Submitting your Blogger.com or Blogspot.com blog site to Google Webmaster will enable Google to find, index, and rank your site. For those who are new to this, you may go to the official Google Webmaster Tools site to create a new Webmaster profile.
Upon logging in using your Gmail account, key in your blog site URL, and click OK. You will then be asked to verify your site. This is to ascertain that you are indeed the owner of the site.
There are two ways to verify your site. You can either add a Meta Tag or Upload an HTML file. If you are using the Meta Tag method, Google will generate a Meta Tag code. Copy the META tag that is generated for you, and paste it in your site's home page in the first section of the page, before the first section. What you do is to go to your Blogger dashboard. Under Template ->Edit HTML, somewhere near the top of the script, add the Meta Tag as follows:-
head>
meta>
< data="'blog'" name="'all-head-content'/">
Replace the META TAG with the code generated by Google Webmaster. Once done, Save the Template. When you return to Google Webmaster site, you can click the button that says “Verify”.
Note: The second method of uploading an HTML file is NOT applicable to Bloggers using Blogger.com or Blogspot.com because this requires you to upload a file to the root directory of your Blog, which is not possible. There is therefore only one method for you to verify your site, and that is by inserting the Meta Tag as explained above.
After you have had your site verified, click on the Sitemaps tab as shown below. By adding a Sitemap, you will be providing Google with more details and information about your Blog. With this, Google will crawl your site, report information on any errors in the Sitemaps tab, and index your Blog site at a faster rate.
Click the link that says “Add a Sitemap”. This will take you to another screen where you should choose the type “Add General Web Sitemap”. The Sitemap URL for any normal website is usually the index page that is stored in the highest-level directory of that site. In the case of Blogger.com or Blogspot.com, the only way to add a Sitemap is to use either of the following 2 Sitemaps:-
http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/rss.xml
OR
http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Remember to replace YOURBLOGNAME with that of your Blog's. For Blogger blogs, do not add "www." to YOURBLOGNAME. Once you have added your Sitemaps, you will receive a confirmation telling you that reports are being generated but “may take several hours to update”. Congratulations! You have successfully added your Sitemaps. When you login to your Google Webmaster days later, you should be able to see the indexed pages and statistics of Google webcrawl of your Blog.
Leave the meta tag in the template if you want to view the statistics of your site. If Google can't find the meta tag, it will show an error message in your webmaster toolbox and you may have to verify your site again.
You may want to read the articles on how to Submit Blogger URL sitemap to Yahoo! and Submit Blogger Sitemap to MSN and Ask.com. Also, submit your Blog to Blog Directories and Feed Directories to let more people know about your Blog. As well, submit your Blog to the various Search Engines for maximum exposure
Now let us say you have set up your blog. Ask yourself as a person of the trade or as a customer what all you would like to know everyday. Whatever is your answer is what you post every day. You also come across news or websites which you think might be useful to your customers. Simply make a mention of it with a link to the news or website. The idea is to make people come to your blogs every day seeking information. So you become famous as a specialist in that area. All your visitor are in a way interacting with you everyday and begin to accept your words and your recommendations if they see the benefits. But be sure to be very honest and transparent. It is like your personal or social relationships where any dishonesty would make people shy away from you.
You can always put in a few posts about your work, your employee who got a promotion or birth of a daughter or anything which also makes it a little warm and personal. You can post about your launches, your predictions, products which are running out, and even promote products not moving well but you feel can benefit the customer.
What you blog can reach millions globally within hours. As an illustration take the example of the recent Tsunami which hit parts of Asia. I am from the southern part of India which is one of the worst affected areas. While the conventional media was struggling to reach their reporters all over within the hour bloggers flashed the news including the details of the people lost and found, mobilized resources for the affected and the world wide web was abuzz with all the bloggers picking up and linking and connecting everything and everyone. This is an illustration of a social cause for which blog was put to good use.
Similarly there have been many instances when business news have been picked up by the industry and consumers through the RSS feeds.
The possibilities of using a blog is endless. The key to building a successful blog is listed below.
Remember to be focused on a topic that relates to your area of work.
Your entries must be in a conversational tone speaking directly to them as if you are sitting across with a friend in a restaurant or playing golf to add personalization to your marketing effort.
Post entries or comments which would benefit people.
Post as often or frequently and keep the blog updated.
Encourage visitor participation. Ask for comments and feedbacks.
Create a huge web of outside resources and other similar blogs to help you achieve both outgoing as well as incoming links to enhance search engine popularity. This also shows your customers that you are widely knowledgeable and clued in on your field of expertise.
While it may be a good idea to post a few photographs to break the monotony keep the blog simple and straight without too many graphics and photos.
Content is the key to making your blog successful and encourage repeat visits. In the beginning you may not have many visitors but as the content improves there would be a lot of traffic as well as inbound links.