The meta the better. Quick Blog 2.03 released
Greetings and salutations.
Today saw the release of Quick Blogcast 2.02 which adds a feature that many of you have inquired about - meta tags. You can now add keywords, descriptions and add custom data to your blogcast. While descriptions are likely to be the most useful addition for most of you, there are some engines that still attach relevance to keywords. But, search engine optimization isn't just a post, it's a whole blog, where the relative value is left for you to decide.
Today saw the release of Quick Blogcast 2.02 which adds a feature that many of you have inquired about - meta tags. You can now add keywords, descriptions and add custom data to your blogcast. While descriptions are likely to be the most useful addition for most of you, there are some engines that still attach relevance to keywords. But, search engine optimization isn't just a post, it's a whole blog, where the relative value is left for you to decide.
What are they and how do I use them?
Meta data is data about data. So, while your blog itself is essentially a large gathering of data, you can further describe and classify it. A meta tag is a format that the above data takes within the web page and is used by the site owner to tell the search engines, and people that have nothing better to do than read your html source, just how you think your site should be classified. One of the more useful tags in this family is for description and that's the example we're going to use today.
Meta data is data about data. So, while your blog itself is essentially a large gathering of data, you can further describe and classify it. A meta tag is a format that the above data takes within the web page and is used by the site owner to tell the search engines, and people that have nothing better to do than read your html source, just how you think your site should be classified. One of the more useful tags in this family is for description and that's the example we're going to use today.
How to get there?
Manage blog, Meta, settings.
Example
From within the settings page.
Fill out the description. This should be a summary of what you want people to know about your site and its focus. There's no obligation on search engines to pay attention to, or even show this information which is meant to remain hidden. Lastly please keep it short - 150 characters or so. This is not the place for your novel. That's why you have a blog after all:) This we insert into you blog template as:
Fill out the description. This should be a summary of what you want people to know about your site and its focus. There's no obligation on search engines to pay attention to, or even show this information which is meant to remain hidden. Lastly please keep it short - 150 characters or so. This is not the place for your novel. That's why you have a blog after all:) This we insert into you blog template as:
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Your description about your blogcast.">
You can do the same for keywords but this time separate each keyword with a comma. Again, please don't go overboard. Most engines no longer count these as a significant. Google doesn't even index them which probably says a lot more than I could were I to go on. I'm not:)
Custom
There are several sites that ask you to include identifying information within your HEAD section to verify that you do indeed control the site.
You can do the same for keywords but this time separate each keyword with a comma. Again, please don't go overboard. Most engines no longer count these as a significant. Google doesn't even index them which probably says a lot more than I could were I to go on. I'm not:)
Custom
There are several sites that ask you to include identifying information within your HEAD section to verify that you do indeed control the site.
The Editor
Many improvements to the template editor made it into this release and while they seem small when written down the impact on usability is quite marked.
We tell you the image sizes needed to replace the standard ones on the template.
We've added the ability to remove the background image completely.
Improved the accuracy of the preview, added more context sensitive help plus the usual bundle of changes that most of you would never have known were broken.
We've added the ability to remove the background image completely.
Improved the accuracy of the preview, added more context sensitive help plus the usual bundle of changes that most of you would never have known were broken.
Let me know how these changes work out for you. I'd like to preempt a question on what we're doing to improve SEO within blogcast and would like to assure you that we're not finished.
Posted by Blogcast Admin at 9/12/2007 4:01 PM 
Categories: Power Tips, Know Your Settings, Release Notes
Categories: Power Tips, Know Your Settings, Release Notes
nice job
Thank you.
QBC Team
How about a three column template??? Have been waiting for godaddy to put up a simple three column template for months and it still has not happened.
Thanks
Greg,
This is something that's at least possible now with the recent template changes and that we have within an upcoming version
Regards
John
QBC team
Counters. When are the counters going to be fixed or how do they work? I read the documentation but it seems inconsistent with what's going on directly on the site. I am specifically talking about the "Number of times played".
thanks,
Francisco
Francisco,
While I will check the # of times played are accurate but while it can be confusing it should be consistent with what follows.
Firstly the podcast counts only update once ever 24 hours. This often leads to episodes showing 0 hits for the 1st complete day and if the timing of the post occurs after the days logs have been ran it's on the second day that it shows up. We add one to the count every time someone plays the file on site , downloads it from the site or requests it from the RSS file. Please let me know if that explains what you are seeing if not we'll try again.
