BLOG WIDGETS, GADGETS, ADD-ONS

In this series, we shall list the free, popular, and interesting web widgets and gadgets that you can consider adding to your Blog. Widgets are elements that extract the services or content from other sites. Some of these widgets are useful, providing your readers with news, information, and reference tips. Others may be just fun and games which make your Blog a little more interesting and promote interaction among your readers. Because there are so many applications, developers and sites, this article will be split into parts and we shall update them now and then.

Many of the sites offer easy to install HTML or JavaScript codes. All you need to do is to copy the code and place them into your layout. For instance, if you want a widget to appear in your sidebar, login to your Dashboard, go to Template -> Page Elements and click “Add a Page Element” at the sidebar. Select “HTML/JavaScript”. Paste the code generated by the service provider and save. Every time you create a new page element, it appears at the top of all the other elements. If you want it somewhere near the bottom of the sidebar, just left-click that “Page Element”, drag and drop to the place you want. Click “Save” at the top right hand corner of the page to save the new layout.

A note of caution when adding widgets. While you may be tempted to have as many widgets as you can lay your hands on, having too many may clutter the Blog and cause slower page downloads. Also, since many of them work on JavaScripts, readers who configure their Firefox or IE browsers to block scripts may not see these features. For these reasons, we have added only a couple of widgets to let you have an idea, but have not included all the widgets listed in this article. Take your time to pick those that truly complement your Blog contents.

Google Gadgets

Take a look at the directory of widgets at Google Gadgets and you will instantly know what widgets are all about.

Blog Widgets, Gadgets and Add-ons

Many of the applications are created by different developers and users. There is no registration required at your end. When you have chosen one, click “Add to your webpage” and you will be asked to customize the title, width, height and border of the gadget. If the width of your sidebar is e.g., 150 px, you may want to set the gadget width to something less than that. It is alright to have a larger width, but readers will have to scroll to view the gadget in its entirety. When you are satisfied, click “Get the Code”. Copy the code and paste it into your “Page Element” described above.




BRAVENET

Here at Bravenet we specialize in web tools and widgets to allow you to give your website visitors the best user experience possible. Check out our huge selection of tools & widgets below!
Get Some Bravenet Tools.



Widgetbox

If you think Google Gadgets are great, you would love the directory of web widgets at Widgetbox. They provide ready installation codes for TypePad, WordPress, Blogger, MySpace and most other blogs, sidebars or websites.

Blog Widgets, Gadgets and Add-ons

Register for a free account. Search for the widgets that you like. Determine the display settings and click “Get Widget”. You can either “Get Widget Code” and paste it into your Blog layout as described above, or let them do it for you by clicking “Add to Blogger”. We prefer the first method.

If you have several widgets, you can also “Make a New Panel” under “My Widgets” and add these widgets into your panel. The advantage is that when you “Install”, you will have one code generated for the panel rather than several codes.





Snipperoo

In a similar fashion, Snipperoo has a directory of widgets that you can use. You can pick several widgets, arrange them into a panel, and the site will generate one code for you to place on your Blog. We think that configuration was much easier previously. With their new interface and a scheme to pay you for putting the widgets in your Blog, we would rather stick with Widgetbox.

Blog Widgets, Gadgets and Add-ons

In any event, if you want to have a look, register for a free account. Once you are logged in, begin by creating a “New Panel”. To the left, you will see “Get Widgets”. Add the ones you like into your Panel. Drag and drop to arrange them in the desired positions. Click “Publish” to update and generate a code.

SEO Tools - Seach Engine Optimization

What are search engine optimization tools, webmaster tools, Google page rank checker, SEO tools, and how can these internet tools help to bring more quality traffic to your Blog? There are many free online web tools that webmasters can use to find out more information about their sites. The tools can also alert the webmasters to possible problems search engines may have with the site's template codes and design. Here, we shall, for the benefit of our new bloggers, explain how these webmaster tools might help improve your website's PageRank.

Search Engine Optimization

We define Search Engine Optimization as – a method or process of improving and optimizing the ranking of a website in search engine results.

With millions of pages of search results for any given keyword, webmasters would want to have their website appear among the first couple of search result listings. The higher the position or ranking, the greater the likelihood that internet users will visit your site. This Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) concept is no different from a brick-and-mortar shop where location and visibility affect how many customers will pass by the shop and hopefully drop in for a visit. On the internet, your virtual site deserves a good location and visibility, and SEO consultants believe they know how to achieve that.

