Blog Catalogue

There are many directories where bloggers need to submit their blogs if they want to increase their PR and their hits. Most of these come and go regularly. Others, stand our among the crowd and actually do what they were meant to do - help bloggers increase their rank.

I use several, but the first one I am going to talk about is blog catalog


Blog catalogue lets bloggers network. It tracks their neighbourhoods and gives bloggers and easy 'one step' place to find blogs of similar topics. The trick is to make sure that your user name has something in common with your topic.

For example: FamousAuthor would be a great user name for someone selling books. Their normal user name - say it is Sunny - will not help promote the blog. But, that doesn't mean the tool will not work well for you.

Listing is free, but you will either need to paste a small piece of code into the bottom of your web page, in the HTML code, or if you are on blogger, use the HTML/Java tool.

However, there are more features. I have added the 'recent visitor' widget to this blog. I only neighbourhood with blogs that have this widget. I an 'into' networking, but I want something in return - I want the blog owners to reward my participation by giving their visitors the opportunity to view my blogs.

I also want people to view my blog - so I include a widget.

I also believe that this widget (Recent Visitors ) lets my readers know that other people are visiting my blog.

How To Make a Widget.

Before starting, make sure the title at the top of your widget is the correct blog name. There is a drop down box that will list all your blogs.

1. Reset the widget size from 180 to 120. Most blogs do not have templates which will accept 180.

2. Reset the number of views to whatevery you want. I like to select 10.

3. Reset the icon size to small.

4. Leave the user name active.

5. Click on the color label (background, boarder, link, title) and it will turn bold. Then, pick a color which will blend with your template.

6. Click the 'update code and preview widget' button. If you like the result, then you can paste the code into your blog. I suggest putting it near the top.

You are done.