AdSense, mobile templates and Analytics - and how they do (or don't) work together

If you

• use AdSense to make money on your blog, and

• have a mobile template enabled
  (which should, unless the blog is about something that makes no sense on a mobile device), 

then it's an extremely good idea to have at least one AdSense ad-unit that was made with Blogger's official AdSense widget rather than by getting the code from AdSense and installing it manually.



This is because the a majority of gadgets don't show up on the screen when a visitor using a mobile device (cellphone or tablet) looks at a blog which has a mobile template set up for it - and by default this includes AdSense gadgets.   When a mobile visitor looks at a blog, Blogger does check to see if AdSense is used on it, and if so it shows one or two ad-units to them.  But unfortunately these checks only detect AdSense gadgets, not AdSense code in HTML/Javascript gadgets or added directly to the template.   So the net effect is that unless you have one of the official AdSense gadgets, mobile visitors to your blog will not see any AdSense ads.

Some more things to note

There is a way to explicitly say that certain gadgets should be shown on your blog when it's viewed in mobile.    However I've found that due to a problem in Blogger, if you use this method, you will get an error message every time you try to manually edit your template.

Also, because of the limits to the number of AdSnese ads you can show, it seems logical that the one official AdSense gadget on your blog should be a link unit - specially since AdSense earnings through Blogger gadgets are not reported in Analytics even if it is properly set up for your blog.   However at the moment, if you try to add a link-unit to a Blogger-site, then you get an error message like this:

"Please correct the errors on this form"
The error message when you try to add an AdSense Link unit in Blogger

This only appears when a link-unit has been selected, and I have not been able to find any way to work around this problem when adding a link-unit of any size.

Non-US based Amazon Associates must "perform all services" outside the US

An interesting addition to Amazon's terms and conditions for their Associates (announced here):

“If you are a Non-US person participating in the Program, you agree that you will perform all services under the Operating Agreement outside the United States. If, for any reason, you cannot comply with this requirement, you must notify us using this link for an exception.”

My guess is that this is something to do with tax-regulations, and is worth a few moments thought (at least) for Bloggers who use Amazon Associates links to earn money from their blogs.    

But it also made me wonder about bloggers who travel a lot:   we possibly shouldn't be doing any work inside a country where we don't have a visa that allows us to work.   I wonder if that includes writing blog posts, or perhaps even drafting but not publishing them or taking pictures for them? 

Help visitors who arrive at your blog via a link to a deleted post

If you sometimes delete posts from your blog, then it's a good idea to provide some help to people who who arrive at your blog via links to those posts.

(Even if you don't have any links to those posts, it's likely that a search-engine somewhere will have some - and other people may have bookmarked or shared them, too.)

There are two options for doing this:

Post-specific redirects

Use these if you want to re-direct visitors who come to a particular previous post:

Go into Settings > Search Preferences, click Edit beside Custom Redirects.

Click New Redirect, to create instructions for what to do if a visitor tries to navigate to a specific post.

Put the address of the post that you want to make a re-direct for into the From field.

Put the address of the post that you want to visitors to be taken to into the To field.

For both addresses, the part you need to enter is the URL of the post from the first backslash on.  

Do not put in your blog-address

Do include the date-part of the URL and the backslash.
eg
for    http://areyoublogger.blogspot.com/2013/01/changing-a-label-value-for-all-posts.html
use   /2013/01/changing-a-label-value-for-all-posts.html

Tick the Permanent check-box.

Click Save.

Click Save Changes.   (Yes, you need to do both Saves)

A generic page-not-found message

Use this if you do not want to set up post-specific re-directs, or if you cannot remember the URL of your deleted posts.

Go into Settings > Search Preferences, and edit the Custom Page Not Found option.

Put in some text welcoming the visitor, explaining that the page they were looking for is no longer available, and suggesting other places that they could try.

 This text can include links to other posts, so long as you hand-code them. (You might like to get code for this using the post editor).

Use diagrams to make pictures for your blog posts

This post from the Weekly Blogging Tips series is about a cost-effective way to make pictures for blog postings.

The best blogging advice is that every post should have at least one picture:  is a stunning professional-looking shot which perfectly illustrates the point you are making perfectly.

This is a great idea if you're a professional photographer and have all time in the world, or if you can afford to purchase images which are custom made for your blog.

But most of us just aren't in that league.

Sometimes, you can use a search tool to find a re-usable photograph that you can put into your posts. (Remember to download your own copy and put it into a Google picture host, to make sure that it's accepted as the thumbnail picture for the post.)

But another option is to use a diagram - like this.

