Joining Blog TopSites are one of the ways to bring traffic(Free!) to your blog. It takes just a bit of effort on your part to get going. Generally, you will need to register with the site and get your blog approved. Once approved you get your personalized code block that you need to add to your blog. This code will help visitors of your blog to vote for your blog. The more votes you get, the higher you climb on the list and are more likely to get more visitors.
Here's a small list of Blog Topsites where you can register your blog :
http://topsites.blogflux.com/
http://www.topbloglists.com/
http://www.blogelites.com/
http://blog505.com/
http://topblogsites.net/
http://www.topblog.ws/
http://www.blogista.net/
http://topsites.technoized.com/blog
http://blogsites.in/
http://www.stateyourblog.com/
http://www.blogranking.us/
http://www.blogsontop.com/
http://www.topblogarea.com/
http://www.blogrankings.com/
http://www.top100bloggers.com/
Attract traffic using Blog TopSites
Technorati Widget for Blogger
Technorati.com is a collection of large number of blogs and is visited by people all over the world looking for blogs to browse. Your objective should be to get visitors from Technorati.com to visit your blog.
The first step in this process would be to join Technorati and go through the "Claiming your Blog" process. You are more likely to attract more visitors, if your blog is ranked high on Technorati. So get the Technorati Widget and request your visitors to vote for your blog.
Here's how you get your widget. Sign into http://www.technorati.com/signup [Opens in a New Window] with your user id and password.
In your account area, Click on the link labelled "Favorites" on the Technorati navigation bar. On the next screen, Under the sidebar heading "Ins and Outs", find the link to your favorite button, where it says :
"Buttons: Help Technorati members favorite your blog with a button."
If you have added multiple blogs to Technorati, you will have to select a blog from the combo box to generate the code for that blog. The page generates three different code blocks. choose the one that suits your page and copy the code and paste into your template(Classic Templates users). XML blogger users read the post on How to add HTML or JavaScript into blogger.
Feedjit Widget for Blogger
Feedjit.com offers 4 widgets for bloggers and webmasters.
The most popular feedjit widget(which you may have seen on other blogs already) is the "Live Traffic Feed" Widget.
If you are a Blogger Layouts(XML Blogger) or TypePad user, the readymade widget on the site will install the code on your blog in a few clicks. Other blogs and websites will have to copy-paste the code from the site into their template.
Creative Commons License for Blogger
Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."
To get the creative commons license for your blog go to http://creativecommons.org [ Opens in a New Window ]. On the top of the page, click "License you work" link to continue. On the next screen you can select the licensing options for your blog.
After you select your license you can choose a graphic for the license and the HTML code will be generated on the page.
Classic templates users of blogger can copy-paste the HTML code into their template. XML Blogger users see this post on How to add HTML/JavaScript to Blogger.
ShoutBox for Blogger
What is cooler than a guestbook, chat and bulletin board? It's a Shoutbox from MyShoutBox.com
This is a feature packed free service for blogs and websites. Here's a list of features that MyShoutBox.com offers
You can add this shoutbox to your blogger blogs after an easy and fast registration process. After Registration you are given a ID/Password, with which you have to login to access your shoutbox management area. Select the link "Code Generation" and set the options for your shoutbox( or leave the default settings, you can always change that later! ) and click "Generate Code".
Classic templates users of blogger can copy-paste the HTML code into their template. XML Blogger users see this post on How to add HTML/JavaScript to Blogger.
Internet Safety Advice : Deceptive Text Links
On the Internet, we all come across text links that are linked to other pages/sites. When these links are clicked they take us to a new destination. for example [ http://www.google.com/ ], link takes you to google homepage as expected. However, a harmless looking text link could be a deceptive link that could lead to a site specifically set up for stealing personal information.
Here's an example of what Iam talking about
The above link takes you to the yahoo homepage instead of google.com. As HTML coders will point out, links are constructed with two pieces of vital information : destination url and anchor text
Anchor text is displayed to the user as a clickable link and destination url is where the link is intended to go. in the first example both the destination url and anchor text are the same and therefore the link works as expected, however in the next example the destination url has been modified to link to yahoo.com instead of google.com and therefore the user is taken to yahoo.com
How can this be a threat to me? you might ask. Let us imagine this scenario. You are browsing a random site and you are presented a link to login to your gmail/hotmail/yahoo mail, where you will get the link to download some goodies. the page that opens looks exactly like the regular web mail service you use, but this random site has used a deceptive link to take you to a different site that has been cleverly constructed to match the look and feel of your regular web mail. Once you enter your email address and password on this site, it is logged and the security has been compromised.
How can you protect your personal information from deceptive links? Firstly, do not blindly trust the links on every site. To get to your regular web mail service, type the URL in the Address Bar to get to Web Mail Service.