Blogger: Beyond the Basics: Customize and promote your blog with original templates, analytics, advertising, and SEO (From Technologies to Solutions) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This book by Lee Jordan is perfect for the novice blogger and packed with must have info for even the seasoned blogger. While it particularly deals with the Blogger (Google) platform, a good bit of the information extends beyond Blogger to services and tips that could be used for a variety of platforms.
I love the approach Jordan uses - taking a sample blog that is plain in nature and allowing the reader to follow that blogs evolution to a more professional looking blog using the guidelines and tips offered in the book.
Jordan shows you why popular blogs are so popular and what you can do to enhance your ratings and most importantly, your readership. He leaves no stone unturned as he divulges all the tricks of the trade, er uh, hobby.
Whatever the purpose of your blog is you should invest in this tool. It easy to understand, simple to follow, and indexed for ease of locating information. I have used it many times in the last few weeks to look up a particular subject and implement the information given.
Here is a list of the chapters:
1. All Blogs Are Not Created Equal
2. Customize and CreateTemplates
3. Social Bookmarking
4. Joining the Blogosphere
5. Using Widgets
6. RSS and Atom Syndication
7. Making Money With Ads
8. Measuring Site Performance with Google Analytics
9. Search Engine Optimization
10. Website Integration
Oh and it comes in paperback or e-book form!

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In Detail
Blogger is a blog publishing system from Google with a friendly interface specifically designed for creating and maintaining weblogs.
It allows users to easily create dynamic blogs with great content and many outstanding features including RSS feeds, link-backs, photo slideshows, and integration with popular Google applications like Picasa. Its versatility and ease of use has attracted a large, enthusiastic, and helpful community of users.
If you want to create powerful, fully-featured blogs in no time, this book is for you. This book will focus on transforming a typical blog into something fresh and professional that stands out from the crowd. It starts with anintroduction to an example blog, discussing what it is lacking, and then adding all the features of Blogger to make it successful. This book will tell you how to transform a slow-paced typical business blog into an attractive and interactive profit-making blog with measurable results. It has a very user-friendly approach and shares tips, tricks, and resources to continue to grow your blog.
What you will learn from this book?
The book aims to be a "complete" guide to working with Blogger. The focus is on more advanced, professional uses. You will learn everything you need to know to extend your blog and grow beyond the basics of using Blogger. This book will cover the following:
Customizing and creating templates to make your blog attractive
Adding social bookmarks to your blog to promote your site
Joining the blogosphere to drive traffic to your site
Customizing your blog by using widgets effectively
Customizing your blog's RSS and Atom feed, so that the Blogger feeds are available to the users
Managing ads and adding e-commerce features
Monitoring viewers and ads using Google Analytics
Managing and optimizing your blog for search engines
Integrating your website with your blog
Approach
Written in a clear, easy-to-read style, the book takes you through the essential tasks required to create a feature-rich blog as quickly as possible. From initial setup to customizing modules, each task is explained in a clear, practical way using an example blog developed through the book. You'll also learn how to market and measure the success of your blog using Google web applications and other popular tools.
This book deals with using the current Blogger and third-party tools to optimize and create widgets for your blog. You'll transform your blog using existing tools then take it further with more challenging approaches to customizing your blog. All the steps involved in each example are listed under the section called "Time for action". Similarly, the results of that action are listed under the section called "What just happened". This structure adds to the clear, simple, and focused approach of the book.
Who this book is written for?
The book is aimed at current users of the Blogger platform who want to get the most out of Blogger and people who use a different blogging platform and are planning on switching to Blogger. Blog owners who promote their own services, expertise, and products, and want to increase their blog's success by pushing the limits of what Blogger can do will get the most out of this book.
The book doesn't require any specific knowledge of Blogger or the related technologies: RSS, CSS, HTML, and XML. Everything you need to know to grow beyond the basics is covered in this book. The companion website to this book (bloggerbeefedup.blogspot.com) includes free resource images and content.

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