From April 1st The New Blogger Dashboard Will Become Default

When checking back i was very surprised to see it was almost a year ago since Blogger introduced the new design on Blogger In Draft.April 20th 2011 to be exact as i explained in the post The New Blogger Dashboard And Design Is Live.After a few months in draft Blogger offered the option to use the new interface on the main blogger site.While some people took up the option and have become familiar with it, many including myself have continued to use the old dashboard.On the first of April however the new design will become default and we will all be using the new GUI.Over the last week I have been trying to familiarize myself with the layout and options of the new interface and it ain't been easy.

One of my main worries however is that hundreds of Blogger tutorials here on Spice Up Your Blog were wrote with instructions for the old dashboard.I have decided to edit all those posts over the next week and all future Blogger tutorials will be aimed at the new design.

On their part the Blogger team are constantly tweaking the new design and a send feedback link is placed in the bottom right of the page for your suggestions.If you remember when Facebook and Twitter changed their designs users were not happy but eventually seen the advantages I think it will be the same in this case.So whats your opinion and what changes would you like to see ?

Drop Your Comments And Questions Below.

Fundamental Link Building Practices to Boost Your Search Engine Rankings in Google

Guest Post By Johan Hedin, See How You Can Become A Guest Author .

We hear the entire buzz about getting back links over the web, but why are links so important to gain higher search engine rankings? First of all, links allow the search engines to find and index your website in the search engine databases. Second, high quality links help drive direct traffic and give the search engines an indicator of the importance of your website. The amount, the quality (trust), and the relevance of back links, will reveal many important signals to the search engines to determine the order of ranking. Obviously, Google cares first about its users, which are their utmost priority. All their technology is based on this philosophy. The more and the better they are able to satisfy their users, the more they will increase their market share (to sell more Adwords ads). They don’t want to ruin their SERPs with useless spam. This is why links from trusted websites are so important. The more trust the more and better rankings you will get.

In order to rank higher, you have to understand how Google places value on links. Each link is counted as a vote, but not all links are created equal meaning that not every link’s value is counted the same. If a link is deemed as high quality, it will pass on more link juice and therefore help your website gain higher ranking positions (compared to lower quality links). This means that getting a few links from really established and trusted websites (a.k.a. authority websites) is worth much more than a big quantity of low quality links. This brings us to the next point.

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Blogger Introduce Great New SEO Options

Blogger have upped the game in regards to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) by introducing a number of options to make Blogger hosted blogs perform better in search results.The big changes include the option to easily add a blog description that search engines will crawl allowing you to tell them what your blog is about, even better is the option to add a short description to each individual post.Adding tags to your images has been made easier so they will perform better in search results and there is also a few more complicated options.

Blogger now provides web savvy users with the option to manage search engine preferences. SEO -- an acronym for Search Engine Optimization -- helps increase traffic to your blog and connect your content with the intended audience. For more background on SEO, read through this article in the Webmasters Help Center, and be sure check out their SEO Starter Guide (pdf).

Here is a run down of all the new SEO features
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Pinterest Pin It Buttons And Follow Buttons For Blogger And WordPress

In the last post guest author Christine Kane told us Why Pinterest Is The Best New Way To Promote Your Blog.With that in mind it makes sense to make it as easy as possible for visitors to your blog to Follow your pins and Pin your content.So in this post i have some cool Pinterest follow icons and pin it buttons that will work on Blogger blogs, I say this as the buttons from the Pinterest Goodies page will not work on Blogger.You can also use a very useful Wordpress Plugin to have the Pin It Button on Your WP Blog.
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Why Pinterest Is The Best New Way To Promote Your Blog

Guest post by Christine Kane.
For all of you cave-dwellers out there, Pinterest is the biggest new thing. The idea is surprisingly simple. An online collection of your favorite images and photos in one convenient location. All you have to do is put the ‘pin it’ button on your toolbar and as you surf the web, any photo you see can be saved easily, quickly, and, best of all to bloggers, keeps the original source with it.

Just that alone would be enough to have bloggers everywhere tittering in delight. I mean, another way for people to essentially follow your site is great, right? But wait! There’s more! Not only does the person pinning the photo get to keep your site in mind forever, but they also share their ‘pins’ with others. Millions and millions of others.
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Awesome Slide Heart Shape Bookmarking Gadget For Blogger

In this post i want to show you a cool new way to have visitors sharing your blog posts.Share This has always been my Bookmark tool of choice and recently they added a cool new interactive Bookmarking gadget.The gadget in question is a love heart with the share this logo and on hover the heart splits to reveal a selection of bookmarking buttons.It looks awesome and the slide effect is very cool while still being practical.When the heart opens it reveals icons for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Stumble Upon, Email and the Share This Icon Offers hundreds more bookmarking choices.I think this gadget fixed in the corner of the page on your blog will grab the attention of visitors and generate lots more shares.So below is a tutorial showing you just how to do that, first check out the live demo.

Add The Split Heart Bookmarking Gadget Top Your Blog

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10 Best Free Rss Subscribe And Social Follow Wordpress Plugins

All Bloggers know how important it is to make it a easy as possible for readers to subscribe to the latest updates from their blog.At one time the Rss feed was the only option offered but now people like to stay updated via Facebook, Twitter and more recent social networks like Google+ (Plus) and Pinterest.Offering more subscription options in more areas on your Wordpress Blog just makes sense.In this post I have listed 10 Free Wordpress Plugins that will allow you to do just that.

10 Free Subscribe And Follow Wordpress Plugins

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How To Find Ideas For Your Next Great Blog Post

Guest Post By Rachel Hyun Kim
Stuck on ideas? Running out of inspiration? This problem is a common one for bloggers, who often must juggle between producing quality content and a strict content schedule. Regardless of whether your blog has a weekly or daily content schedule, it is important to maintain it with consistent blog posts. If not, a blog with prolonged inactivity may lead to consequences, such as the loss of readers and traffic.

5 Tips for Frustrated Bloggers

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Simple Stylish jQuery Image Slideshow For Blogger

Today i want to bring you another neat Image slideshow for Blogger users.The slide show is simple to add to your blog, looks great and has some neat options.The width can be changed to the size of the area you want it placed on your blog, captions can also be added to the images.Once on your blog it will auto scroll through your images and also has controls for the user to manual scroll.This will look great on Photography Blogs, Business Blogs or for anyone looking to display some cool pics.

The original version comes from Basic jQuery Slider, i have made some changes to make it work better with blogger.Check out the demo below, i have the demo slider spanning the full width of the blog but as i said it can be changed.


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