Tuesday 12 April 2016

How to Create HTML Sitemap for Blogger Blog

An HTML sitemap provides you a wide range of advantages. A sitemap not only improves bounce rate of your website but also improves the ranking of your site in the search engine results. It improves the navigation of your site and sometimes helps search engine bots to discover content on your website. 

Sitemaps are of two types namely, XML Sitemap and a simple HTML sitemap page. XML Sitemap is used by the Google bots to discover the content of your blog. On the other hand, a simple HTML sitemap is used by your blog visitors to easily navigate your site.

According to Google, HTML as well as XML Sitemap, both are useful from the viewpoint of search engine optimization. A website with a sitemap is more likely to perform better in search engine results. 


A sitemap may not directly influence your ranking in the search results but it does improve the performance of your website. Here is a screenshot of a Google's search engine optimization starter guide page. You can also download a copy of the same by clicking on the source given below the image.


In this post, you will learn how to make and add a simple sitemap page for BlogSpot blog. If you want to learn how to prepare a custom XML sitemap please click here.

Steps to create Blogger HTML sitemap


HTML sitemap BlogSpot blog
Sample HTML sitemap

If you have not added a sitemap page in you blog for the visitors of your site, you should create one. You can create a simple sitemap for the users of your blog manually as well as online with the help of auto sitemap generators.

If you want to create an auto-generated sitemap using online tools you have several options to choose from such as sitemaps.com . You can use this tool to generate HTML as well as XML sitemap for BlogSpot blog. If you have a large number of posts on your blog you will find this method useful as it automatically generates a sitemap for your site.

If you want to create a sitemap for your blog manually, you can arrange your post hierarchically or in any other order that you think will help your users to easily navigate your site. 

Easy navigation is all about simplicity and ease of use. So if your sitemap can provide these two things to your blog visitors your will not find it difficult to create a sitemap for your users.

Follow the following steps to create an HTML sitemap for BlogSpot blog.

  • Open your blog dashboard
  • Click on pages
  • Create new page
  • Arrange your blog posts on the page in such a manner so that it help your blog readers easily find the information they are looking for. Make sure to add the URL link to each post using link function.
  • Once you have arranged all the posts publish the page and you are done.


Although, Google bots mostly use XML Sitemap to index your blog content, however, sometimes Google bots also use HTML sitemap page in your blog to discover the content of your blog. Make sure to update your sitemap every time you post new content on your website. 

So making a simple sitemap for your users is a very useful SEO practice as it helps in achieving better search engine ranking as well as better navigation. 



If you liked this article, please share it with others. If you have any other suggestion to create a better Sitemap, please feel free to share with us in the comment box. Keep reading! Keep sharing!

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Wednesday 6 April 2016

Off page optimization techniques for SEO

Off page optimization usually follows on-page optimization. If you have not optimized your website content on-page, I would suggest you to first optimize your website content on-page before you employ off-page optimization techniques for SEO.

Off-page SEO techniques involve all those activities that you do outside your website to drive more traffic to your site. Off-page SEO not only helps your rank higher in search engine ranking but also helps you drive traffic through social media sites, forums and various other sources.

Off page SEO techniques to improve search engine ranking


Once you have optimized your site content on-page, it would become easier for you to maximize benefits of off-page optimization. Although off page optimzation involves several activities, here are some of the best off page SEO techniques you can employ to improve search engine ranking of your website.

off page SEO techniques
Off page optimization techniques

Build backlinks to improve credibility of your site


The first thing that you can do to improve the ranking of your website is to build quality backlinks. Search engines use backlinks to measure the worth of your blog or website. The more quality backlinks you have, the higher your website pages rank in the search engine. 

However, make sure to avoid link schemes to build backlinks for your website. Adopt only white hate backlink practices.

Here are some best practices to create quality backlinks for SEO

Guest Posting: You can make use of Guest posting to get quality links from high ranking blogs or websites. Create a couple of posts every month exclusively for guest posting. Although, guest posting is an effective method of building backlinks and driving traffic to your blog, make sure to use guest posting carefully. Understand the advantages as well as disadvantages of backlink building practices and how backlinks can backfire.

Also, read: 


Post comment on other blogs: You can significantly improve the presence of your website if you post quality comments on other blogs in your niche. Quality comments not only help you build a better relationship with other bloggers; sometimes it also helps you get some quality backlinks from other websites.

A majority of the bloggers would not mind a link to a comment if it adds value to their blog content or helps others to understand a concept.

Moreover, some of the bloggers allow you to provide a link to your blog while commenting on their blog. You can significantly improve the ranking of your site if you post your comments on such sites.

