calculated by FeedBurner. Choose its color scheme and an animated or static appearance. This impresses your viewers into signing up for your feed.




Chicklet Chooser : These are small buttons which are the links for viewing your blog feed in any feed reader or application. You can choose the standard feed icon or any of the many chiclets. Paste the html code into a Html/Javascript Page Element in sidebar. This encourages people to subscribe to your feed by posting a friendly graphic in an easy-to-find location.

PingShot : This Notifies services when you publish. You can notify Technorati, My Yahoo, Bloglines, PubSub, Ping-o-matic, Newsgator and up to five additional services. Click on activate after choosing and then Save. Whenever you publish new content all these services are notified.

Email Subscriptions : Offers feed updates via email. Activate this and you will be given code to put in your site. Viewers can then type in their email address and click the Subscribe button. They will then receive in their email any updates to your blog.

Creative Commons : This service attaches the appropriate Creative Commons license in your feed's content. Choose the options you want and Activate and Save.

Password Protector : Basic security to keep an unwanted Tom, Dick, or Harry out of your feed. Protect your feed with a required username and password using HTTP
authentication. Any requests for your burned feed will require readers to enter a username and password to retrieve it.

OPTIMIZE FEED

Browser Friendly : makes your feed formatting easy to read in any browser. Choose among the options and Activate.

SmartFeed : Makes your feed compatible with any Reader application whether it is RSS or Atom.


FeedFlare : gives the viewer multiple options at the bottom of each post. See image below:

AUTODISCOVERY

It's a tag that tells web-based news readers and browsers like Firefox and IE7 what your exact feed address is. First View your blog in a browser and click on View----->Page Source. Locate these lines at the top :

<meta content='text/html; charset=UTF-8' http-equiv='Content-Type'/>
<meta content='true' name='MSSmartTagsPreventParsing'/>
<meta content='blogger' name='generator'/>
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="test blog - Atom" href="http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="test blog - RSS" href="http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss" />
<link rel="service.post" type="application/atom+xml" title="test blog - Atom" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/875397467806229665/posts/default" />
<link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="http://beta.blogger.com/rsd.g?blogID=87539746760806229665" />

Copy this code. Then goto Template----->Edit Html and locate this line :

<b:data='blog' name='all-head-content'>

Replace the above line with the source copied. Save Template.

Then in the same code replace these lines :

<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="test blog - Atom" href="http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="test blog - RSS" href="http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss" />

with this line :

<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Your Blog Feed" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/YOURBLOGFEEDNAME" />

where YOURBLOGFEEDNAME is the URI, of your FeedBurner feed. Save Template.

REDIRECT YOUR FEED

If your url is changed you may need to redirect your feed. Follow the instructions here.

Technorati Tags:feedburner, feed, rss, atom, autodiscovery, ping,

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

Technorati in Blogger Beta.

Technorati is the search engine for blogs and hence no blogger can afford to go without it in his/her blog................

Google is the generalized search engine for the web. Technorati is a search engine which is specialized for blogs. Blogs in contrast to other web sites have ever changing content and Technorati focuses on them by searching them for keywords. Each blog is indexed and individually ranked among the 50 plus million blogs in today's blogosphere. The major differences between the two are outlined below :

Search Engines Compared

GOOGLE	TECHNORATI
Generalized Search	Specialized Search
Searches static, inactive Web	Searches Dynamic Web
No Focus	Focuses on Blogs
Infrequent visits to site	Immediate indexing of content
More sites to cover	Less sites to cover increasing efficiency
Covers World Wide Web	Covers World Live Web

Just as you have to submit your site to Google and the other search engines you have also to 'submit' your blog to Technorati so that other bloggers/readers can find your blog in the blogosphere. Also by doing so you can analyze your blog traffic, backlinks and find out your blog rank.

To register with Technorati go to Technorai.com and click on Join link at the top or click here. After registering you have to 'claim' your blog which is like submitting your site. To do this go here. Claiming your blog establishes that you are the (co-)author of the blog and allows you to use other Technorati services to help increase the visibility of your blog.

During the claiming process Technorati will give you a snippet of code which you have to paste in a Html/Javascript Page Element in the sidebar. To do this go to Page Elements subtab of Template tab and click on Add Page Element in the sidebar. In the new window choose Html/Javascript option and paste the code in contents and save. Having done this go back to technorati and click on Verify so that Technorati spiders your blog. Automatic robots known as "spiders" are released by Technorati to discover content on your site and its feeds. Technorati uses RSS feeds to track updates to millions of blogs. After updating your blog or after every post you have to ping Technorati to let them know that fresh content has been added. It then sends the spiders to index the content.


Each blog you claim will be listed on the Your Blogs page. To make sure the world can see it on Technorati, click the "Configure Blog" button and check to make sure that "Include this blog in Technorati's Blog Finder" is checked. This includes your blog in its Blog directory.


Technorati receives alerts from the Blogger servers whenever a user updates his or her public weblog. To set this automated ping go to Settings---->Basic----->Add your blog to our listings----->Yes---->Save Settings. Blogger will now ping Technorati automatically whenever content is updated.


Technorati breaks up your weblog's home page into smaller sections such as posts and sidebars. You can help Technorati's spiders properly identify a unique post and its proper link destination by adding a link with a defined relationship of "bookmark" for each post. For example:

<a href="http://blog.bloghost.com/post1" rel="bookmark">Post title</a>

Technorati also uses tags to index your blog. A tag as a simple category name. People can categorize their posts, photos and videos with any tag that makes sense. For example if you have a post about films you can tag it with the tag 'film'. Another post about family matters can be tagged as 'family'. Thus you can have posts on various subjects within your blog all neatly categorized using tags. In Beta Blogger tags are called as Labels.

There are two types of tags recognized by Technorati. Post tags are tags added to your posts and they allow your posts to be listed in Technorati's tag search here. To add the tags, add the below code for each tag you'd like add to your post into the body of your post.

<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/[TAGNAME]" rel="tag">[TAGNAME]</a>

Publishing a tagged post in Blogger automatically pings Technorati about updated content. If your blog software supports categories and RSS/Atom feeds just use the included category system and make sure you are publishing RSS/Atom feeds and your categories will be read as tags.


Blog Tags are tags added to your blog on Technorati's Blog Configuration page here. These tags allow your blog to be listed in Technorati's Blog Finder and Explore feature.


Technorati indexes the home page of your weblog assisted by the content of your web feeds. If the home page of your weblog contains summaries or plain-text with no links Technorati may not recognize and index your full posts.


If you use the Atom syndication format to publish the content of your weblog Technorati can still index the full text of your post regardless of your content choices on your weblog home page. Just include your entire post within the content element of each entry and we will recognize this content as the full content of your post.


HOW TO SEARCH TECHNORATI :

You can search Technorati Blog diectory.

Technorati Tags:atom, feed, google, ping, rss, search, search engines, tags, technorati