Help out a poor newbie!

Hi all-

I just posted a similar message in the Google board onthis site and then silly me finished browsing down all of the and saw this whole group of posts regarding Blogging.

So...I was browsing through the internet mindlessly tonight when I saw this guys website. Sorry I can't link directly to it yet becuase I am new here.
You will ahve to cut and paste this one guys and gals.

http://www.blogandping.com/blogandping.html

The site got me thinking, Hey that is a great idea. However I can't bring my self to lay out another 47.00 for some ebook again. I have done that so many times and been disapointed when I have found the info either badly written or something I could find for free.

So can anyone lead me on how to do this.

I own two sites currently, I have pretty good basic skills with setting up, designing etc of websites so I will understand any basic code etc.

I also already know what a blog is and know how to sgin up for a free account at blogger.

Now what I need to know how to do is:
1. Integrate the blog into my website? Which way do I go? Should I write articles and post them to my website and then copy them into my blog? Or do I blog an article so to speak and somehow get the blog to display on my website. Which is beeter for Search Engine positioning?

2. What is a poing and how do i set it up?

3. What is the deal with using My Yahoo page and RSS feeds of your blog? How can I do that?

Any other tips, tricks and etc to get be going and achieving at least a little better search engine rankings would be great. I like writing and won't have any problem blogging. Just need some help and tips on getting everything set up for maximum effect in the serach engines.


Thanks
Ichibanda

 

Hi all-

I was able to answer some of my questions but would still appreciate the help if anyone is so inclined.

I went over to Blogger and signed up for a free account. Gotta love the price. I was able to set up a new blog and get it to publish to my website no problems there.

Now I just need some help with getting the RSS feed set up I guess so that I can use the feed on My Yahoo page.

Thanks
Ichibanda

 

To set up the feed you need to login to your blogger dashboard and click the settings tab.
In that section, you need to click on the link that says "Site Feed".
Name the file something like "atom.xml" (I think it comes like that as default anyway), and make sure that you remember which directory you put the feed in (You need to specify the actual server path information).

Then all you have to do is place a link to the feed on your blog. (A standard <a href> type link).

It's also worth your time submitting the feed to feedburner too (Along with the huge numbers of similiar services - Technorati, MyYahoo etc...)

Also, go through dmoz and submit to all the blog directories. There are a good 60 or 70 in there that are worth your while submitting to.

Good luck

 

Hi there-

Thanks a lot for the help. I finally got it. It took me like an hour or to of screwing around with things but I got it to all work and it feeds to My Yahoo Webpage. pretty cool.

For some reason I was having a lot of problem getting all the right paths etc.

At any rate thanks for the help!

Ichibanda

 

What site did you end up using the "trick" on?

 

Hi there-

The site that I set up can be found at
www.crowntemplates.com

What I did to be clear is I went to http://www.blogger.com and set up a free blog for my website. I selected to have it hosted on my site for free.

You can see the blog at http://www.crowntemplates.com/blog/blog.html. I then was able to set up a Feed so that everytime I update my blog it appears on My Yahoo! home page.

From my understanding of the whole process which is pretty limited by using Blogger Google will frequently spider my blog and therefore the rest of my site. Then by adding the feed into My Yahoo homepage then Yahoo will frequently spider my site.

I hope that answers your questions. I am really new at this and don;t know very much. However I did notice this morning that there are a few new links that have been spidered by Yahoo after having the blog for only one day.

At any rate gotta go.

Ichibanda

 

Just a note, crowntemplates brings up a javascript error on MSIE.

 

How do I place a link to my feed on my blog? I don't get it. I signed up for a blog at blogger. I put the feed in and now what do I do?

 

I think I found out how to put the link in. Not sure, but it asked me for my FTP password? I don't know what they are talking about. I thought blogger was hosting my site. Can somebody fill me in here. I just to learn how to post a live feed. There are no instructions on this on the blogger site. If they are there, then I can't find them or they are not very clear. Thanks