How to Verify your Site to Google

These directions are for people using a self hosted blog or website. These directions are not for those using Blogger blogs but I can do a post about verifying a blogger blog on Google if requested.

A friend is having trouble verifying his wordpress blog and the simplest way to help him is to just show him.

If you have a self hosted site then this is the fastest and easiest method for verifying your ownership to Google. You have two choices for verification; add a Meta Tag to your site or add a html file. Adding the html file is easier as you don't have to understand code - you just have to know how to upload a file.

Example of a Meta Tag



Example of a html file



How to Verify your site using a html file.

Please click images to enlarge and read the directions. Just follow these steps and your site will be verified in a few minutes.













Cheers,

Griz

How to Remove Date and Author on Blogger Posts

Just a quick one here. I get asked this a lot - "How can I get rid of the date on my Blogger posts?" and equally "How can I remove my name from Blogger posts".

Both of these tasks can be done at the same time and is simple to do.



Login to Layout and Page Elements.



The Blog Posts Edit button will bring up the following screen. Just select the items you wish to show on your posts by checking the boxes.



I turned off several items and now the post looks like this...



And that is all there is too it.

Cheers

Griz

Privacy Policy

Update April 2009 - Privacy Policy

This website/blog uses third-party advertising companies to serve ads when visiting this site. These third parties may collect and use information (but not your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, you can visit Google's Advertising and Privacy page.

If you wish to opt out of Advertising companies tracking and tailoring advertisements to your surfing patterns you may do so at Network Advertising Initiative.

Google uses the Doubleclick DART cookie to serve ads across it's Adsense network and you can get further information regarding the DART cookie at Doubleclick as well as opt out options at Google's Privacy Center



Privacy


I respect your privacy and I am committed to safeguarding your privacy while online at this site beginner-blogger-basics.blogspot.com The following discloses how I gather and disseminate information for this Blog.


RSS Feeds and Email Updates


If a user wishes to subscribe to my RSS Feeds or Email Updates (powered by Feedburner), I ask for contact information such as name and email address. Users may opt-out of these communications at any time. Your personal information will never be sold or given to a third party. (You will never be spammed by me - ever)


Log Files and Stats


Like most blogging platforms I use log files, in this case Statcounter. This stores information such as internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring, exit and visited pages, platform used, date/time stamp, track user’s movement in the whole, and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses etc. are not linked to personally identifiable information.


Cookies


A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user’s computer tied to information about the user. This blog doesn't use cookies. However, some of my business partners use cookies on this site (for example - advertisers). I can't access or control these cookies once the advertisers have set them.


Links


This Blog contains links to other sites. Please be aware that I am not responsible for the privacy practices of these other sites. I suggest my users to be aware of this when they leave this blog and to read the privacy statements of each and every site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this Blog.


Advertisers


I use outside ad companies to display ads on this blog. These ads may contain cookies and are collected by the advertising companies and I do not have access to this information. I work with the following advertising companies: Google Adsense, ROI Rocket, Project Payday. Please check the advertisers websites for respective privacy policies.


Contact Information


If you have any questions or concerns please contact Grizzly Brears at brears@mts.net. This privacy policy updated March 2008

How to Add a No-Follow Tag to Your Links

Create No-Follow Links, Target Blank Links, Hypertext Links and Quick Links on Blogger

Here is a quick demonstartion of how to add the rel="nofollow" tag to your outbound links. This tag should be added to any links you have on your page that points elsewhere and where you don't want to send any Google juice (pagerank). There are many instances when you don't want to pass Pagerank to other sites; the more links you have passing juice the less authority each link gets. If you assume that you have a total of 1 unit of juice to give and send out 100 links then each link will only have 1/100 of the juice available. If you only send out 1 link then that link will be 100% juice. Keep in mind that the less you link out the better so don't blead excess link juice.

If you are promoting affiliate products (Banners or Text ads) then use the no-follow tag - why give them PR?

If you are selling advertising on your site you must use the no-follow tag - Google does not allow you to sell PR so never put paid links on site without the tag. Google will strip you of your own PR if they catch you selling links without the no-follow attribute.

If you have navigation links to pages like "About", "Contact Us" etc then don't waste juice on these links - use the no-follow.

If you write posts and link elsewhere then decide whether you wish to pass juice on to the sites you link to. Some you will (friends who you wish to help) and some you won't.

How to create a no-follow Link

Here is a standard hypertext link. (Click Image to Enlarge)



and this is what it looks like when the code is added to your blog.

Make Money for Beginners


There are several things we can do to a standard hypertext link;

We can make the Anchor text more useful by changing the keywords to be relevant to the site we are linking to. This is for sending do-follow links to sites that you want to help out. In this case my other site will benefit more if I use "make money online" in the anchor text as that is a term I want to rank well for in the search engines. (Click to Enlarge)




And the result looks like this;

Make Money Online

You will notice that both hypertext links above will take you to the same place - the home page of my MMO blog when clicked. The difference is that Google will count the link as a vote for "make money for beginners" in the first link and count the link as a vote for "make money online" in the second link. Both links pass pagerank to the other blog. The "vote" means that Google will rank me in the serp's (the search engine results pages) for whatever terms are used in the anchor text. I will get ranked for both terms thanks to these two links. The more sites linking to me using these terms the higher I will rank in the serp's. Sites linking to me with higher PR (pagerank) will boost me higher in the rankings.

Now let's say we are promoting a product with an affiliate link. I will use a real example. I am currently promoting a program looking for new publishers in order to give away free magazines among other things. The program will pay me for every free magazine I give away. For the month of July 2008 they will also give $50 to every site that promotes their service. The program is called RevResponse.

In this case I want to link to the site with my affiliate link but I do not want to send them any juice or pagerank.

I do this by adding a no-follow tag to the hypertext link - like so... (Click to Enlarge)



And this is what the link looks like. If you aren't using the Search Status plug in for Firefox then you will see what looks like a normal link - you can't tell if it is a no-follow link or not. If you install the plug in from Search Status then you will see a pink box around all no-follow links.

RevResponse



How to Create a Hypertext Link Quickly on Blogger

1) Highlight the word or words you want in the anchor text.

2) Click the "Link Icon" in the editor.

3) Copy/Paste the url for the site you are linking to in the pop up box that appears.

4) Click OK and the link is created.

5) You will have to do a quick edit on the link if you want it no-followed.

See the screenshots below - click to enlarge.









If you want the hypertext link to open in a new tab then you can add another tag to the link - target="_blank" This is useful if I don't want people leaving my page when they click a link - like the RevResponse link. To do this just add the target="_blank" tag to the code.





Here is the new link to Revresponse - you will find the link above opens in this tab and the link below will open in a new tab.

RevResponse

And that is all there is to creating Hypertext Links.

Cheers,

Griz