Monday, April 25, 2011

Linking Blogs and Websites

This article looks at the answers to a very common question on the Blogger help forum: "How do I link my blog on blogspot to my web site?"


There are many ways of linking blogs and websites.

The simplest is to give them mutual links, ie put a link to the blog onto the website, and a link to the website onto the blog.

The major advantage is simplicity - but there are disadvantages because you have to maintain two separate sites, your readers/customers may get confused or may miss the link, and it may not be good for attracting search traffic - although this  only matters if you are replying on search to bring visitors to your blog.

Another option is to use RSS feeds to display content from one site (blog, website) on the other.   These work better for displaying content from sites that keep getting new posts, rather than sites that have updates made to existing posts:  usually your blog is the site that gets new posts, so you may want to put an RSS feed from it onto your website.

Or you could display the content of one site (website or blog) right inside the other site:   <iframe> statements provide this option.


Mutual Links

Putting a link to your blog onto your website

To do this, you will need to talk to whoever built your website, and probably pay them to change it:  you cannot control your website from inside your blog, unless your website was built with Blogger in the first place.

They will (should, anyway) ask you some questions about how you want it to work, for instance:
  • Where should the "blog" link go on your website?
  • What happens when someone clicks it - are they taken to your blog, or to a view of it that opens inside your website?
  • Should it be a link at all, or do you just want a "feed" of blog posts to show up in a window inside your website?

Putting a link to your website onto your Blog:

You do this same way you'd do any other link.

If you want it in an individual Post, then write the post, choose the text where you want the link to be, and choose Link.  Then enter your website as the URL.

If you want it in the sidebar, header or footer, then:
  • Follow the usual Add a Gadget procedure
  • Choose which type of Gadget to use (eg a picture gadget), and enter your website's address (URL) as the "link to" or similar option.  (The options that are available depend on what sort of gadget you use).

If you want it to be a menu bar entry (similar to ones set up by the Pages feature) - then you will have to do some work in the menu.  There is more detail about this in Putting your Posts into Pages in Blogger.



RSS Feeds

Put a feed from your blog inside your website


It is possible to build a RSS-feed from a Blogger blog.   The best way is to use Feedburner (http://feedburner.google.com), which gives you a range of options about how this feed should work.   You can even make several different feeds, each of which has slightly different features.

Therefore, provided your website is built in a tool that can display RSS feeds, the people who maintain it should be able to set it up to take a "feed" from your blog.

This means that you keep updating the blog within blogger, but that the words you write are taken into the website.   What is taken in probably does include the formatting you used (bold, italics, centering etc) and links that you used, but probably won't include

  • the colour scheme 
  • things that are in the sidebars, header and footer.   

And the overall layout will look a bit different to how it looks in your blog


Another option, especially if the people who built your website don't know very much about RSS feeds or Blogger, is to shift your blog onto some other system that is already integrated with your website or web-host (that you simply haven't been using up 'til now).   Under this option:
  • You will need to learn how to use a new blogging system (which may not be quite as easy as Blogger)
  • You may or may not be able to import the content of your current blog in blogger
  • The new blog will look different, and will have different features to the ones you have in blogger.
  • Your readers will need to be told where you new blog is

Shifting to a different blogging system may be cheaper initially (especially if your web-hosting-plan already includes a blogging feature that you're just not using).  It may not be cheaper in the long term (Blogger is free:  a blogging-tool inside web-hosting company may chaarge an extra annual fee like you already pay for your website).   Make sure that costs (initial and on-going) are discussed before you decide what to do.


Embedded Displays using iFrame statements

I've seen a comment in the google help forums that you can insert a web-page using an iframe, like this:
<iframe
allowtransparency="true" scrolling="yes" frameborder="0" width="600" height="800"
src="YOUR BLOG URL, INCLUDING THE HTTP:/"
>
TITLE-FOR-THE-FRAME
</iframe>
I have yet to try this out, but if it works as well as I suspect, it could be a very powerful technique to displaying content either way (but not both ways at the same time - that would be an infinite loop).

This would put some Blogger functionality re leaving comments inside your website, so - I think - you would not be able to sell access to the website because that violates Blogger's Terms and Conditions about re-sale.




Related Articles

Static Pages in Blogger

Putting your Posts into Pages in Blogger.

Setting up Google Analytics for your blog

Using your custom domain for something other than Blogger

Is search traffic relevant for your blog?

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25 comments:

  1. Hi,

    I appreciate what you're trying to do here but I created my own website and would like to find both the icon for blogger and the html code to paste into the source code for my website. I felt a little ripped off when I read this article because I was actually expecting to find something useful in it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sorry to disappoint you - it's quite a challenge writing articles that suit everyone!