Blog Directory and Search Engine Listings

After having published a Blog or website, the first thing to do is to make sure that the information relating to the site is available on the internet. Web Directories, Blog Directories and Search Engines are the internet Yellow Pages. Although the major Search Engines will crawl your website even without any action on your part, it will be much faster if you could proactively provide them your site information. We had written articles on how and where to submit the blog information so as to have your site fully indexed and appear in many places on the internet.

Read these guides and follow the steps outlined:-

1. Submit Blogger Sitemap to Google Webmaster

2. Submit Blogger Sitemap to Yahoo!

3. Submit Blogger Sitemap to MSN and Ask.com

4. Submit Blog to Search Engines

5. Submit Blog to Blog Directories

6. Submit RSS Feeds and Pings

7. Blog Traffic Exchange

Free SEO Tools

After you have submitted your website's data to all the search engines and directories, you should be able to find your site somewhere on the internet. If you do a keyword search on your website's topic, you may find many other listings in the search results ahead of yours. These are the sites which have better page ranks and are optimized for the search engines. You can optimize your blog or website too.

To attract business, many SEO sites have put up some of their SEO tools for free. Commercial sites which are serious in wanting to climb up the search ranking will pay the SEO consultants for more value-added services. If you are like us, blogging out of fun and passion, it might be better to use only the free services for a start.

Enter words like - free SEO tools - into the search box and you can see what some of these sites offer.

Enter your search termsSubmit search form


Suggested SEO Tools

Many of the SEO webmaster sites have similar free tools and services. You can try any of them, though the one that we like is iWebTool. In fact, they have a link exchange program which you may want to check out. Among the SEO Tools, the ones we find useful in all these sites are:- (Copy the words and paste in google search box given below in this page.It will open in a new window)

a. Backlink Checker – A list of sites that have linked to your blog or website. PageRank is largely determined by the number and quality of links to your site. Monitor this and you can probably guess what your PageRank ought to be.

b. Broken Link Checker – A look at which of the links in your site are pointing to incorrect or non-existent URLs. Having too many outdated and broken links on your web page may irritate not only the readers but the search spiders. Do this housekeeping once in a while to remove the bad links.

c. Google PageRank Checker – The Google PageRank of your site. You can also download Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar to view the Google PageRanks of all the sites that you visit.

d. Google PageRank Prediction – A future Google PageRank prediction. If you are dying to know, these sites can give you a fair estimate of your future PageRank.

e. HTML Optimizer – A clean up of your HTML source code. Be careful when you apply the suggested changes though. Always good to backup the template before making any modification.

f. Index Checker – Number of pages of your website that are indexed by search engines. If pages are missing from the index, try submitting your sitemap again.

g. Keyword Density Checker – The keyword distribution in your webpage. This will by and large influence the sort of Ads that AdSense will place on your site.

h. Keyword Suggestor – Suggested popular keywords for your website. Bear in mind these keywords when writing or editing your posts.

i. Meta-tags Generator – Configuration of website's meta-tags. Tailor a suitable description and set of keywords to be inserted into the template.

j. Reciprocal Link Checker – A check to see if the partners in your blogrolls or link exchange are linking to you.

k. Spider Simulator – The page contents as seen by a search engine spider. Some may give you a breakdown of the commonly used keywords in your site.

l. Traffic Graphs – A comparison of your site's and other competitor sites' traffic history graphs in Alexa.

m. Website Speed Test – Speed of website page load. If you find the pageload time a little long, take some measures to have a Faster Web Page Load Time.

Submit your Blog to Search Engines

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) aims at increasing the volume and improving the quality of traffic to a website from search engine results. Search engines work on different algorithms to analyze the contents and keywords, and present the search results. Google, for instance, assigns page ranks to the sites and sites that rank highly will appear early in the results. Of course, many other factors are considered by search engines, such as relevance, unique content, coding and quality of links. The major search engines know that revealing these factors will only encourage manipulation of the ranking system and have thus been secretive about how the ranking algorithms work.

