Many people who publish blogs also have FaceBook pages - and one of the easiest ways to get traffic, to the blog, is to share the blog to a FaceBook page.
Some people want money for publishing their blogs. AdSense is a very popular way to earn from publishing. AdSense produces the best results, with lots of readers to read the blog, click on the ads, and buy the products and services advertised.
FaceBook, and similar social network sharing services, is not the best choice for advertising a blog that uses AdSense ads.
You can share your blog through social networks like FaceBook, if you wish.
If you emphasise social network sharing when advertising your blog, you will have a large, unfocused following population. Many people who follow you won't be interested in the advertisements on the blog - and won't buy the products and services advertised.
FaceBook and Twitter can provide traffic - but is it the right traffic?
Some people will use social sharing, and urge their friends to
Read my blog - and Like my FaceBook page!
This will simply send a lot of traffic to the blog, to have people "Like" their FaceBook page. AdSense calls this invalid / low quality traffic - and rejects such blogs from their programme.
Social networking, used to share a blog, sends lots of traffic to the blog - but is the traffic useful?.
Google+, and the search engines, can provide relevant traffic.
To develop a focused reader audience, publish informative, interesting, relevant, and unique posts. That encourages search engine activity - and gets search related traffic. If you emphasise search related traffic, you spend less time using FaceBook, and asking people to "Like" your blog.
Search related traffic targets the blog subject - and the ads provided by AdSense are relevant to the blog subject. This produces readers who are interested in the blog subject, and in the ads - and who will click on the ads, read about the products and services, and buy the products and services advertised.
With relevant traffic, the ad managers who provide the ads, for their company, are paid well - and AdSense can charge more for their ads, as the premium ad hosting service.
You can encourage your readers to share your blog, as they like.
This blog provides sharing to FaceBook, Google+, Pinterest, and Twitter - using two sharing toolbars. The native Blogger toolbar is linked from the "Share" caption, at the bottom of each post.
I added the Blogger toolbar to this blog, using the "Show Share Buttons" selection in the "Configure Blog Posts" wizard. Later, I added my personal AddThis toolbar, that floats in the left edge of each display.
Having added the toolbars, you have 8+ icons to choose from, to share this post and others.
I routinely share new posts in this blog, to FaceBook, Google+, and Twitter. If this post, or any other, interests you, you are welcome to share to any of 4 social networks (linked from the Blogger toolbar), or any of 200 (linked from the AddThis toolbar).
You can encourage sharing by your readers - if you include the AddThis, Blogger, and other third party sharing toolbars, in your blog.
Use the social sharing buttons, if you wish - selectively.
Both search engines and social sharing have their advantages - and disadvantages. You can get readers for your blog, using social networks - but try to get the right readers too.
To get readers who click on the ads and buy the services and products advertised, publish quality content - and get the blog indexed by the search engines with good position. Spend less time getting readers to "Like" your FaceBook page.
It's fun to advertise a #Blogger blog using social networking, like FaceBook - but if AdSense is part of the blog, you will get better results by publishing relevant and unique posts, and focusing on search engine indexing.
We've known of resourceful scammerspammers, for years.
One long known scam, popular with home / small business blog owners, has been to award a badge for a "Most Excellent Blog" - and encourage the badge recipient to award the badge to friends with "Most Excellent Blogs".
The recipients of the "award" would proudly display the badge on their blogs. The "Most Excellent Blog" badge, of course, contained a link back to the scammers blog.
Recently, a spammer in a foreign country hosted an "SEO Contest" for other blog owners, where everybody participating was again, encouraged to put the "SEO Contest" badge on his blog or website. Again, the badge lead back to the spammers website.
Both examples of deviousness lead to mazes of interconnected blogs and websites, all of dubious relationship to each other.
Randomly connected blogs and websites are purposeless.
The blogs and websites involved had no real reason for interconnection - other than each being owned by a gullible contest entrant, or "award" winner. Meanwhile, the spammer sat there, watching his website swell with the readers, coming in search of informative and interesting content - and seeing more spam.