Regards
John
QBC team
Thanks John -
That helps. I was just surprised by the number of times some of the podcasts were actually played. The variance is amazing from only played 200 times to 10,000 times. It was just hard to believe and I wasn't sure if I was getting hit by robots and such.
Thanks for clearing this up. I guess it's a little more popular than I would have thought it would be.
thanks,
Francisco
Right on. It's nice to see some improvements in the SEO category.
Is there any other plans to help our blogs in the SERPS?
Wasn't the SERPS some kind of pension plan
Regards
John
QBC team.
Yes, meta tags are a nice addition and definitely work for me. Many thanks for adding. The custom tag is very handy for notifying Google site maps of site ownership - again this is great. I know you pre-empted the question, so I'll not harp on, the meta tags will really come into their own when they can be set on a per page / entry basis as well as on the front page. Great stuff, again many thanks for making these additions and responding positively to suggestions and feedback from the user community.
Greetings John,
There's more to come in the next build so I'll not harp on re what I hope is a really useful feature. The plan is to have the main page continue with the user set meta info and then on each page making a description from the excerpts and keywords being created from the category list ( sized appropriately < 20 words or so) Will post on these when it's updated.
Regards
John
QBC
I tried using the custom meta tag to add a Google site map verification tag. You seem to be stripping characters from what is entered for content.
The content key should be this
aBz1NtiJXvsa48F08Ubb2u8Fb5Bhv4fDHklYDSLkpi8=
but it goes in as
aBz1NtiJXvsa48F08Ubb2u8Fb5Bhv4fDHklYDSLkpi8
the problem is the last '=' sign has been stripped. Is this a length issue, or are you stripping special characters?
Unfortunately validation fails, as the content keys dont match.
If you're stipping chars, could you please change the behavior, or if it is length, please add support for longer strings.
thanks.
Greetings,
We're taking a look at that to see where it's occuring and will amend it to work, or provide an alternate route to verify these.
This just in: Interestingly enough if you save it the first time the = strips but if you go back into edit tthe tag, add the = back in and then save it stays present..
Regards
John
QBC team
I'm interested in using the Google Analytics tool and I'm wondering if it's possible. It requires that I insert the following html code immediately before the , but I can't figure out how to do it. I can insert the code on the html view of each entry, but how do I get it on the home page before the body?
_uacct = "UA-XXXXXXX-1";
urchinTracker();
Greetings,
Thanks for the question. Presently there's not a practical way to include this within the Blogcast using that method. This is an item that we have on our list of features that will be in an upcoming release. As soon as we've included this feature I'll post a note on the blog.
Regards
John
QBC team
Is this possible yet? I am getting frustrated at how difficult it is to add things like google analytics to godaddy quick blogcast blogs.
Hi K,
We are still working Google on a solution for Web Master Tools that will allow us to directly integrate this into our application.
As for Google Analytics, Google does not yet provide an API that will allow us to seamlessly integrate and setup Google Analytics into Quick Blogcast. We will look into other options similar to our Google Ads sidebar widget, where you will just need to provide your tracker code ID after you setup Google Analytics and we can setup the rest.
Thanks for your input.
I like quick blog but i would also like to see more! Blog sites have been around for some time now nothing new here ;-)
you think you guys can ad user profiles with photo so when people leave comments on my site they can see the user profiles, pics, etc, like to see this a little more like my space and so would my co-workers!
Rina,
We'd all like to see more, stay tuned for some more in the next week or so there should be quite a bit more. With regards to the profiles that's an interesting idea and one which is turning it into a cross between a journal / forum and as you mentioned social networks such as MySpace. We have user profiles/ commenting within our roadmap for a future version. Thanks for your comments.
Regards
John
QBC Team
I have a question. Do you have an address where can I go in order to more thoroughly understand 'statistics'?
I understand 'articles' certainly but what is the relationship between 'articles' and 'browsers'?
Hi Eileen,
We have recently updated our application and have a new statistics tool. We still provide access to the classic statistics tool through a link at the bottom of the new statistics pages. Below, I have listed 2 links. The first link is to the help articles for the classic statistics tool, and the second link is to the help articles for the new statistics tool.
Classic Statistics Help Articles
New Statistics Help Articles
To answer you question directly, there is no direct relationship between article views and browsers. Article views are when a person visits your site and views a particular article. The browsers statistic simply keeps track of what browsers the people who visit your site are using.