Sweet Electric

I’m by no means an expert when it comes to blog design but I thought I would share a few easy html tricks I’ve learnt. The good news is that these are super easy to implement – you don’t even need to mess with your blog html coding!

To use any of the following coding all you need to do is go to the template page in blogger > click on customise > go to the advanced section > add CSS > copy and paste the coding you want into the add custom CSS box > click apply to blog button.

*Make sure you save your template before making any changes, then if anything goes wrong you can just upload it again*

Centreing Post Title
.post-title {
text-align: center;
}

Centreing Date
.date-header {
text-align: center;
}

Centreing Sidebar Titles
.sidebar h2 {
text-align: center !important;
}
*To align to the right – just change the ‘center’ to ‘right’*
Centreing Page List/Menu Bar
.PageList {
text-align: center !important;
}
PageList li {display inline !important; float:none !important;}

I hope this was helpful.…

Today, I thought I would show you an easy way of how you can make your own blog button like mine above.
Blog buttons are a great way of getting your blog ‘out there’. By putting a blog button with a grab box on your sidebar, its easy for anyone who likes your blog to put your button on their site or in the case of button swaps it just makes it so much easier!

1. Firstly you need to make a blog button. This can be your blog header resized or you can make one from scratch. If your making one I recommend using picmonkey which is free and easy to use!
I would say a decent sized blog button is around 200px x 150px or anything similar (it really depends on what looks best for your button and blog sidebar.

2. Once you have a button, you need to upload it to a site such as photobucket.

3. Going back to your blog, you need to add the following code into the add html gadget via the layout section of blogger (see below).

4. Add the following code into the html box – Edit: Now updated as the previous coding stopped working!

5. In the pink section you need to delete the text and type the link for your blog homepage, for example mine is http://www.sweetelecricblog.com
In the yellow section delete blog name and type in the name of your blog
In the green section you need to delete the text and type in the link to your blog button – if you’re using photobucket you need to copy and past the direct link code.

6. Click save and voila!Your blog button and grab box will now be visible on your blog!

*The code will also centre your button in your blog sidebar*…

Social media accounts are a great platform for getting your blog and posts out there. I have very little knowledge of social media – I’ll chuck a tweet out and repin a few images and hope for the best. This year, I want to get a bit more serious with my accounts and look into how I can really work them to their potential when it comes to blogging. I use Twitter and Pinterest mainly but I throw a few images out on instagram now and again. If you’re like me and want to know a bit more about how we can improve our social media accounts then this post might prove fruitful. Gaining subscribers on your accounts is a way to really help improve your blog reach – the more followers you have, the more chance that people will see your blog posts. If you want to grow your social media subscribers then the following may help (click the bold title to view the blog page).

Grow your Instagram followers

If you’re like me and clueless about Instagram then this post may help. There are some great tips here.

How to get more Twitter followers

There’s some really useful information in this post, especially if you’re new to Twitter or want to start up an account.

10 Facebook tips

If your blog has a Facebook page then this is for you.

Grow your Pinterest following

If you’ve joined the Pinterest bandwagon then this post is highly recommended. I’m going to implement some of these strategies and see if they work.…

Search engine optimisation basically relates to how your blog is placed in search engine results. I’ve already written a post on 5 quick and easy seo tips for bloggers which you can read as a basic starting point. I don’t really consider seo too much when I’m writing on here as its my hobby and I generally like to write in a casual manner. However, for work purposes I do deal with search engine optimisation techniques and I thought it might be useful to share some of the resources that have helped me gain a little more understanding of the subject. There’s a lot to consider when it comes to seo, however if you’re looking to better your blogs standings in search engines (and gain more traffic to your blog) then these are all great resources with very helpful information (p.s. if you have wordpress, I really recommend using the Yoast plugin – its so easy to use).

Anatomy of a blogpost with great seo
A great example of an optimised blog post.

The future of SEO: what to know in 2014
but very relevant now too. How to adapt yourself for the ever evolving world wide web.

How to name your blog photos and why you should
A quick guide for both wordpress and blogger on naming your images.

12 tips and tools for making seo as easy as 123.
A really easy and concise guide to seo.

seo for bloggers: the non techie guide
An easy way to understand seo with some useful tips.…