Setup A Blog For A Google+ Page

The popularity of Google+ continues to grow. Some blog owners would like to have a Blogger blog publish to a Google+ Page, instead of their personal Google+ stream.

This is not difficult. You first make a new Google account, to own the Google+ Page.

Everything that follows is normal Blogger blog management. Don't overlook the details of blog management, though.

The process of making a Google+ Page a blog owner is not so complicated - but it has to be done, carefully.

1. Add a password, to the Page.
2. Setup a GMail email address, for the Page.
3. Make the new Google account a blog owner.
4. Add blog and page relationships.
5. Add blog content, using the new(?) Google account.

Add a password, to the Page.

See Google My Business Help: Set up a password for your Google+ page, for this step.

Note: In some cases, you may have been previously instructed to setup a Google account to manage the Page. If you already have a business Profile setup, skip straight to Step #3, and make the existing Google business account a blog owner.

Setup a GMail email address, for the Page.

Setup a new GMail email address, while logged in to your new account - if this has not already been done.

Make the new Google account a blog owner.

Once you have a new Google account with a unique email address, transfer control of the blog, to a Blogger account based on the new Google account. And make sure that your new Blogger account uses a Google+ profile.

If you want, put the blog under team ownership - though as always, know the risks of team ownership.

Add relationships between the blog, the Google account, and the Google+ page.

Add appropriate links, from the blog to the page, and back. And add the appropriate accessories to the blog - the Google+ badge, or maybe the +1 Button, are good, to start.

Then, add automatic sharing of posts - and maybe Google+ hosted comments. If you add the latter, be aware of one known peculiarity of Blogger and Google+.

Add blog content - while using the new Google account.

Finally, login to Blogger, using the new Google account. Then, start publishing content - and add value to your blog.

Anything you post to the blog, using your current Blogger account, will still be shared to Google+ under your personal profile. You need to be actually using the new account, to share to the Google+ page.

Be aware of possible complications, depending upon how you publish and share.

Sharing to a Google+ page is most reliable when you use the "Share" menu link, in the dashboard Posts page. Automatic sharing, and scheduled posting, may or may not produce the same results.

Publicising Updates To Your Blog, Using FaceBook And Twitter

If you publish a public Blogger blog, and have a FaceBook and / or Twitter account, then you have an audience for your blog updates, waiting to read your blog posts.

Any Blogger feed (which eliminates private blogs) can automatically post, to FaceBook and / or Twitter.

Until recently, you could publish your Blogger post feed directly to your FaceBook wall.

Right now, you can use FeedBurner to publish your Blogger post feed to your Twitter feed. Alternately, using the third party TwitterFeed service, you can publish any suitable newsfeed - Blogger or other - to any of 5 online services.

• Twitter
• Statusnet
• Hellotxt
• Facebook
• Linkedin

I setup a new TwitterFeed account, today, in a single screen transaction.

Having setup my TwitterFeed account, setting up a Blogger to FeedBurner feed was similarly quick and painless.

1. I provided the URL of my Blogger post feed, unredirected.
2. In a separate window, I logged in to FaceBook, using my normal FaceBook account.
3. In the TwitterFeed window, I instructed TwitterFeed to publish to my FaceBook account.
4. In the TwitterFeed window, I instructed FaceBook to trust TwitterFeed.
5. That's it.

Now, we see when this post publishes to my FaceBook Wall.

Next, I'll get back to work publishing blog posts. And, enjoy the convenience of automated publishing to additional blog services.

Verifying Ownership Of Your Site To Bing Webmaster

As a web master (aka blog master), besides adding posts and enhancing the template, you have a third activity - connecting your web site (blog) to other web sites and blogs. In many cases, you'll simply send the owners of the other web site (blog) a request to link to your blog.

For links to large and very active web sites, you'll use an online wizard. To prove ownership of your web site, instead of sending email, you'll add a file of specific name, or maybe specific content, into the web site. You can't add a file to your blog, though. With a Blogger blog, you have no control over files and folders - all that you do is publish posts.

One of the most important web sites that you can add your blog to, similar to Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer, is the Microsoft search engine, Bing.

Similar to Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer, Microsoft provides Bing Webmaster, which provides you the web site (blog) owner the ability to monitor and tune the relationship between your web site (blog) and Bing, the Microsoft Search Engine. When you add a non Blogger web site to Bing Webmaster, you add a file of specific name and content, to the root. When you add your blog, you add a record of specific content - a meta record - to the template.

This meta record, which provides your verification of ownership to Bing, may be one of the most important single lines of code in the template. Add this with care.

