Mega Menu with Images or Thumbnails for Blogger

Visual content holds a certain appeal that websites integrate images to every page, or even operate solely through photos. Now, with the new AJAX navigation menu widget, images can be added to the drop-down menu as well.

The AJAX navigation menu for blogger is a widget designed specifically for the Blogger platform. It is inspired from the Mashable website long before it was given a makeover. Despite the plain and simple inspiration, the drop down menu with images is a huge hit.

It works based on the jQuery library and Blogger JSON Feed API. Function-wise, it works just like a normal drop-down menu when JavaScript is disabled. For it to work online, a blog must be for public visitors, so the Blogger JSON Feed API will function as designed.

 

Which Hashtag Instagram Widget Should You Choose?

There are apps and widgets for almost everything, but one thing that is lacking is a widget that connects one of the most popular image-based social network to your website. Unfortunately, Instagram has yet to design an official widget that will allow you to easily and quickly embed grams on your website.

A widget is like a desk accessory that allows an end user to execute a particular function within a webpage. It fetches information from a particular source and then display it on an intended area. It can be designed to provide easy accessibility to weather, maps, sports updates, calendar and many others. Android and WordPress are two of the biggest contributors of web and mobile widgets, but Instagram still has to catch up.

While they're still trying to figure out how to make an Instagram widget, take advantage of any of the third-party widgets for Instagram. But because there are plenty of them out there, choosing the right one can be tough. Well, we did the sorting and guesswork out for you and presented you with the top 3 options:

7 Search Engine Optimization Tips for Bloggers

SEO, as you might have already know, is an acronym for search engine optimization. In the simplest of words, it's the way search engines like Google.com, Yahoo.com, Bing.com and others present your page in users' search results on their sites.

Cool, how do they that?

Well, they do that via sophisticated software tools, called spiders. Consider the whole internet as an empty room, with air particles as websites. Now sneak a spider into that room. Each tiny step that this spider would take now is essentially crawling a website (as the room is dark and full of websites). This is how search engines crawl through the web picking up site after site, studying them and ranking them. This ranking is important, really important. A higher ranked website by Google will always be on the first page of Google's search results for a related query compared to a lower ranked one.

So, in order to get ranked higher, you and I need SEO. SEO is like black pepper without which fried egg might not taste 'that' tastier. In simple words, in order for search engines to find your site and rank it higher than others in your field, you need to optimize it. Let's see how with these 7 simple tips.

Ways to SEO Optimize your Blog

Keyword Difficulty Analysis: How to Choose the right SEO keywords

A successful SEO campaign almost always relies on the keywords used. As elements that search strings are matched against, they can propel a website forward, helping it rank on search engines. The significance of individual keywords, however, is slowly dwindling, and keyword-based search engine optimization is losing its strength. Blame it on black hat practices that, even when they're being cracked down, have left lasting effects. This is because there are now factors that are far more important than keyword presence:

• Keyword placement matters more than usage frequency. That is, using keywords in the title tag and header has more weight than using them five times in the content.

• Using synonyms is more than acceptable. Now that Google is more sophisticated in interpreting data of a website, keyword specificity is fading. So even if different key phrases are used, as long as they have similar context, Google can place them in the exact same category, theoretically.

• Semantic search is making a huge difference on user searches. In the past, Google dissects search queries by words. A search query about "running shoes Utah", for example, would return anything that may be related with running, shoes and even events in Utah. But with search semantics, Google interprets the meaning of the whole search query rather than just the individual words.

Along with these changes is the need to take a different approach to keyword research. Keywords still matter, but they need to be perfect to be really effective. So whatever process you have been following for as long as you can remember, you should completely forget. Even if you did rank, it turns out that you have been doing keyword research all wrong. Rather than research for high volume, low competition and good CPC keyword, or effective latent semantic index keywords, you should use keyword difficulty analysis instead.

What does Keyword Difficulty Analysis mean?

Building a List/Grid View Switcher in Blogger with Auto Read More

A list of posts in grid or list view provides a more defined canvas with which a blogger or website owner can use as a guide in creating content. This concept has extended to visitors, where they can have control on whether or not they wish to view posts in list or grid view. While custom modification codes are shared by some blogging sites, others are not. Some that are shared, however, can be complex even to bloggers themselves, such as JQuery.

The good news is there are lightweight codes available, including the Auto Read More in Blogger. Through it, a blogger can add two buttons that will enable visitors to switch between grid view and list view, depending on what they prefer. These buttons, however, are only visible on limited pages - homepage, label page and archive page. Nonetheless, it is better than not having this particular feature at all.

