Weekly Geeks: Blogging tips

Most of you know that I lost my Reading Room blog to malware. Yes, I did create this blog named Everything Distils with Reading. But I lost my links, ranking, readership and lot more which I had built over three years.

I explored and found very simple rules:

1) Have a back up. I find importing blogger blog to Wordpress easy. Create a wordpress blog of the same name and import it, comments and all. You can do it on bloggers too but I found it cumbersome. Do whatever is easy and works for you. (Important update: Importing to wordpress doesn't affect your blog posts in blogger!)

2) Submit your blog to Google webmaster tools or Yahoo Site Explorer. I have added meta tags from both the sites. Either works. They search your blog for any kind of malware and inform you. Keep checking regularly.

3) Don't clutter your blog. Keep it simple. More widgets you add, more chances of malware. Avoid animations, music, graphics unles you have specific blogs for those. It also affects loading and results in lesser number of visitors. I avoid visiting those blogs which are filled with all kinds of gadgetry. It takes away the pleasure of reading, let alone commenting. Of course I do read them on my google reader.

4) If you have to have a site counter, go for well known ones. Statcounter or sitemeter work well. I had put good counter which was the culprit for Malware.

5) Add Google Analytics. That way you can learn more about your visiters. Adding something like Feedjit works too.

6) Internal linking in your blog posts works great. That way you get more visitors, which might bring about more commenters.

7) To keep in touch with more and more blogs, use google reader. Believe me it works very well. You can have RSS feed links too. However, the old cut/paste system works wonders.

Explore the net as how to protect your blog. Blogs are extension of our creativity. Losing it is painful. Ask me how. I almost went insane.