The picture above is a diagram that I used in a blog-post to emphasise that budgeting for an event is on-going through the planning phase, not a one-time job   I spent quite a while thinking about how to make the point about the original plan vs the on-going feedback loop.

Diagrams don't have to be complicated. Sometimes something as simple as showing a bullet pointed list in a different shape can be an effective way to add "visual texture" to your post and thus make it more appealing for people to read.

There are various tools that you can use to make diagrams.

• PowerPoint is fantastic especially in in Office 2010 and 20123 where it has shape placement guidelines, as well as the usual squiggly word-art, smart-shapes, gradient-fills etc. 

• Google Spreadsheets is catching up, though they've got a way to go yet, and your have to use screenshot tools to get an image (JPG, PNG or BMP) file from it. 

• And most other drawing and word-processing tools include some drawing tools too.

Make it easy for visitors to find other posts in your blog

Some visitors arrive at your blog from a search engine. Others will have subscribed to an RSS feed, or followed a link from some other blog or website. A few might even go directly to your home page because someone told them about it.

But no matter how they got there,

If you want people to read more than one post then you need to make it easy for them to find other posts. [tweet this quote]

Kindness vs Confusion

Some people say "don't confuse your visitors, only give them one way to look at your blog".

But I disagree.

• Some people are naturally searchers: if they want something they google it. 
• Others are navigators: they start from a place they know, and follow the directions to get pretty much anywhere else. 

You need to cater for both types of people - and to remember that there are lots of options in between.  And remember that not everyone understands Blogger jargon like "older posts" or "archive".

In general, I think you should

Give people at least two or three different ways to move around your blog [tweet this quote]

Blogger's navigation options

Decide which blogging-directions tool(s) to use based on how well they fit with your blog's goals.   Some options include

• An archive gadget - lets people choose from timeline of posts

• A labels gadget - shows a list of topics, and then a list of posts for a selected topic.

• A menu bar made from post-labels  - this is easy to make from a Pages gadget

• Showing the labels for every individual post.

• Cross linking between posts like I did in the two bullet-points above this one - using relevant linking words, of course (aka "anchor text")

• Using a LinkWith gadget, which shows a fixed number of other posts, chosen from ones with the same label.  You can use one of the several 3rd party options, or just make your own "related links" section at the bottom of each post, like I do for articles here on BloggerHAT.

• A search-gadget or custom-search-engine (CSE).
  (I use the latter for one pair of blogs that are set as a main site + news site:  visitors see them as the same because I have www.news.mySite.com and www.mySite.com, but Google and Blogger know that they are two separate blogs.    So I have one CSE which searches both sites, and is installed in both of them. 

• Mega posts: one one of my blogs, I have two monster posts which between them link to every other post on the blog.

• A popular posts or random posts widget.
  (Blogger provide a Popular-posts one, but you'll have to borrow a 3rd party one for the random option - install it the same way you install any other 3rd party code).

• The "newer posts" and "older posts" links at the bottom of each post (
  You might want to swap them around so they make sense to people who aren't Blogger users.)

What navigation tools have been most successful on your blog?




Weekly Blogging Tips is a series of short posts about the fundamentals of blogging, helping you to understand the relationship between the different tools and techniques that Google's Blogger offers.

Introducing Weekly Blogger Tips: A new type of post from Blogger-HAT

Are-You-Blogger was originally where I kept my own notes about how my solutions to problems with Blogger

But then I found other people were visiting - because they were looking for solutions to the same problems!   And looking back, I was embarrassed about how low-quality the original posts  were.  So I made a commitment to only publish properly researched articles, and I started keeping a private blog with post-ideas that I haven't researched fully (which now has 200+ posts in it).

Then in Sept 2012, I started posting "Quick Tips" - very quick posts about changes in other products that are people tend to use with their blogs, which I didn't have the time or ability research fully, but which I really wanted to share with my readers quickly.

Recently, however, the number of  Quick-tips has decreased: as Blogger and the other tools have become more mature, there just haven't been the same number of changes.

And at the same time, other projects have been taking more time and I often don't have the capacity to do the in-depth research for the quality articles that I want to publish here.

But one thing I that noticed on another project is that I get a lot of satisfaction from publishing regularly:   in one niche, there's a type of post that I can write in about 20 minutes, and this is great for my motivation and satisfaction, as well as for the blog's traffic levels.

So, between now and December this year, I've set myself a target of publishing at least one short post here once a week.   This won't be a fully researched article.  Instead it will be a short hint about some aspect of either Blogger or blogging in general- in short a Weekly Blogging Tip.

To start with, I've made a list of potential topics, but I'd love hear your suggestions about aspects of blogging where a quick post would be helpful - you know where to find the comments box ....