1. First, and always, backup the template for the blog.
2. Sign in to your HotMail / Live / Microsoft account (Yes, here, too, you have to sign in! And you will need a Microsoft accepted account!)
3. You start from Bing Webmaster Center - Home.
4. Under "Sites", you'll see the "Add Site" button. Hit the button.
5. Paste or type the URL of the blog into the "Site:" box.
6. Hit "Submit".
7. Now you'll have "Verify Ownership".
8. Click on "Option 2: Copy and paste a tag in your default webpage".
9. Copy the meta record, as presented to you.
10. You'll take the record as provided, and reformat it slightly. Here's an example of what they provide.
    

    <meta name="msvalidate.01" content="XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX">
    

    
    Here's what I used.
    

    <meta content='XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX' name='msvalidate.01'/>
    

11. In another tab or window, open the template editor window, for the blog.
12. Copy the record into the template for your blog, just below the records added for Google Webmaster Tools and / or Yahoo Site Explorer verification.
13. Save the template.
14. Back in the Bing Webmaster "Verify Ownership" window, click on the "Verify" button.
15. You'll now see your site, added to the Sites list, and the "Dashboard" for your newly added site will be displayed.
16. And again, backup the template for the blog. Save both backups.

Having verified ownership of your site, you now have access to various features of Bing Webmaster.

>> Top

Security Change To BlogSend Leaves BlogSend Email Distribution Broken #2

A year ago, we noted a security change to BlogSend, which left many blog owners with severely deprecated ability to publicise blog updates, when using a private Google Group. At that time, the recommended workaround was to add "no-reply@blogger.com" as a Google Group member.

Today, we see that the ability to add Google Group members directly is no longer offered. It appears now that the use of private Google Groups, for distribution of Blogger blog updates, is not an option.

Last week, Blogger announced the option to publicise blog updates using Google+.

It would appear that use of Google+ may be the future, for Blogger blog publicity. Some time ago, we were advised that private Blogger profiles were being replaced by Google+. It's possible that private blog updates may have the same future.

>> Top

Publicising Updates To Your Blog, Using Google+

Ever since Google+ was released, blog owners have been asking how to post blog updates to Google+. Previously, there was only the possibility of publishing from Google+ to our blogs - and that option was not well designed. Last week, Blogger released this option, in Draft Blogger.

Today we’re excited to announce the first way you will be able to leverage Google+ -- by making it possible to replace your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile.

In addition to giving your readers a more robust and familiar sense of who you are, your social connections will see your posts in their Google search results with an annotation that you've shared the post.

As long as you are prepared to use a Google+ profile with your Blogger account, you can send blog updates to your followers.

After you login to Blogger, simply edit your profile. There, you'll see the advice

Connect Blogger to Google+ : Use your Google profile and get access to upcoming Google+ features on Blogger. Learn more Get Started

After you upgrade Blogger to use your Google+ profile, go to the dashboard Settings - Google+, and select "Prompt to share after posting", for automatic sharing. Or, you can use the Posts link "Share" for any post, when convenient.

I suspect there will be several possibilities with this new feature, so watch this space for updates.

Verifying Ownership Of Your Site To Google Webmaster Tools

As a web master (blog master), besides adding posts and enhancing the template, you have a third activity which is almost as time consuming.

You will be constantly connecting your web site (blog) to other web sites and blogs. In many cases, you'll simply send the owners of the other web site (blog) a request to link to your blog.

For links to some web sites, you'll not use email, you'll use an online wizard. To prove ownership of your web site, instead of sending email, you'll add a file of specific name, or maybe specific content, into the web site. You can't add a file to your blog, though - with blogs, you have no control over files and folders - all that you do is publish posts.

One of the most important web sites that you can add your blog to is Google Webmaster Tools.

"Webmaster Tools" - now known as "Search Console" - provides you the web site (blog) owner the ability to monitor and tune the relationship between your web site (blog) and the Google Search Engine.

Note that some time ago, Blogger added a quick, universal verification of your blogs. At the bottom of your dashboard, under "Tools and Resources", you'll find a link "Webmaster Tools". This appears to generate a file known as the "WMX Verification File".

Right now, there are some odd circumstances which may be a result of using that link. For right now, I would only verify my blogs, one at a time, adding a meta record - as shown below.

When you verify ownership of your web site to GWT, you add a file of specific name and content, to the root. When you add your blog, you can't do that, so you add a record of specific content - a meta record - to the template. Note that the automated process which reads the blog header, and verifies your ownership, appears to be sensitive to private blog settings.

This meta record, which provides your verification of ownership to Google Webmaster Tools, may be the most important single line of code in the template. Add this with care.

