Official Google Blog: Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.

Official Google Blog: Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.

How to add Google Analytics code to your Blogger blog

So you've managed to get our blog up and running be it through Wordpress or Blogger.com and we are eager to get traffic to it (10 things to increase traffic to your blog) and rank well with Google (Blogger tips to get started). Fair play. 

How do we find out who, if anyone, is finding your blog? One answer Google Analytics! Here are 3 simple steps to setup full Analytics tracking for your Blogger blog.

2. STEP How to setup an Analytics account for your Blogger blog

1. Setup and account with Google Analytics at http://www.google.com/analytics/ with your Gmail username and password or your email address and password for your google account (If you don't have a Google account click here to set one up for free).

2.  Go to 'Overview' and select Add new profile. If you are a first time Analytics user the setup process will get you there automatically, just follow the next steps.

3. Enter the URL of your website or blog (e.g http://mygybe.blogspot.com)

4. Choose your Country and time zone

5. Click Finish

6. Google Analytics now provides you with a tracking code, 1 urchin.js and 1 ga.js to add to your webiste or blog. Use the new ga.js as it's the newer format and Google will in time remove the urchin.js codes (read more about urchin.js or ga codes? at Google's analytics blog).

7. Select and copy the code - Ctrl-C (Win), Cmd-C(MacOS)

Note: Make sure that you copy the entire code and don't use both urchin.js and ga.js code.

Easy, first step done

2. STEP How to add the analytics account to your blogger blog

1. Login to your blog at www.blogger.com with your username and password

2. Load the Dashboard, select the blog you want to track and click layout

3. Select Edit HTML (don't worry we won't do any coding)

4. Backup a copy of your template by clicking Download Full Template (better safe than sorry)

5. Go to the end of the html code and find

6. Place the cursor right before the body tag

7. Paste you Google Analytics code, Ctrl-V (Win), Cmd-V(MacOS)  

Not that hard either, second step complete.

3. STEP: Check if the Analytics code is working for your blogger blog

1. Log into Google Analytics with your username and password

2. In the Overview check the symbol next to your blog profile url. Check Mark (receiving data) means tracking is successfully installed and the Triangle means something didn't get picked up.

3. If you see the triangle please just repeat the 2. STEP and refresh Analytics until you see the check mark. Don't worry it happens a lot.

Job done! Enjoy full visibility of your blogger blog.

Analytics updates overnight so you won't be bale to see and visits and data until the next morning. Analytics give you both clicks and unique visitors as well as data about location were the clicks came from and how the visitor got to your site (e.g. search engine or direct click).

If you have something to submit or sell on your blog you can further setup goals with Analytics to track conversions. Find out more about goals in Analytics Help.

SEOmoz | A Dozen Don'ts for SEOs

SEOmoz | A Dozen Don'ts for SEOs

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Syncing doesn't have to be an issue with mac OS x

Most of us have experienced in the past how difficult Apple makes it to sync iPods, Iphones, Itunes etc. but lets face it Apple everyone need to embrace sharing these days. Here are a few tips of how to sync some of these applications and make your life a little easier.

Calendars:

Syncing iCal between different desktops and macbook is relatively easy, however it doesn't work without a little help from our friends at Google. What you need is to sign up to Google calendar and link it to iCal.

An easy way to do this is by adding a CalDAV open protocol to iCal or Mozilla Sunbird, which allows access via WebDAV. What this does is enable you to publish and subscribe to calendars, share them and essentially sync their content between different users or computers/ handsets.

Google has a comprehensive guide as to how to set these up here: http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=99355 .

There are a few limitation, such as that you can't set up new calendars and invite people to them, without manually exporting them from iCal and importing them to Google calendar, but this it's fairly easily. Also Google is working on Apple and Microsoft to get a bug fix asap.

iPhone:

GoogleSync also allows you to sync calendars, contacts and email with your iPhone http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=99355. There are again still a few bugs around so maybe stick with CalDAV for now as it also syncs calendar, contacts and you are able to get your Gmail via pop3 or imap.

iTunes:

This one has several ways to sync between two machines. A good third party software that does the trick is syncOtunes which scans your itunes libraries and tells you which/ how many songs are missing from either one. Very simple and straightforward, however you aren't able to select individual tracks to sync. http://homepage.mac.com/oligrob/syncOtunes/syncOtunes.html

A more tailored approach is to hack the div file, but since almost every user license agreement prohibits this, you are going to have to look somewhere else to find out how to set this up.

