How to Identify and Fix 404 Errors with Webmaster Tools

404 Errors or "Page Not Found" warnings are frustrating for your readers and can increase your bounce rate.  Making sure that every incoming link to your site lands on an actual page is important in order to give readers a good user experience, but it can be difficult to identify those bad links on your site.

Fortunately, Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) has a tool made just for this task.  Using your sites own crawler data plus the ability to redirect bad incoming links, you can virtually eliminate 404 errors from your blog!

In this 7 minute video tutorial I walk you through, step by step, how to determine which links are bad, where they are coming from, how long they have been there, and what exactly you can do to fix them!

What are sponsored posts and how do they work?

Before I even start this post I want to premise it by saying that 100% of this post is *MY* real life experience.  Not every blogger feels the same way about sponsored posts and their experiences may be very different from mine.  But since this is MY blog, I am of course going to share MY thoughts and opinions.. the good, the bad and the ugly.  This post is not passing judgement of any other specific blogger and/or their sponsored posts..  nor is it a ‘call to action’ for other bloggers to change the way they write their sponsored content.  Every blogger must make their own decisions when it comes to working with brands.  I feel very strongly about the way I handle sponsored posts on my blog and this post solely reflects those feelings towards my own content.

As any long term reader may have noticed, in the past year or so my blog has become peppered with sponsored content. I have always monetized my blog with display ads, but beginning in March of 2014 I started writing sponsored content as another revenue stream.  (For my rationale see number 5.)  

What happens behind the scenes of a sponsored post

I recently wrote about my experiences with sponsored posts and why I think it is so important to make sure that the content within them is always worth reading.  I was actually surprised by how much traffic (and feedback) that post received.  Based on the majority of the responses to that piece (both on the post itself and on social media) I am clearly not the only one who feels that way.

It isn’t that I believe most bloggers set out with the goal of “write crappy sponsored posts and annoy my readers,” but sometimes that just happens.  Creating high quality sponsored posts usually means a lot more work than just regurgitating the sales pitch you are told to give.  Even with the best intentions, not every post will be a winner. Sometimes posts just don’t turn out like you envisioned. I admit that I have had that happen to me.

Good posts (sponsored or otherwise) are hard work..  and LOTS OF IT.  Most bloggers are already keenly aware of this, but a non-blogger may not realize what it actually takes get a post written and published. So today (and since I am tapped out of new projects to share.. #KeepingItReal) I am going to show you what it takes for me to create a post.

How to Find Your Most Popular Posts in Google Analytics

Now that year is winding down, you should be looking back at your analytics to see which posts ended up being the most popular on your site.  Knowing which posts are your most trafficked is good in terms of determining what kind of content you should be sharing in the future, and also if you plan on doing a “look back” post or a roundup of your most popular posts of the year.

Today I’m going to share how to figure out which posts were your most popular ones. I’ll show you how to determine both your top posts written THIS year, as well as your most popular posts overall. (The posts that saw the most traffic this year, no matter which year they were written.)

How to Confirm Google Analytics is Installed Correctly

Google Analytics is the gold standard of traffic monitoring software.  When site owners talk about their monthly page views or uniques, they are almost always referring to their numbers form Google Analytics.  This tracking software is the most accurate and therefore should be installed on your blog if you ever need access to your traffic statistics (don’t EVER use numbers from Blogger!)

However.. this accuracy is only true if you have Google Analytics installed CORRECTLY on your site.   This means the tracking script should be installed only one time, and in the correct location on the page.  If you have duplicate versions of the tracking code or have it installed too early in your head section, you can get falsely inflated analytics.

To demonstrate just how dramatic this inflation can be, I did an experiment on my own site.  I installed a second tracking code into my html and then watched my traffic over the next 4 days.  This is what happened:

My page views doubled and my bounce rate dropped to about 10%.  

As much as I wish those numbers were true.. They are completely an artifact of the duplicated code. 

How to Use Google Analytics to Determine Why Blog Traffic is Changing

Often bloggers are faced with sudden and/or long term increases or decreases in blog traffic. Determining the cause of these changes isn’t alway the easiest thing to do.   Luckily, the data stored in your Google Analytics account can yield a lot of information about exactly why you page views are changing.

How to Add An Image Slider to Posts on Blogger

Slideshows have been the hot new fad on blogs lately.  Many blogs have them on the sidebar, in the header and within the post content itself.  They are a great way to add a lot of images to a single post without making readers scroll and scroll to the bottom of the page.  They also can help loading time since they only pull one image at a time.  If the images are clickable you can also use sliders as a way of rounding up your old content.. almost like a fancy ‘navigation’ tool.