1. Sign in to your Google account.
2. You start from Google Webmaster Tools - Dashboard.
3. In the Click here to add a site box, enter the URL to your blog, and then hit Add Site. Make this entry identical to the URL to which the blog is published. Use the following examples, substituting appropriately your value for "myblog", "mydomain", "xxxxx", and "zzz".
   • If the blog is published to "myblog.blogspot.com", enter it as "myblog.blogspot.com".
   • The blog will never be published to "www.myblog.blogspot.com", so do not enter it as "www.myblog.blogspot.com".
   • If the blog is published to "mydomain.zzz", enter it as "mydomain.zzz".
   • If the blog is published to "www.mydomain.zzz", enter it as "www.mydomain.zzz".
   • If the blog is published to "xxxxx.mydomain.zzz", enter it as "xxxxx.mydomain.zzz".
   If you rename the blog, either changing the BlogSpot URL or republishing to a Custom Domain, remember to repeat this exercise with the updated URL.
4. This will take you to Overview.
   

   Next Step
   Verify your site. By verifying your site you can access comprehensive statistics and crawl errors about the pages in your site

5. Click the link for "Verify your site".
6. This will take you to Verify a Site.
7. In the Choose verification method... pull down list, select Add a meta tag.
8. This will generate your site verification meta tag. Highlight and Copy the text from the box.
9. In a separate window, edit the template for your blog. Add into the template, in the heading section, your site verification meta tag, that's provided by the GWT wizard. After you add the meta tag, you should have something like:
   

   <head>
       <b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>
       <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
       <meta name="description" content="......."></meta>
       <meta name="keywords" content="......."></meta>
       <meta name="verify-v1" content="......."></meta>
   
       <b:skin><![CDATA[/*
   

   
   Note that some detail was removed from the above example, and that the above example shows template code for designer and layout templates.
   
   You might want to observe the different ways to format a meta tag, including differences between classic and layouts formats. The XML, in a layouts template, will require a properly closed tag.
   
   • The tag will probably be presented, by the GWT wizard, as

     <meta name="verify-v1" content=".......">

   • One way to code the tag, in a layouts template, would be

     <meta name="verify-v1" content="......."></meta>

   • A second way to code the tag, in a layouts template, would be

     <meta name="verify-v1" content="......." />

10. Save Template Changes.
11. Go back to Verify a Site, and hit Verify.
12. This will take you to Overview. Part of the display will include:
    

    You've successfully verified (your site)

    and may include
    

    No pages from your site are currently included in Google's index.

    and

    You have not submitted any Sitemaps. Submit a Sitemap to help Google discover pages our crawlers might not otherwise find.

    Select the Sitemaps menu entry.

Having verified ownership of your site, you now can add a Google Sitemap, or use the other features of Google Webmaster Tools.

Custom Feeds And The Google Sitemap

Custom feed services, like FeedBurner, give you much more than a native Blogger blog feed. You can aggregate content and pull in material from other blogs and web sites, you can provide more user friendly formatting, and you can even track the number of readers who subscribe to a FeedBurner custom feed.

Your Blogger blog even supports your use of a custom feed. If you setup the Post Feed Redirect option, all links in the blog that would reference the native blog post feed are replaced by the custom feed. Your blog readers, when they click on a link that says

Click here to subscribe to my feed!

automatically subscribe to the custom feed. This is good for your readers, and for you.

Unfortunately, use of the feed redirect option isn't a good idea for everybody, immediately. If you're using a Google Sitemap, to make it easier for the search engines to index your blog, and bring you more readers, you'll need to use the native blog feed.

With the blog redirecting all blog post feed references, to a custom feed, the sitemap will be broken. The Google Sitemap requires a feed that has the same URL as the blog. A custom feed has the URL of the custom feed service. This breaks the sitemap, unless you modify the feed URL.

Having modified my feed URL, I can create a Google sitemap that the spider can work from.

>> Top

Setting Up A Custom Domain? Check Your References!

When you setup a Custom Domain, the migration process for Blogger access to the blog is transparent.

The setup wizard provides encouraging advice

We won't leave your readers behind!
http://myblog.blogspot.com will redirect to your custom domain.

Not all non Google services will update the blog URL properly, when you publish to a custom domain.

When you publish your blog to a custom domain, two things happen instantaneously.

• All dynamic links within the blog are changed, from "myblog.blogspot.com" to "mydomain.com".
• Blogger sets up a server based "301 Moved Permanently" for your blog.

The URL change, from custom domain publishing, is not always immediate.

Your readers, and the search engine spiders, see the change the next time that they visit. Any automated processes that support a "301 Redirect" know to replace the old address, "myblog.blogspot.com", with the new address "mydomain.com".

All that said, you shouldn't expect for every search engine on the web to immediately acknowledge the new blog address. Just as establishing a search engine presence, updating one to a new address could take weeks.

With the initial setup out of the way, you may have a major amount of work yet to do, and a small but significant part needs to be done at your earliest convenience. Various third party elements that reference the blog by its URL may have to be updated. Some, if not updated immediately, may present a problem to your online reputation.

Webmaster Tools / Search Console is an essential service to be updated.