However, always remember two quality backlinks are better than 10 low-quality backlinks. So make sure to use backlinks that add value to your site and help you improve the ranking of your blog. Avoid using links in your comments for spamming.

Learn more:


Participate in leading forums: nowadays, discussion forums like Quora, Reddit and V7N are great places to gain some quality backlinks. You can use these forums to answer the queries of your readers and get some quality traffic to your blog. Moreover, these forums enable you to ask questions and get insight into the leading trends in the industry.

However, make sure to participate in these forums with the intentions of helping out people who need answers to their queries. It will help you get some natural backlinks.
Never throw links in these sites with the sole intention of building backlinks. It may take you some time to build links from these sites but I am sure sooner or later you will be able to get quality backlinks. 

Join social media sites: if you want to improve the visibility of your blog, you must join some of the leading social media sites such as Facebook, Google plus, twitter, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, and Instagram. Make sure to create your profile in these sites. If you can spend some quality time you can also build your own groups or communities to improve the visibility of your blog.

Some of these sites not only help you get some quality links but also help you build a network that can help you drive tons of traffic to your blog.

Also, read: 


Search engines use social media signals to understand the worth of your site. Social shares, comments, and likes may not directly impact the ranking of your site but these signal play an important role in improving the page views, audience engagement, and bounce rate of your blog or website. So indirectly, social signals play an important role in improving the ranking of your blog or website.

Build quality networks


Quality networks are much better than a large untargeted network of online friends. If you can build a network of online friends who share similar interests, you can get some quality links from your network. Bloggers in your network are most likely to provide you backlink if you read their blog and post comments.

If you regularly post your comments on quality blogs and reshare their blog pages, you will be able to attract their attention. Once you manage to bring yourself to their notice, you can bring some great content on your site to their notice and request them for a backlink. 

Submit your website to leading search engines and use webmaster tools


By submitting your website to leading search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing etc you can significantly improve the indexing of your site. Use tools like Google search console and Google Analytics to get useful information about indexed pages as well index errors. 

Moreover, these tools will help you get insight into broken links. By rectifying broken links you can improve the ranking of your site in the search results.

Create infographics


Infographics are increasingly gaining popularity as they not only improves audience engagement but also provide several off page SEO benefits. Infographics are easy to understand and stand a better chance of getting quick backlinks. 

You can create your own infographics using online tools such as Canva Infographics or you can also use the infographics from other reputed websites. A majority of the bloggers allow users to use the infographics on their site provided that you link to the source.

You can collect interesting information from a couple of infographics to make your infographic more interesting and useful for your blog readers. You can also use screen capture software to capture the relevant and reliable information and use it in your infographics.

Convert your content into audiovisuals



Audiovisuals are the future of blogging. Youtube has gained unprecedented popularity in the recent past decade. You can convert your content into video content and upload it on Youtube. Link the video to your site to improve audience engagement and bounce rate. 

Moreover, it is also one of the best off page SEO techniques. It will provide you two major benefits. First, you will get more backlinks. Second, you will be able to open one more income stream using same content. 


If you liked this article, please feel free to share it with others. Do you know any other off-page optimization technique to improve search engine ranking? Please feel free to share with us.

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Sunday 3 April 2016

Five Reasons Why Video Content is the Future of Blogging

The virtual world is rapidly evolving. The per capita global data consumption and the number of digital consumers are on the rise. The broadband speed is increasing at an unprecedented rate as a result consumption of Video content is increasing faster than ever before.

Digital consumers seem to be more interested in content shared in the form of videos than in writing. The video marketing statistics and data consumption behaviour of the consumers shows that Vlogosphere is outperforming Blogosphere.In such a scenario what could be the future of blogging.



Why Video Content is the Future of Blogosphere


If we look at the present and forecasted data consumption habits of the digital consumers it is apparent that video content is the future of blogging. There could be several reasons behind the increasing popularity of video content. However, in this article, I have covered the five key reasons that indicate that audiovisual content is the future of blogosphere.

Reason #1: Increasing consumption of video data



The video statistics highlights of Cisco white paper is not only interesting but also good enough to provoke thought.

Let’s have a look at the video highlights:

  • By 2019, almost a million minutes of video content will cross the global web network every second. You can gauge the volume of this content by the fact that it will take an individual more than 5 million years to watch the amount of video that will cross global IP networks in a month.


  • The consumer video traffic will increase to 80% in 2019 as compared to 64% in 2014. This means digital consumers are going to consume more content in the form of videos. 

  • By 2019, broadband speeds will double which will further boost the use of video content. 

However, the question remains why video content is increasingly gaining popularity. There could be several reasons behind it. However, the top most reason is the benefit of video content over blogging.