While no SEO consultant can be absolutely certain about how each search engine views your site, the common agreement is that the more visible your site is on the internet, the higher your ranking will eventually be. Having your site linked to by many other sites and indexed by different search engines increase its exposure and visibility. We have given readers a list of Blog Directories and Feed Directories. In this article, we shall provide a list of search engines where you can submit your website or Blog URLs for Free and have your site or Blog indexed by the search engines.

Website Indexing

Unless you have created a private blog, it is a matter of time that your blog is indexed by the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. One of the fastest ways to have your site indexed is to get another site that is already in the search engine listings to link to you. When the search engine crawlers visit that site, they will find your site and index it. We tried this out by linking to our new Blog and it appeared in Google search listings within three hours. Hence, try this method if you do not want to wait for search engines to approve your site submission.

Before we proceed to the list of search engine sites, there are a few points to note:-

1. To check if your site has been indexed by a search engine, enter the full URL into their search query. For some search engines like Microsoft Live Search, enter site: followed by the full URL. If you see your site appearing in the search results, it has been indexed and there is no need to resubmit the site.

2. If your Blog has been linked to by Blog Directories, websites or Blogs, you may see these other sites that mention your Blog appearing first in the search results. More likely than not, they have a higher page rank. Scroll through the remaining search result pages and you will probably find a listing that is solely about your Blog.

3. When submitting your site, you do not need to submit the URL of each individual webpage. Submit only the top-level webpage and for Blogger Blogs, it will be an address like this http://blogname.blogspot.com without the www. before the blogname.

4. You can submit your sitemap to Google and login to Google Webmaster site to know the status of the indexing and view traffic statistics. Also, submit your sitemap to Yahoo! to find out more about the index and links to your site. Submit Blogger Sitemap to MSN and Ask.com too.


5. If you add your URL in Yahoo!, it will appear in their other search sites like AlltheWeb and AltaVista as well. Similarly, AOL Search uses the data by Google.

6. Some of the sites send advertisements and newsletters to you in exchange for free submission. If you don't want that, remember to opt out of it. Avoid having your regular email account filled with these mail by creating another free web-based email account just for website submissions.

7. Since search engines have different standards of content, design and technical specifications, submission of your site does not guarantee that it will be included in their database.

List of Search Engines

You may submit your site URL to these search engines for Free. If you lack the time, submit your site to the top few leading search engines.Search these below words without links in google search box given below.

* Google
* Yahoo! Search
* Microsoft Live Search
* Alexa Web Search
* Baidu (Chinese search engine)
* ExactSeek
* SearchSight
* Scrub the Web
* EntireWeb
* Gigablast
* Exalead
* SearchKing
* whatUseek
* AnooX
* Splat Search
* Walhello
* SearchIt
* email Mozdex
* Jayde
* Infotiger
* Abacho (European search engine)
* Submit-one
* TowerSearch
* HotLaunch
* Shoula
* The-search-site
* Websquash
* Unasked
* eVisum (educational resource)
* DinoSearch
* SearchRamp
* SearchtheWeb
* SearchWarp
* Mixcat
* BestYellow
* Beamed


Website Submission Services

There are many sites on the internet offering free website submission services to search engines. The list of search engines are by and large the same. For a fee, some of them offer to send your URL to more than a hundred search engines. Is it necessary to have your webpage listed in all the smaller search engines? We think that Google, Yahoo! and MSN have cornered such a large share of the market that it is sufficient just to have your website listed there. However, the decision is yours to make. For a start, you may want to use their free services and monitor the traffic.
Type the following words in google search and enter into their website.Use the Seach box given below.
* FastSubmit
* Submit Express
* AddMe
* Freesubmissionweb
* ineedhits
* Submitshop
* Searchengineoptimising
* AddPro
* Pageranklist
* Freewebsubmission
* Amfibi
* Burf
* Jerkasmarknad
* LocalSubmit
* SrSubmit

Submit your Sitemap to MSN and ASK.COM

We had explained how to submit Blogger sitemaps to Google and Yahoo!. When the sitemap industry standard was first announced in 2006, Microsoft's MSN was one of the three major search providers which supported the protocol. Submitting your Blog's sitemap to these search engines will enable them to index the pages and contents of the site. Needless to say, having all the pages indexed will essentially avail your contents to more internet users and improve your site's page rank.