My personal favorite is to simply point both iTunes libraries to the same folder on a shared drive to make sure files will be available in every iTunes library linked. Requirement for this is however that you have a networked your machines either wirelessly via your router or connected to a central server. Check this help video for further info on how to setup a home network for mac. http://www.ehow.com/video_4446178_set-up-mac-home-network.html

Feel free to comment if you have found some other/ better/ easier ways to sync your mac applications.

Happy Syncing...

Blogger tips to get started

This is my first attempt to set a step in the new media world of blogging. Not sure what its going to bring, but we'll see were we end up.

here are first of all a couple of great sites that helped me build this new site and optimise it to a degree. Thanks to all the webmasters that know how daunting every new beginning can be.

http://www.searchenginewatch.com
newsletter, forum and help pages in regards to SEO

http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/Overview.html
html help and tips for rookies

10 things to increase traffic to your blog:

I know it's tough, you spend so much time putting all your hard work into finally publishing something online and then.... no one is there to read it, not to mention subscribe to it. Well every beginning is tough, but don't drop your head. There are a few simple ways to increase traffic, but beware nothing beats the no. 1 rule in search engine marketing: 'up to date unique content'!

Here are the other 10:

1. Set up an Rss feed to your MyYahoo account so Yahoo crawlers will register updates quickly. Here is how: Yahoo Publishers guide

2. Set up a Google analytics tracking code in your blog, or at least your linking website. Again this makes sure that update or the blog will get noticed by the search engine crawlers.

3. Contribute to the online community, by being actively enveloped commenting and posting on other forum or blogs within your field. It doesn't hurt to leave witty marks, as it reflects better our your style if you know what I mean.

4. Make sure you ping your posts as it won't be found otherwise. Word-press and some blogs will ping your posts automatically. Otherwise use www.pingomatic.

5. Register your blog with other search engines and meta crawlers. bing ; Google ; Yahoo

6. Submit your blog to blog directories such as Google's Blogsearch and blogarama.com

7. Create a link to your blog on every page of your website.

8. Have links to your blog on your facebook, myspace and twitter accounts. In fact put a link on all online profile you own and get your friends and family to promote it on theirs as well.

9. Include a link in you email signature, on as many email accounts as you have.

10. Make use of trackback links from other blogs and add lots of relevant feed from news-sites or blogs

But after all nothing will get both your rankings in the search engines and with it traffic than bloggin regularly fresh and original content. Remember you've got a hell of a lot of competition in the world and you've got to find something interesting and useful for others to read.

Bing, and what you think of it

Fair play Microsoft is out there now promoting their 'new' search engine bing. From a first look, not too bad and some neat new features like site overview and links summary. The name change does seem like a step in the right direction to dilute the fact that's its run by a big old corporate Goliath behind the scenes. I'm just not too sure how much raindrops on leaves will keep me as entertained as Google's ever-changing themed logo.

Their advertising model with Sponsored sites work pretty much the same way as Google's sponsored links (Adwords) and the highly praised 'related searches' box seem to have a bit too much spin on in terms of enhancing user experience. YouTube videos start previewing on mouse over and it does look a lot cleaner overall.

Most importantly however how is Microsoft is planning to get the traffic in a Google dominated market?

Well for one they have invested more than $60 million in a massive PR & marketing campaign that within the first few weeks of bing's launch have seen a top level shift in search volume from Google to bing. We are talking low single digit figures here, but so far so good.

What it boils down to then is how the user experience differs from Google and how Microsoft is going to compare on its other search engine based products and it's Adcentre. There is to date only little data about bings crawler technology and its left for us to find out whether it produces higher relevant search results for each query.

In the end bing finally here and we can be sure that Microsoft will through enough money at it to last for a good while. The question remains whether bing will actually be able to compete with Google, but Microsoft has got very little (traffic) to loose and enough cash to try it. Competition is healthy at the end of the day and as long as it's handled fairly should leave use users/consumers with added value.

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