If your blog has a Google Sitemap, you'll have to use Google Webmaster Tools / Search Console to re verify site ownership, and to setup a new sitemap. If you've added a Google Sitemap to your blog before, you sort of know what to expect. Also, the sitemap setup wizard was improved in early 2008, so you'll find the sitemap addition process somewhat simplified and more intuitive.

You can probably update (re add) one blog in 5 minutes, if you read the instructions. You do need to do this part fairly promptly (though after the transition period if you used the "Buy A Domain" wizard), as the sitemap is an important component in access by the Google spider, and secondarily affects your blog in Google searches.

Internal blog links may or may not deserve updating.

With the sitemap updated, you can change all of the internal links in the blog, if you wish, and as time permits. Thanks to the "301 Moved Permanently", any internal references to the BlogSpot URL are simply replaced when any given link in the blog is followed. This dual personality effect will last for eternity.

Your friends web sites, that may have static references to yours (blogroll entries, generally), will likewise produce referrals to your blog, and to its new address. The static references can be updated at the convenience of the owners of the other web sites.

The Blog Feed Redirect Option Needs To Be Used Properly

When you setup a Blogger blog, and use a properly configured feed, the combinations of comments, labels, and posts feeds can do wonders for making your blog more accessible and maintainable. You have a number of feeds, with URLs based upon the URL of the blog, to work with.

For more possibilities, you can use a custom feed, provided by an aggregation service like FeedBurner or FeedDigest. When you use a custom feed, you can even redirect references, within the blog, to the custom feed, so you don't have to manually reconfigure things like post footer feed links.

You redirect feed references using the dashboard setting in Settings - Other - "Post Feed Redirect URL".

Always use this setting properly - only put a valid feed URL in the box, or you will end up with a broken blog feed. A valid feed could be:

• A feed from another Blogger blog, as when you move the blog to another URL, and setup a stub blog with a redirected feed.
• A valid external URL - one provided by FeedBurner, FeedDigest, or a similar service.

Do not point this internally, to the same BlogSpot or domain URL. You cannot use this to simply change the URL of the feed for any one blog - it must be used in conjunction with a second blog, or a custom feed setup.

Here's the redirect setting, for this blog:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Nitecruzr-Blogging

That's my FeedBurner feed URL. Yours will be similar, excepting the

Nitecruzr-Blogging

If you use the URL of a feed for the same blog, you'll end up with a feed redirect loop. If your readers see anything from the feed, when it's directed to itself, it will be something like

The page isn't redirecting properly

Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.

If you have no FeedBurner or second blog feed to redirect into, or if you don't know what is needed here, leave this setting blank. If you're using the setting, and you're experiencing a feed related problem, you should first clear the setting.

Also, be aware of the interaction between the Google Sitemap and the blog feed. A Google Sitemap will break, if you redirect your blog feed to a URL outside the blog naming space.

Finally, note that the blog feed is intended to let your readers read your blog, with greater ease. It's not designed to let you randomly distribute the blog content to the Internet, while abusing your Followers and subscribers.

Controlling The Search Engine Spiders

Most, but not all, blog owners eagerly anticipate the arrival, upon their blog, by the search engine spiders.

The spiders come to index your blog, when the search engines recognise your blog's existence in the Blogosphere.

For those blog owners who don't want their blogs indexed, Blogger provides the settings, in Settings - Basic - Privacy, "Add your blog to our listings?" (for internal Blogger spiders, and Blogger links) and "Let search engines find your blog?" (for external spiders).

The privacy settings control the content of the "robots.txt" file in the blog.

The spiders, when well behaved, read "robots.txt" for instructions.

The spiders, when interested, read "robots.txt" for instructions. You can modify "robots.txt", using the dashboard "Search preferences" wizard.

You make the privacy settings changes, and let Blogger maintain "robots.txt" on your behalf. Alternately, you can use "Settings" - "Search preferences", if you are daring.

These settings are at the blog level - one setting affects the entire blog. If you would like only a part of the blog protected, make a second blog (blogs are free), and include one blog in the other. If you would like specific URLs protected, use the URL removal tool in Google Webmaster Tools.

Read "Search Console" reports carefully, and learn the meanings.

If you use Google Webmaster Tools / Search Console, maybe to add a sitemap or otherwise analyse or maintain your blogs search engine relationship, you may see some interesting details

URL restricted by robots.txt (http://myblog.blogspot.com/search/label/mylabel)

and you'll generally have one of these notations for each label in the blog.

Those restrictions are normal. All label searches are restricted, so the search engines won't detect the label searches as containing duplicate content. Your blog shouldn't depend upon label searches for your readers to find each post.

Some search engines will index private blogs.

Interestingly, I note that the search engines can have access to blogs that require permission to read. Private blogs can't have blog feeds, but the search engines can still index them. The "robots.txt" file is advisory only; search engines may honour the files directives, or they may ignore the directives.