    If you're wanting to use the Blogger logo rather than your own custom-logo, you'd best review Google's info about copyright/permissions for using any of their logos: http://www.google.com/permissions/guidelines.html

    As for generating the code, one way is to use the Post Editor in compose mode to create a link, and then copy the HTML from Edit HTML mode. I've written this up here:
    http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2010/05/getting-html-code-to-put-picture-into.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You still have missed the point! Similarly to FaceBook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc one can get the logo and the link to add to one's website, so when a visitor to said website wishes to go to one's Blogger blog, he/she will click the logo and presto... Capish?

      Delete
  3. Hi,
    I was wondering if you could please help me out. Re: "Should it be a link at all, or do you just want a "feed" of blog posts to show up in a window inside your website?"

    This is exactly what I want to do. A site was built with dreamweaver, and I have a blogger blog attached to it. I would like a window of the titles of the 3 latest blog posts to show up. How could I do this?
    Thanks you SO MUCH!
    Peggy

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Peggy

    I'm afraid I don't know anything about Dreamweaver. I'm sure that what you're asking for is possible, but no idea how. Perhaps you could google for a dreamweaver help forum, and search "rss feed brom blogger" on it.

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  5. I have a blogger blog. I want to insert it into my website but I understand if I use iframe that it won't help my search engine rankings. Anyway to have my website show my blog and have it increase my rankings?

    ReplyDelete
  6. I think you really need to ask whoever built your website about that: the answer totally depends on what is supported by the tool that your website is made with.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I just used your tips on using an iframe to add a blog to our small business website, something I've been struggling to make work for over a week now. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I'm so excited to find something that works!!!

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  8. Glad to help, good luck with the site.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Mary, thanks very much for a very informative post! I just recently made my website live (www.howardgrill.com) and have been blogging here at Blogspot for about 4 years. I would like to integrate my blog (www.howardgrill.blogspot.com) into my new website which has a lot of other content (ie the blog is just part of a website). I would like it to appear on a page that the viewer gets to by clicking on "Blog" on the navigation bar. BUT, I would also like to retain the Google rank and SEO qualitites of the current blog.

    Someone had asked about the i-frame technique above (which I haven't yet tried. Will that preserve page rank and SEO. If not, what would be the best way to do this.

    Thanks for any help in this.

    Howard

    ReplyDelete
  10. Howard... The i-frame technique is actually just displaying a webpage (howardgrill.blogspot.com) inside another webpage (howardgrill.com).

    Your current page ranking and SEO of your blog should be fine.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Sorry pl. Comment repeating. Another query - Help pl : any easy way to add another side bar to my template ? (having one- required 2 side bars). With high regards.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Hi ifinder, that depends on what sort of template you have. Post a question in the blogger-help-forum (http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger) and see if anyone can help. NB make sure you tell us your blog's URL.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Hi Mary,
    I've spent a lot of time trying to find a forum or posting that helps me link my blog to my website. Your post provided the answer. THANK YOU!

    ReplyDelete
  14. Glad I was able to help Caryn: it's impossible to write posts just right for everyone, so yes, sometimes I can take a while to find the advice you need.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Thanks for the great article!I will write an article using the iframe code you printed above. I use the iframe to embed a job board on my blog and it was successful. Thank you so much. It is a big help to me.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Thanks for helping out! :)
    I want to ask something: How can I put the profile of my website in my blog? same feature as adsense? thanks in HTML?

    ReplyDelete
  17. I used your iframe statement. I linked our blogger blog to our btck website and so far it is running beautifully. Thank you for the help.

    ReplyDelete
  18. After reading went and did the iframe method took about a minute works great thanks

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  19. Ty so much for the expalnation posted, it's usefully for newbie likes me...

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  20. I've also used the iframe and it works fine, just what I was looking for thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Great post,one question how to link my website to my blog,link from my site to my blog's post

    ReplyDelete
  22. Oh my goodness thank you SO MUCH! I used the last suggestion to combine my website and blog, and it works! I've been looking for something like this for days! Thank you so so much!

    ReplyDelete
  23. Hey, thanks for the advice - it was very helpful and did exactly what I wanted it to.
    Cheers.

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  24. Hey, so I can use this RSS format on Blogger? I have multiple blogs with multiple pages on them, but I want those blogs to be In one central place. I have made a blog with links to all the different blogs Ive made, but I would like that home page to show updates from those other blog; as the pages at the top are only links to the different blogs not pages and the traditional label system does not work with separate blogs.

    I hope you understand what I mean.
    Thanks Kieran.

    ReplyDelete