Unlike JQuery, the Auto Read More uses HTML, CSS and JavaScript. To view posts in a list view, two sets of CSS codes are added as one. Another set is added to view posts in grid view. Other combination of codes is used to enable easy switch between views, particularly at a click of a button.

How to Add a List/Grid View Switcher in Blogger

Add Masonry, Grid Layouts to Blogger Posts with CSS and Javascript

How a website's content is displayed can spell the difference between being popular and obscure. Anything that looks chaotic or hardly readable is never going to be anyone's favorite. This is why content must be displayed in an organized, easy to follow and straightforward manner. Nothing works better than a structured grid, in this case.

Posts listed in grid view provide an excellent viewing experience for both the blogger or website owner and the visitors. This is especially true if the grid comes with images that would play with a person's visual inclination. What is great about grids is the seamless and smooth layout, complemented with a structured yet simple architecture. This makes it easier to navigate through a blog archive or product page. The style also enables a website owner to present posts in a more artistic and informative manner, without delving into the details. Suffice to say that a grid view demands creativity to be effortlessly mixed with functionality.

How views can be switched depends on a number of changes in a blog's codes. Some are fairly easy to implement, while others can be a little complex. Not to worry, as there are guides that will be provided. Grid styles also come in huge varieties, with each one designed to cater to a specific audience. Now, are you ready to go on the grid?

How to Track Invalid Adsense Clicks Using StatCounter

A lot of things can happen online, some of which are beyond your control. One of these is invalid click activities that are caused by a number of things, but can lead you into one unfortunate situation - getting banned from AdSense for good. Since you need AdSense to keep track of your website's performance, you should do anything possible to protect yourself against invalid clicks.

StatCounter can help you in this mission. This is a web traffic analysis tool that lets you track all clicks and exit links. Through it, you will know where a majority of your invalid clicks are coming from, and the corresponding IPs that you can then block to protect your AdSense account.

Getting started is as easy as signing up and creating an account. You can then create a new project for a website that you want to track. Like most analytics tools, StatCounter is fairly easy to use. Make sure to select a counter or Invisible tracking, and opt to receive reports in a weekly or monthly basis, so that you can keep an eye on invalid AdSense clicks.

After entering the appropriate information, press the "Add Project" button which will take you to the "Choose an installation Guide for your website" page - here click the "Default Installation Guide" link. Now, StatCounter will give you a code along with instructions on how to install this code on your website. After adding the code, press the "Check Installation" button on the right toward the bottom of the page in order to finish the installation process.

Tracking Exit Links

4 Ways to Detect Invalid Activity in Google AdSense

Monitoring your website's performance shouldn't be a chore but a necessity. After all, how else will you know how to serve your audience better - and acquire new ones - if you don't know how they get to you, what they do on your site and who they are? Google Analytics is a tool that does all that, but despite its sophistication, your account can be suspended for invalid activity.

This is the one thing that you have to avoid because the process of reinstating your account may take a while. That said, how can you detect invalid activity?

Before answering the question, here are some terms that you need to familiarize yourself with as they will appear throughout the rest of this post:

DEFINITIONS

- Clicks: number of times a user has clicked on your advertisements
- CPC: cost per click; what you get whenever a user clicks on your ads
- Pageviews: refers to the action the user takes of viewing a page with an ad displayed
- CTR: click through rate; calculated as (clicks / pageviews) x 100 and is given in percentage
- Estimated Earnings: calculated as (clicks x CPC); the value goes up or gown while the earnings are still in verification process

WAYS TO DETECT INVALID ACTIVITY

Using the AdSense Access and Authorization Feature

It is amazing when you see a webmaster using a blogspot blog stealing an AdSense Java Script Code and using it on their website. They will usually keep your unique publisher ID while showing ads from your account. While their action may be unintentional in terms of them not caring which ID that they use, the net effect is that you are now involved in their illegal action.

Whatever their reason for doing so, once they are caught and banned for using illegal and plagiarized materials, chances are that Google will also ban your Adsense account as well because it violates the terms of service and the program polices even though you may not have been aware that this happened to you. It doesn't really matter to Google because they see your unique publisher ID and assume that it is you posting the illegal materials.

In addition, there are websites that also use the iFrame HTML program that will embed to the post and pages of your website as well. This means that you are now violating the Terms of Services as well as the Program Policies because they are showing the AdSense ads inside an iFrame which is forbidden. Again, because it is your website, Google will assume that it is you unless you can take appropriate action.

While this may seem unfair, it must be noted that Google has recognized the practices of others in using the websites and unique publisher ID, so they have developed a new feature called "Access and Authorization" that you can find within the dashboard of AdSense. It is here that you can only allow certain sites to show ads for your account and not have to worry about getting punished for something that you did not do.