Blogger Sitemap

If you own an external domain site, you can search the net for sitemap generators which help you create a sitemap file. Upload the file onto the root directory and call it sitemap.xml. The full URL of the sitemap will then be something like this:- “http://domainname.com/sitemap.xml”

However, we cannot upload files onto the root directory of Blogger blogs. Hence, when asked to insert a Blogger blog sitemap, it will have to be either:-

http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/rss.xml


OR

http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/atom.xml


Replace YOURBLOGNAME with the name of your blog. For Blogger blogs, do not add "www." to YOURBLOGNAME. As an example, our blog's sitemap will be http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com/rss.xml

Submit Blog Sitemap to MSN

Unlike Google and Yahoo!, MSN does not have a set of procedures or an address where you can submit sitemaps to. In the latest post in their Microsoft Live Search Weblog, they had invited webmasters and developers to help build a New Webmaster Portal that would include sitemap creation, submission and ping tools, very much what Google and Yahoo! already had. Once MSN has that user interface, we shall update this article.

The MSN team had suggested that webmasters add this to their robots.txt file to have the MSN spiders crawl the sitemap file:-

User-agent: *
Sitemap: http://domainname.com/sitemap.xml


Again, we do not have root access to the Blogger server and this will not avail to us.

The alternative solution in the meantime is to submit the Blog sitemap to Moreover.com. It seemed that there was a standing arrangement for Moreover to provide the submitted feeds to MSN for crawling and indexing.

Whether or not the arrangement still holds true, there is really no harm in submitting your sitemap to Moreover.

Copy and paste this line into your internet browser, replacing the portion in red with the name of your Blog:-

http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/rss.xml


If you have submitted it correctly, you should see this message:-

Thank you for your ping. The moreover database will be updated with the new data from your url - http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/rss.xml as soon as possible.




Submit Blog Sitemap to Ask.com

Ask.com, previously known as Ask Jeeves, is the next major internet search engine. The sites that it owns include Excite, Bloglines, MyWay and iWon. It is also a participant of the Sitemaps protocol program.

Submitting the sitemap to Ask is easy too. Copy and paste this line into your internet browser, replacing the portion in red with the name of your Blog:-

http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/rss.xml


If you are successful, you should see this screen:-



(Tags: Sitemap,SEO,Search engine submission,ASK.com,MSN )

Submit your site to Yahoo Search Engine

Publicize your site by having your Blogger.com or Blogspot.com blog site included in Yahoo! Directory and Yahoo! Search. I went to the official Yahoo! submission of URL page and clicked the link “Submit Your Site for Free”. You will be prompted to log in using your Yahoo! account. For those of you who do not have a Yahoo! account, simply sign up for one. It is Free.

After you have your Yahoo! account, and are logged in, you will see this screen.





Select “Submit Site Feed” and enter the URL of your Blog's site feed. You can use either:-

http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/rss.xml


OR

http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/atom.xml


Remember to replace YOURBLOGNAME with that of your Blog's. For Blogger blogs, do not add "www." to YOURBLOGNAME. Once the Sitemaps are submitted, click the “Authentication” link shown at the top right hand corner of the page.





You will now have to authenticate your site ownership with Yahoo!, by either uploading a verification file to your site, or adding a META tag to your site. The authentication via a META tag was only introduced by Yahoo! recently, on Jan 30, 2007.

Note: Blogs created under Blogger.com or Blogspot.com cannot upload a verification file in the root directory. The first method is therefore NOT applicable to you.

The only way to authenticate your Blogger.com and Blogspot.com blogs with Yahoo! is to add a META tag. Copy the META tag that is generated for you, and paste it in your site's home page in the first section of the page, before the first section. What you do is to go to your Blogger dashboard. Under Template ->Edit HTML, somewhere near the top of the script, add the META Tag as follows:-

head

META Tag

b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/



Remember to replace the META Tag with the code generated by Yahoo! Site Explorer. Once done, Save the Template. When you return to Yahoo! Site Explorer, click the button that says “Ready to Authenticate” as shown below.

You will see a message that says “Your site is pending authentication.” Check back later, and you will notice that your site is now indexed and crawled by Yahoo!

According to the Yahoo Site Explorer instructions:-

“If you have added the META tag, please keep the tag in your site's home page. We will revalidate your site ownership by checking this META tag regularly.”

It is alright to leave this meta tag as well as the Google sitemap meta tag in your template.


(Tag: SEO, Search Engine Submission,Page Rank,Index)