Blog Baby Blog Week 4: 5 Minutes or Less Tips for a Better Blog


Hey there! Welcome back for week 4 of Blog Baby Blog.  Today we’re tackling some quick fixes.  Here are five things you can do to improve your blog that each take five minutes or less.  Totally doable.  Bonus points if you do all five.
Quick Tips to improve your blog.  Each tip takes 5 minutes or less.

Let’s get started!

Set up Google Analytics

Think you don’t need Google Analytics?  What if I told you your Blogger stats were completely unreliable?  They’re basically made of pixie dust.

This is so stinking easy to do.

•Go to Google Analytics.

•Set up your account.

•Click “Get Tracking ID”

•There will be a mess of code on here.  All you want to do is copy the little piece under Tracking ID.  It will look something like this: MI-54892249-1 (I made up this piece of code, your code will be similar though.)

•Go to your Blogger dashboard and select Settings-->Other-->Google Analytics.  Paste your code in and save!

Clean Up Your Labels

Do you labels list look like a list?  Or a 10,000 word essay?  Having lots of labels helps with related posts gadgets, but it seriously junks up your sidebar.  Plus, your readers are not going to dig through all that.

This one is super fast to clean up.  Go to Layout and find your Labels gadget on the sidebar.  Switch from “All Labels” to “Selected Labels”.  Try to get your list to 15 or less.  Save and you’re done!


Clean Up Your Sidebar

While you’re cleaning up the labels on your sidebar, how about cleaning up the whole thing?  Sometimes the sidebar of a blog is longer than the post section.  What are your readers genuinely going to be interested in?  This is prime real estate.  Make sure important items don’t get lost because you have too many items.  (I’m looking at you, blog award from three years ago.)
While you’re looking at your blog, just click on the little wheel beneath the gadget.  You can delete almost all the extra widgets and images from there.

Add a Pin It Button (yours is probably broken)

So, everyone’s custom pin it button disappeared.  The place where the script was stored no longer exists.
You have two options, fix your old one or go with the official Pinterest button.  Sadly, I have to recommend the official Pinterest button even though it hurts my soul.  You can read more about that on my Rich Pins series here, here, and here.

Even if you’re not ready to conquer rich pins, you still need a pin it button.  From your Blogger dashboard, go to Template-->Edit HTML

•Click somewhere inside your HTML code box.  Click CMD F (I think it’s CTRL F on a PC) to search.  Search for </body>

•Directly above </body>, paste this code in:

<script async='true' data-pin-hover='true' data-pin-round='true' data-pin-tall='true' defer='true' src='//assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js'/>
<script type='text/javascript'>
document.getElementById(&quot;Header1_headerimg&quot;).setAttribute(&quot;nopin&quot;,&quot;nopin&quot;);
</script>

•Save

Fix Your Broken Instagram Widget

So many broken gadgets!  Go peek at you Instagram gadget.  Are those pictures pretty old?  Instagram changed its TOU for gadgets.  Before, you could basically put anybody’s account on your blog without proof you were that person.  If you haven’t proven your account is your account, it’s easy to do.

•Go to Light Widget.

•Log into your IG account.

•Set up your grid size.  2x2 is good for a sidebar and 1 or 2 columns with 6-8 in a row is good for a post footer.  I put two pixels between each image to give them a little space.

•Select “Get Code” and copy the code.

•Go to you layout and find your Instagram gadget.  Get rid of the old code and paste the new code in. Save it, and you’re good!  (Don’t have a gadget yet?  Just add an HTML gadget and paste that code in.)

Any other quick tips you think I should add?