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The Importance of Blog Design

Blogs have increased popularity over this past months. Many people have started to create their personal blogs to express their thoughts and feelings. Internet companies have also started their blogs to inform consumers on the latest product news and reviews.
Because of this, blogs are also being used as internet marketing media. Before, internet marketing is done by placing banners and links on popular websites, such as news and information sites. Links were also included on newsletters and marketing letters sent to the members of their mailing lists.

Many people spend time reading blogs. People read their friend's blogs, their favorite author's blogs, blogs on topics that they are interested in, and blogs on product reviews. With the increasing popularity of blogging, it is even feared that people rely on blogs to get the latest news.

While getting news reports from blogs isn't reliable, some people look for product reviews through blogs. In some cases, this is more dependable. While it is true that some media persons are being paid to write good reviews about a certain product, blog writers write about their actual experiences on products and services from a company.
Since there are many people who read and start their own blogs, blogs are a good medium to market a product. With the increasing blog traffic means increase in product sales.

Blog traffic can be increased by joining affiliate programs and sites, which will list your blog under a certain search category or name. You can also have your blog advertised in popular websites. This, however, will cost some money and is not advisable if you have just started blogging.
A writer who has just launched his/her blog will want as much traffic as possible to increase advertisements on the site. Also, some advertisers pay every time their link is clicked or the page that has their link is viewed.

When you have increased traffic on your blog, you should try to keep you visitors coming back and recommending your blog to friends and colleagues.
This can be done by having informative or amusing content and good blog layout and design. You may develop your blog's content or you can also acquire the services of a web content writer to provide you with the blog articles.

The blog's layout and design also plays a big role. While most of the companies offering free blog hosting offer pre-selected templates, there are also some that allows customization that if you utilize this feature correctly can increase your blog's traffic.

Here are a few tips to make your blog stand out from the millions of blogs out there that have standard designs.

* Customize the banner

The banner usually has the most generic designs that are common to the blogs from a blogging company or service.
You can personalize this banner by having a graphic with the dimensions of the banner. You can also edit the graphic so that it will also include the title of your blog.
In this case, you can create your own graphic or you can purchase professional looking graphics online for less than $10.

* Personalizing photos

Of course, most of the photos that you will be posting will be your own. However, if you don't customize the photos before posting them, you may miss maximizing the enhancing benefits graphics can add to the page. Adding photo borders can help the photo stand out from the page.
It can also add to the design of your blog. You can choose a standard border or you can also create your own border which can be associated with your blog's templates.

* Add a favicon

Don't you think sites with icons on the address bar before the website's URL are cool? Many people do. These favicons add a professional look to the URL. These easy to do using photo or graphic editing softwares.

* Check out blog templates, layouts, backgrounds, textures and skins from sites
There are sites that offer free blog templates, layouts, backgrounds, textures and skins. You can make use of these so your blog will not look generic like most of the blogs hosted by the service provider.

* Include RSS feeds

This is a cool way to inform people with newsreaders about your blog headlines. Tutorials on RSS feeds are available on the internet.

* Audio makes your blog more personal

Not only does audio personalizes the blog; it can also keep your visitors coming back. You can try having streaming radio stations, mp3 file or playlists loading with your blog.

* Advertisements

If you have signed-up with Google Ad-Sense, which I am sure you would like to do, make sure that the ads are conveniently placed that these will not hinder your readers' ease in accessing the information on your blog.

Try using these tips and you can definitely increase and retain traffic on your blog.

There are many well-designed and professional looking templates available for Google Blogger, all very tempting for the everyday blogger to import. Most of these are tested for Blogger and work fine, but Google has made the importation of these a sometimes buggy and more tedious process than it used to be. Here are a dozen simple steps to make these other templates work while backing up your current blogsite.

1. To change to a new template, you must first have the new one downloaded onto your local computer, and it will normally be in XML format, but sometimes is simply in a TXT file.

2. After logging in at Blogger, select Customize your blog.

3. First backup the existing template: select Layout, Edit HTML and Download Template. Change the name to something you recognize, like 'Temp-MyBlog-010309', then save it. This takes a few seconds, the file will be small, usually 50-100k. This will not save the posts, that's next.

4. Next, backup your posts. You won't have to reload them, it's just a good idea to back them up before major changes. Select Settings, then Export Blog (the Basic tab). This exports the posts themselves. Again save the file as something you remember, like 'Exp-MyBlog-010309'.

5. You need to back up or copy each of your widgets, the HTML code. Make sure you use a text editor like Notepad. I put them all in one file with labels for each and a separator line, which makes it easy to copy them back into the new template. Unfortunately, copy and paste is the only method you can use here, one at a time, so it can be tedious with a crowded interface with lots of sidebar gadgets.

6. Now you're ready for the new template. Return to Edit HTML, and select Browse to find the new template on your computer. When you select it, click OK, then when back in Blogger, select Upload. The new template will be transferred to Blogger.

7. After the refresh, you will see a list of widgets on the left that will be deleted, such as 'html1' and 'blog1'. If you proceed from here, you will likely get the infamous 'Bk-#' error screen with an error code. You must first debug the new template.

8. Use 'Ctrl-F' to Find, and search for 'widget id'.

9. When you find one, click Close, then edit the resulting widget's name that you see by incrementing the number, such as 'html1' should be changed to 'html2', 'text1' becomes 'text2', and so on. There may be two or more of each of these, change them all. Don't miss changing 'blog1' to 'blog2', this is almost always present. Then use Ctrl-F again for the next instance of 'widget id'.

10. When you've edited them all (and be careful to not cycle through them twice), click Save Template. After the screen refreshes, you have a new list of widgets that will be deleted, but now it's OK, none will be from the new template.

11. Click Confirm and Save. This should work without errors now, and you can select either Preview or View Blog and see the results.

12. You can now copy your widgets back (one at a time) that were deleted during the importation process. Even if you have many, it should take less than an hour.
Since you've properly backed up the previous template, if there's a problem with the new one or you don't like it, you can change back to the original by using the upload process again, and select the original template backup name. You will have to copy back the original widgets again, but at least you won't lose anything.
Build a test blog first, then don't be afraid to try a new template to refresh your blog!

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Are you tired of the regular templates that come with Blogger? Well never fear because this article will show you how you can change the colors and layout of your chosen template into something that's unique and attractive. You can add different headers, change the background, and even change the font style and the best thing is that it's actually very simple. So let's get started so you can learn how to edit your Blogger templates.