How To Upload Sitemap To a blogger Blog

It is very frustrating when you try to submit your sitemap to Google and all you get is an annoying error message 'General HTTP error: 404 not found'. What is the solution for this error message? Yap, I have got just the solution that you were looking for, just hang on.

Blogger.com does not allow you to upload sitemaps. Blogger provides sitemaps for you. Sitemap for all blogger blogs are located at the root folder. The root folder is where your main blog is ; for example my root folder is: http://www.odesktestsguide.blogspot.com/. The location of my sitemap would be http://www.odesktestsguide.blogspot.com/atom.xml, which is actually my feeds' URL http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/CIKOI .  The sitemap for all blogger blogs is located at yourblogsname.blogspot.com/atom.xml.

All you need to do is just to add 'atom.xml' to your blog address, that is the default map for all blogger blogs. So, blogger blog sitemap is already created for you and there is no need of getting sleepless nights figuring out what to do. The file "atom.xml" is another name of sitemap.xml.

Steps of how to upload your sitemap to your blogger blog

1.  Ensure that you have enabled feeds in you blog. In your blog's Dashboard > Click Design > Click Settings > Click Other> choose either full, custom, Until jump break or short to enable feeds > Click Save settings. You will see the Post Feed Redirect URL displayed for you. Mine is http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/CIKOI .
2. Ensure that you have a webmaster tools account and that your blog is added to the webmaster tools account. Then click on the blog to manage. Under Dashboard > click Optimization > Click Sitemap > click Add/Test Sitemap. Then just beside your blog's URL enter atom.xml. Lastly,  click Submit Sitemap
3. This is how it looks 

How to upload Sitemap to Blogger Blog using Webmaster Tools

To see the contents of your sitemap, you have to download it by typing /sitemap.xml just after your blog' URL or address at the address bar. For example for my sitemap, I typed, http://www.odesktestsguide.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml and then pressing enter key. Then click save to save your sitemap. You can double click the sitemap file you have just saved and it will show you the contents.

 Just to mention; if your need to manually put your sitemap let me know how it is done.

 

How To Resize Images Before Uploading Them to Your Blogger Blog

Image size

When uploading an image it is good to put into consideration the size of the image. The size and the resolution should be good because if the image is too big, then it will take too much time to load. If the image is too small then it will not be visible. Do not annoy your visitors because they will avoid your blog or your website. Always re-size your images before you upload them. Paintbrush is the best tool to use because it is readily available and it is free.

Paintbrush

This is a free open source application. It is a basic image editor, which is very simple to use. You can crop a photo, add some text to an image and even re-size a photo before you upload it to your blogger blog.

With paintbrush you can save the file in these formats: png, tiff, gif, JPEG, 24 bit color bitmap, 256 color bitmap, 16 color bitmap and monochrome bitmap.

Steps of Resizing an image

1. Click Windows Start Button
2. Hover over All Programs
3. Select Accessories
4. Click Paint
5. Open the image that you want to edit
6. Click Image Menu at the top
7. Select Stretch/Skew image
8. Chose the percentage figure to re-size the image
9. Click OK
10. You can keep maneuvering the percentage figure until you get the desired size
11. Click File, then click Save or Save as. I would advise you to save your file with a a JPEG format and also to always use a uniform format throughout your site
12. Once you have save your file, sign in to your blogger.com account and open the post you wanted to upload you image to
13. Click Insert Picture Icon just next to Link icon
14. Click Upload
15. Click Choose files
16. Browse to location where you have saved your image and click open. The file will start to upload
17. Once the file finishes to download, click Add Selected
18. Then highlight the image and click on Caption. Now add a descriptive caption if you are serious on optimizing on search engines
19. Highlight the image again and click on Properties. Put a descriptive Title text in order to optimize on search engines. Also put a descriptive Alt text so that those browsers that have disable loading of images can have the text displayed instead of the image. the Alt text should be descriptive enough.
20. Click OK

I wish you the best as you work on your blog's search engine optimization for faster loading of your blog or website.