Reason #2: Video content provides several advantages over written content


Videos are easy to consume as compared to written content. A video takes less time to watch and provides a wide range of advantages in terms of convenience to the audience. A 5 minutes video offers more value in terms of information, time, and convenience.

  1. Visual content is easy to remember: as compared to written content streaming visual content can be remembered for a long duration of time. Unlike written content, video content impacts your eyes as well as ears. You are more likely to remember a thing for a longer duration of time if it impacts more of your sense organs. This is why audiovisual content is gradually replacing books. 
  2. A video speaks louder than words: when you see things in action you are likely to gain more from it than written content. The audience is more likely to believe in a video content than written content. A video also enables you to read between the lines. A nicely created video provides more information that the written content. The facial expression, the tone of voice and body language tells you more than the actual words. 
  3. Streaming videos are appealing to eyes: if you are offered same content in writing and video, you are most likely to click on a video content. Video content is more appealing to your sense organs. Unlike written content, you are most likely to watch a video several times if it is entertaining and informative. 
  4. It takes less time to watch a video than written content: written content usually takes more time to consume than the video content. Consumers are increasingly looking for content that can be consumed easily and quickly. If you are running against time you are most likely to watch a video than a written content. Video content can be saved and watched time and again. 
  5. Some content can only be shared in the form of videos: This is one of the biggest advantages of video content over written content. Videos are more effective if you want to share something that you have captured accidently. A video showing robbery in a shop or a video showing a horrible accident are more likely to perform better online than written content. 

Reason #3: Increasing popularity of Smartphones


With the advent of Smartphone, the consumption of data has increased significantly. In 2015, the video data accounted for almost 50% of the total mobile data consumption.





The Ericsson mobility report 2015 indicates that the number of worldwide mobile subscriptions has increased from 7,100 million units in 2014 to 7,400 million units in 2015. The Smartphone subscription is forecasted to touch the mark of 9,100 million units by 2021.

The monthly data traffic per Smartphone has also increased significantly from 1.0 Gigabytes per month in 2014 to 1.4 Gigabytes in 2015. As per the estimate of Ericsson, the projected usage is likely to reach the mark of 8.5 GB per month by the year 2021.

The report also says that the increased data consumption in the third quarter of 2015 as compared to the same period in 2014 was the result of increased video consumption. According to the report by the year 2021, almost 70% of the all mobile traffic will be from videos.

The above statistics clearly indicates that digital consumers prefer video content over written content. The audiovisual audiences are on the rise and video content will perform much better than written content.



Reason #4: Declining cost of data across the world


One of the factors that keep you from watching videos frequently is the cost of downloading data. The cost of downloading writing content is far less than the video content. This is why a majority of the consumers use written content to collect information. However, the cost of data is likely to decline in the coming years which will increase the usage of streaming visuals.


The cost of data in developed countries of the world is far less than the developing countries. This is why the consumption of data is more in developed countries. Although the cost of data is dropping, however, it has not reached a point where video content can be consumed frequently.


The increasing consumption of data coupled with increasing number of users will enable the service providers to drop the cost of data. Moreover, the stiff competition between the service providers to attract and retain their consumer will further lower the cost of data.


The usage of data in Asia pacific region and Africa has increased significantly due to the availability of affordable devices as well as the declining cost of data. With the drop in data cost the use of audiovisual content will increase. 


Reason #5: Increasing popularity of social media sites




Source: Statista 2016


The number of social network users is forecasted to increase from 1.96 billion in 2015 to 2.44 billion in 2018. The social media sites such as Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus provides an opportunity to the users to share their content in any form. These sites have made the world a global village.


The increasing convenience of sharing and consuming the content in any form has further boosted the use of video content. Social media sites contributed to 15% to the mobile data traffic.

Interestingly, according to Mushroom Networks, YouTube has emerged as the second largest search engine outperforming leading search engines like Yahoo, Bing, and Ask. The performance of Youtube has significantly improved over the past couple of years in terms of active users. Here is an interesting infographic from Mushroom networks that show the increasing popularity of Youtube.

Created by Mushroom Networks

Does it Indicate Death of Written Content?


Now the question arises does it mean online rewritten content will become a thing of the past in the coming years? I would say NO. It only shows that written content supported with relevant videos will gain more popularity.

For example, if you are a food blogger and you have created recipes for hundreds of dishes on your blog, you can also include videos to improve audience engagement. Your audience is most likely to spend more time on your blog if you have videos as well on your blog. 


Similarly, if you are a travel blogger you can include videos of the places you have recently visited. It will not only improve the bounce rate of your blog but also help your audience get an idea of the places they are planning to visit.

You cannot beat competition solely on the basis of written content in the near future. Marketers are increasingly using video content marketing as a tool to enhance their online presence. By including videos in your content you can also increase income stream.