The former blog owners, participants in the "SEO Contest", later report.Blogger deleted my blog! I need my blog, to make a little extra money!!
But there is no encouragement here, your blog is gone. Blogger Policy Review can't distinguish the spammers from the victims - that would require determination of motive. To them, it is all one big spam blog farm, in an ingenious affiliate marketing scheme.
Long ago, we had web rings. Now, blog hops and traffic exchanges.
Long ago, when the Internet was just a geeks paradise, one guy convinced half a dozen of his friends to link their websites to each other, sequentially, backwards and forwards.Website A linked to Website B which linked to Website C ... which linked back to Website A.
The theory was that you could start from any point in the ring, surf in either direction, and view each website in the ring.
When other participants joined, they would break and insert into the middle of any convenient link pair.Website A linked to Website AA which linked to Website B ... (and Website B linked to Website AA which linked to Website A ...)
This technique was called a website ring. My first website was linked into a ring, called by its creators, "The Ring Around The World". Now, we have "blog hops" and "traffic exchanges".
Blogger / Google has "Next Blog".
Google's version of a webring started as the well known "Next Blog". As the number of blogs and websites grew to approximate the world population, people decided that they would prefer to only view other websites that resembled their own - and Google tweaked "Next Blog", to link the current blog to other blogs of the same subject.
Blogs which derive traffic from schemes such as "Badges" and "SEO Contests" (and send their readers to the creators of the schemes) become yet one more type of righteous spam classification.
None of these schemes are useful, long term.
Folks, there is no legitimate free traffic scheme. You get traffic to your blog, from publishing informative, interesting, and unique content - and from improved search engine indexing.
Don't lose your blog, from following bogus advice.
We see the signs of naivete, periodically, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger.
How do I require my readers to enter a password, to keep my blog safe from public view?
This blog owner does not understand the realities of setting up a private blog.
Long ago (very long ago), a computer system might have "private" files, and a shared password, known by everybody, for each file. Nowadays, a private Blogger blog uses team blog access - or team blog ownership - and each team member gets to choose her / his own Blogger account, with a password that he / she decides to use (and hopefully, remember).
Having a group shared password is fine, for a small group, where nobody leaves. What happens when somebody leaves the group?
Group shared pass codes are fine - until the group changes.
Have you ever worked in an office, where the doors are protected by a tumbler key set - or maybe combination push buttons? That's a shared password system. What happens when somebody leaves the group? Every door has to be re keyed - or the locks have to be changed.
What if the blog owner has to change the password for the blog, because somebody shared the password with a stranger - or somebody just left the group? Have you ever gotten to work, and found that your key - or assigned push button combination - doesn't work?
Have you ever had to wait for the department secretary to get to work, and give you a new key, because they changed the locks last week, while you were out of town? Have you had to anxiously search your email, looking for the message from the manager, providing the new password (here's hoping that you can get online, and your computer / phone has a freshly charged battery)?
Personal pass codes promote individual responsibility.
The personal account / password approach is so much more supportable - and it promotes responsibility. Have you ever had the manager ask everybody who came in over the weekend, and left the office in a mess?
With everybody using a common physical key, to open the door, there is no telling who comes and goes. Using individual passwords - or preferably, a card key system - you can audit employee presence, and encourage responsible attendance.
Use personal Blogger / Google accounts, for better security.
Using a personal account / password is so much better than a group shared password. Don't waste time trying to protect your blog, behind a shared password script.
Just make the blog private. Invite designated members - and let each member choose their own account / password, for blog membership.
Some Blogger blog owners treat custom domain publishing, as drivers in Miami USA treat the suburban streets.
Have you ever been to Miami, Florida, USA?
Many of the suburban streets there are long, straight, and intersect at 90 degree angles. And as you get into the outer suburbs, with housing developments which (this year) may be right next to the Everglades - there will be almost no traffic, much of the day.
