The number of designs that you can use is more limited than for instance Wordpress blogs and there’s less flexibility, but you don’t have to pay for hosting, it’s simpler and it’s a good place to start!   

 Registering

To set up your blog, first go to to Blogger.com –  https://www.blogger.com/start

Blogger is now owned by Google, so if you already have a Google Acount, you can use that, but if not, you will need to create a new account.

Once you’ve created your account, you can create your blog. You can create as many blogs as you like, each one has to have a unique name and url.

 Creating your blog

Step 1 is to give your blog a name. eg london-to-brighton-mini-run.blogspot.com. All blogger blogs end in blogspot.com

Step 2 is to choose a template. The designs are somewhat limited!

Some templates have different colour options which you can view by clicking the radio button and then preview template.

You’re now ready to create your first post, but let’s take an overview first.

Overview of the Blogger.com interface

The basic interface (below) has 4 main tabs.

POSTING
New Post. This is for creating the main text or content of your blog (posting).

Always give each new post a title.

Then type your text into the main box. If you use the “compose” tab, you have options to change the font/size of text, indent etc

 You can also insert pictures from this toolbar.

You can also  create hyperlinks to webpages. Here’s how:

Just type some text and highlight the bit that you want to be linked – in the example below “Speeding”. Click on where it says LINK in the toolbar. A box comes up saying “Edit Link”. Type in the url (web address) that you want to link to. It should generally start with http://www.

At the bottom of the box where you type your post is a place to put labels for your post – this helps search engines to know what your post is about.

 When you have finished working on your post, you need to click Publish. If you want, you can click on “preview” to see what it looks like first.

 With Blogger, when you view your blog, the most recent post is always the one that is displayed first

Edit Posts

Next to New Post is Edit Posts – this is where you can change a one of your previous posts.

Edit Pages. These are static pages. A page is different to a post. A page is for things like an “about me” page. A post is like an article.

When you’ve created a page, you can choose where the link to it will appear – in the top bar or the side bar.

Comment Moderation. If you allow people to comment on your posts, you can moderate their comments here.

SETTINGS

“Basic” you need to enter the title of your blog, and if you want, a description. It’s best to have all the rest of the options set to “yes” except for “adult content”

“Publishing”  – rarely needed

 “Formatting”  - for setting how many posts go on one page (7 is a good number), time and date formats etc

 “Comments” – to keep things simple, it’s best to turn comments off – otherwise you’re destined to get a lot of spam!

 “Archiving” – leave the default settings

 “Site Feed” – have the first box as “full” and leave the rest

 “Email & Mobile” – you can leave this

 “OpenID” leave blank

 “Permissions” – is set by default so anyone can read your blog – and that’s what you want

 LAYOUT

Under “Page Elements”  you can change the layout of your blog. In particular you can add “Gadgets” in the top bar, side bar and bottom bar.

 If you go to http://4wheelsgood.blogspot.com/  you’ll see I have a number of Gadgets and you can see how these correlate to the Gadgets in the side bar in the picture above.

Under the layout tab, you can also change the colours and default fonts for your blog, edit the html (advanced) and change to a different template.

MONETISE

 You can set up adsense and Amazon associates accounts so that adverts are displayed on you blog.

So that’s about it. There are further advanced features, but the basics are all you need to get started. As you get stuck into it you find it’s all quite easy.

Search engines do not necessarily rank new websites very highly straight away. So you may need to wait a while to get on the first page of Google for your search terms!

Search engines mainly require the following:

 Text and meta tags correctly used and that are keyword rich.
Good text content on your pages with appropriate keyword density (ie not stuffed with keywords).
Links to your site.

Yourshould submit your site to Google, Yahoo and Bing (Microsoft Live Search) as well as the following sites:

However, you can improve your chances of ranking higher by getting more links.

You can do this yourself.

There is a list of directories here http://strongestlinks.com/directories.php

You want to visit those that say “Yes” in the “free?” column.

Most of these do not require a reciprocal link.

You can also search on google for other sites to submit to and there may be other driving school directories that you can get your entry into.

Some sites will only link to you if you place a link to them on your site (reciprocal link).

Google local

 Essential! You can submit your details here https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?continue=http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter%3Fgl%3DUS%26hl%3Den-US&service=lbc&hl=en-US&gl=US

It’s definitely worth while!

Make good use of your site

Make sure you make optimum use of your site by including your website details in your other advertising, in your literature you give to pupils and on your car or headboard.

This section of the vizzo website is for all kinds of web information. Browse the categories to find what you need.