The websites that include streaming video content stand a better chance of ranking higher in the search engine results. Videos give a reason to your blog readers to spend more time on your website. Moreover, video clips are pleasant to eyes and enable your audience to get a glimpse of things in action. 

Moreover, if your video content goes viral you are most likely to experience a significant increase in blog traffic and backlinks. 


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Do you think video content is going to change the way we blog today? Will you make any changes in your blogging strategy keeping in mind the changing consumption habits of the digital consumers? Please feel free to share your opinion with us.

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Friday 1 April 2016

Is Bounce Rate a Right Metric to Measure Websites quality


Bounce rate is a widely misunderstood concept. A majority of the people believe that high bounce rate is the result of low-quality content or boring home page. If a majority of the users leave a site within a few seconds of landing on a page it results in high bounce rate.  

It is true that when visitors leave your site after reading the landing page on your site it results in high bounce rate. However, bounce rate does not say anything about the amount of time a visitor spends on the landing page. Thus, the bounce rate is not a real metrics of measuring the quality of a blog.

Let’s check out what Google says about the bounce rate.



Wikipedia defines bounce rate as the measure of the effectiveness of a website to encourage visitors to visit other pages on the same website. Interestingly one of the articles in Mashable introduces bounce rate as a kiss of death.

While, in an interesting infographic Kissmatrics, has tried to demystify the concept of bounce rate. According to this infographics, the bounce rate varies from industry to industry ranging from 30% to 90%.

The above definitions of Bounce rate reflect four major reasons for high bounce rate.

  • First, the link that leads users to the website might not be in line with the content.

  • Second, the blog content is of low quality and readers find it not good enough to spend time on the site.

  • Third, users may leave your site due to issues related to site design or usability. 

  • Fourth, the users might not find the need to visit other pages on a website if they find all the information they need on the landing page.


Now the question arises does high bounce rate really reflects the low-quality content. For example, if a user is looking for particular information on the landing page and leaves the site after getting the required information does it amount to low content quality?

Let’s dig a little deeper.

Does bounce rate actually reflects low content quality

Maybe not:

  1. If you get all the required information on the landing page, you are unlikely to read other pages on the same site. It does not mean the content is of low quality. 
  2. If you are following a blog and regularly read its content, you are most likely to leave the site after reading latest content. It does not reflect the low-quality content. In fact, it shows the quality of the content is high resulting in returning visitors. 
  3. If you are looking for a particular link or video on a page you are most likely to leave the site after clicking on the link resulting in high bounce rate. It does not necessarily indicate that the quality of the content is low. 
  4. If you are reading a long post (2000-3000 words long), you are unlikely to read other pages especially if you are busy with other things. In fact, the bloggers who write long post are most likely to experience high bounce rate as compared to bloggers who write short posts. 
  5. If you have optimized your blog content using the wrong keyword, you are most likely to experience high bounce rate. Since your post is showing up on search results for the wrong keywords, visitors are less likely to stay on your page for the longer duration of time. Does it mean you content is low in quality?

Bounce rate vs. average time on page


So bounce rate could not be necessarily used as a right metrics to judge the quality of blog content. The real metrics that could be used to measure the quality of content is the average time on page. 

In the Google analytics, the average time on page metric shows the time readers spend on your site as you can see in the screenshot. In the Google Analytics, click Behavior. In the drop-down menu select Site Content and click on All Pages.

bounce rate


Low audience engagement not only leads to high bounce rate but also says a lot more about the quality of the content. If users are leaving your site within a few seconds of landing on the majority of the pages, it means you need to focus on the quality of content. It means your blog does not have good enough content to engage the audience.

So the real measure of content quality is the average time your audience spends on your blog pages rather than the bounce rate. Bounce rate only shows that readers are leaving your page after reading the landing page on your blog irrespective of the time they spend on the page. 

On the other hand, average time on the page shows the amount of time your blog audience is spending on your page.

Therefore, if some of your pages show high bounce rate plus low average time, it means you need to improve the quality of the content on those pages.

However, if you are sure that the quality of your blog content is high you need to dig deeper to find the real cause of high bounce rate. There could be several reasons behind it.

  • You have optimized your blog content using the wrong keyword

  • Your site might be taking more than usual time to load.

  • You post title is sending wrong signals and attracting the untargeted audience. Change the title of your posts with high bounce rate.

  • You are using wrong geographical targeting in the Google analytics. In other words, your blog post is showing up in wrong search results at wrong places. Fix the issue by resetting the targeted country in the Google analytics. 


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Is bounce rate a right metric to measure the quality of a website? what do you think? Please feel free to share your opinion with us. If you liked this article please share it with others. Keep learning, keep sharing!