The major streets intersect with stop signs or traffic lights. Many of the natives blow the stop signs, run the red lights, and speed with almost reckless abandon. And auto collisions are frequent - and lawyers and police are very busy.
I car pooled with a co worker for a while, until I noticed that he drove like a native.
His justification?
My brother does this all of the time - and he never gets into an accident - and has never been stopped by the police!
One day, after work, we were getting home - and as we approached the final traffic light, the light cycled green. There was no other traffic in front, or behind.
Instead of cruising through the intersection, my bud jammed on the brakes, and came to a screeching halt. As soon as I untangled my forehead from the dashboard, I started screaming at him. His reply?
My brother lives down that street!
In Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, we deal with the reckless abandon of some blog owners, setting up their custom domains.
There is much confusion, and bad advice, provided by blog owners who want to publish their blogs to custom domains - but find the official instructions to be either confining or confusing.
For every need, you will find bad advice.
- Can't buy a domain? No problem, get a free domain.
- Can't figure out the supported DNS configuration? No problem! Get the registrar to setup forwarding!!
- Can't wait for HTTPS connectivity provided by Blogger? Use proxied SSL from CloudFlare!!!
- Want to publish to the domain root ("naked" domain)? No problem! There's a great kludge for that, too!!!
There's a workaround, for every need - but how many are effective, long term?
And here in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken, we see the results.
And all of these symptoms - and the frustrating secondary results - can be avoided.
If you want to setup your domain, properly - and you find the official instructions to be confining or confusing - see my tutorial here - and more recently, here.
You may, alternately, read my forum FAQ, here - or the official Blogger Help FAQ, here.
Many problems can be avoided - if you only believe. There is but one configuration, for each publishing need - if you want to avoid the problems - though some folks may be more optimistic.
- Poor search engine activity.
- Spurious malware / spam classification.
- The old "Another blog ..." / "Key already exists ...".
Or, we'll see you, in Blogger Help Forum: Something Is Broken - whether immediately, or years later.
One of the oddest displays of naivete we see, from some blog owners, asking in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I?, would beHow do I let anybody post to my blog?
These owners have no idea how popular they would be, with spammers, were this to happen.
If you have a blog, and you want to let up to 99 of your closest friends publish their thoughts to your blog, you can setup a team blog, and have fun. Beyond that limit, you cannot - nor should you - go.
Occasionally, in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? we see the anguishWhere did the spam, on my blog, come from?
These queries come from people whose blogs have been successfully attacked, by hackers or spammers, and who now see content which they do not appreciate, being posted in their blog.
Leaving blog open to public authorship will make your blog spammer friendly.
If you were to voluntarily let anybody post in your blog, without requiring that anybody hack to gain control surreptitiously, your blog will become very popular with spammers.
After spammers saturate your blog content, your genuine friends will find elsewhere to post - and your remaining friends will be spammers. And your new friends (spammers) will tell their friends (more spammers), about a blog which accepts ads (posts) from everybody.
Your blog will be late classified as a spam host.
Shortly after this happens, your blog will be - righteously - classified as a spam host, and taken offline. And if you cannot show any non spam content, it will likely stay offline.We're sorry, but your blog cannot be restored. It was recently confirmed as spam. Blogger suggests that you read the TOS.
You are responsible for content distributed by your "guest authors".
Another thing to consider, as the owner of a "host" blog, where "guests" post contributed material, is that you will be responsible for the content posted by your guests - whether you let the world post - or designated members.- If you allow guest posts in your blog, you, as the blog owner, are responsible for the content of those posts.
- If your "guest" posts the same material elsewhere (as in his own blog, or a third person's blog), and search engines index both blogs, both blogs may receive "duplicated content" penalties.
- Nobody benefits, from duplicated content.
Unfortunately, you have to develop your blog content, yourself. Don't expect the public to provide your content for you - and plan to keep your blog online for long.
