Click here to find out what a favicon is.

To put up a favicon on your blog at blogger.com, follow the following steps

1) First of all create a favicon or find one from the internet. Preferred sizes for favicons are 16x16 or 32x32 pixels. 16x16 is preferred as it works best with old browsers too. The favicon image file should have a .ico extension. I'm not sure if .jpg or other image extensions work for favicons or not. You can also use softwares for generating favicons. You can find such softwares by googling the term 'favicon generators'.

2) Once you have selected your favicon, then you need to get its location or URL on the internet. If you decide to pick up a favicon from the internet the copy the location of the image. If you made a favicon or your own then you need to upload it on some free image hosting sites like photobucket. After uploading your .ico file you need to get its location or URL.

3) If you do not have an account at any image hosting site or if you do not want to go through the tedious procedure of creating a new account, then you can try this alternative. Create a new post on your blogger blog. Upload your favicon image to this post. View your post in the 'Compose' mode. Right click the image and choose the 'Copy Link Location' option. Paste the copied link location in any text editor. Find the following phrase in the link '/s1600-h/' and replace it with '/s1600/'. Use this newly created link as the 'URL of your favicon image'.

4) Once you have the URL of your .ico file,
go to the dashboard of your blogger account > click on Layout > Edit HTML.

5) After clicking on Edit HTML you'll have the HTML/XML code of your blog template in front of you. Locate the tag in this code, it will mostly be at the beginning of the code so you'll be able to find it without needing to scroll down the code.

6) Just below the tag, you'll find the following line -
<title><data:blog.pagetitle/></title>

Put this line just below the line showed above.
<link href='URL of your icon file' rel='shortcut icon' type='image/vnd.microsoft.icon'/>

Replace 'URL of your icon file' with the URL of your icon file.

7) Save the changes and you've given your blog a new look with a brand new favicon!!!! [:)].


If you have further problems putting up a favicon for your blog, please post a comment.

Cheers,
Online Spectrum

A favicon (short for favorites icon), also known as a website icon, shortcut icon, url icon, or bookmark icon is an icon associated with a particular website or webpage. A web designer can create such an icon and install it into a website (or webpage) by several means, and most graphical web browsers will then make use of it. Browsers that provide favicon support typically display a page's favicon in the browser's URL bar and next to the page's name in a list of bookmarks. Browsers that support a tabbed document interface typically show a page's favicon next to the page's title. The Microsoft Windows Shell also uses favicons to represent "Internet shortcuts" to web pages.
In much simpler tearm it is a logo in the tabbed view, this adds a glamour point to your blog or site .But the favicons are speciall images not just any images so you have to look up for them online.
In my next post i will tell you guys how to add favicons to your blog or site,till then enjoy and keep checking other post

Alexa is widely tooted as a must use tool by many marketing gurus. The problems with Alexa are:
Alexa does not get much direct traffic and has a limited reach with it's toolbar
a small change in site visitors can represent a huge change in Alexa rating
Alexa is biased toward webmaster traffic
many times new webmasters are only tracking themselves visiting their own site
Why do many marketing hucksters heavily promote Alexa? Usually one of the following reasons:
ignorance
if you install the Alexa toolbar and then watch your own Alexa rating quickly rise as you surf your own site it is easy for me to tell you that you are learning quickly and seeing great results, thus it is easy to sell my customers results as being some of the best on the market
if many people who visit my site about marketing install the Alexa toolbar then my Alexa rating would go exceptionally high
the marketers may associate their own rise in success with their increasing Alexa ranking although it happens to be more of a coincidence than a direct correlation
A lower Alexa number means a greater level of traffic, and the traffic drops off logarithmically. You can fake a good Alexa score using various techniques, but if it shows your rankings in the millions then your site likely has next to no traffic.
Alexa by itself does not mean that much, but it simply provides a rough snapshot of what is going on. It can be spammed, but if a site has a ranking in the millions then it likely has little traffic. It is also hard to compare sites in different industries. For example, if I created a site about weight loss there would be many more people searching for it than a site about knitting. Also, you should't forget the webmaster bias the tool has, which means my site will have a higher Alexa rating than it should.

Alexa.com is a subsidiary of Amazon.com. It is a website which provides information on traffic levels for websites. The Alexa rank is measured according to the amount of users who’ve visited a website with the Alexa toolbar installed. Alexa toolbar is an application developed by Alexa Internet. Its primary use is to measure website statistics. This toolbar collects as well as gives some valuable information. Once you install it, the Alexa toolbar monitors all your surfing and collects information about what domains you visit. They use this data to rank web sites. The traffic rank they assign to websites is based on 3 months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of other users and is a combined measure of page views and users. Webmasters, advertisers and ad networks use your blog’s Alexa rank as a gauge to determine the worth of a link on your website. If you depend on link or site selling as a form of monetization you’ll definitely want to increase your Alexa rank, because it’ll increase your bargaining power when it comes to ad pricing.

Okay guys now here is a collection of methods you can use to boost your Alexa Rank.Many of the tips are derived from several webmasters who claimed to have derived positive results through their experiments with the Alexa Rankings.Some of the other tips were derived from articles and sources.
Do these tips work? According to some, yes they definitely do work. But do note that most of them require active effort of some sort and hence, they will work as long as long as you are consistently performing specific actions.
To increase your Alexa rank in the long run, I would highly recommended that one should focus on developing quality content which attracts and maintains a large audience instead of purely focusing on artificially increasing your Alexa Rank.
Great link-worthy content will lead to an natural increase in site traffic and is an excellent way to passively increase your Alexa rank.
It is important to emphasize that you should devote most of your efforts in growing your site audience alongside integrated implementation of any of the following tips below.
1. Install the Alexa toolbar or Firefox’s SearchStatus extension and set your blog as your homepage. This is the most basic step.

2. Put up an Alexa rank widget on your website. I did this a few days ago and received a fair amount of clicks every day. According to some, each click counts as a visit even if the toolbar is not used by the visitor.

3. Encourage others to use the Alexa toolbar. This includes friends, fellow webmasters as well as site visitors/blog readers. Be sure to link to Alexa’s full explanation of their toolbar and tracking system so your readers know what installing the toolbar or extension entails.

4. Work in an Office or own a company? Get the Alexa toolbar or SS Firefox extension installed on all computers and set your website as the homepage for all browsers. Perhaps it will be useful to note that this may work only when dynamic or different IPs are used.

5. Get friends to review and rate your Alexa website profile. Not entirely sure of its impact on rankings but it might help in some way.

6. Write or Blog about Alexa Webmaster and bloggers love to hear about ways to increase their Alexa rank. They’ll link to you and send you targeted traffic (i.e. visitors with the toolbar already installed). This gradually has effects on your Alexa ranking.

7. Flaunt your URL in webmaster forums. Webmasters usually have the toolbar installed. You’ll get webmasters to visit your website and offer useful feedback. It’s also a good way to give back to the community if you have useful articles to share with others.

8. Write content that is related to webmasters. This can fall in the category of domaining and SEO, two fields in which most webmasters will have the Alexa toolbar installed. Promote your content on social networking websites and webmaster forums.

9. Use Alexa redirects on your website URL. Try this: http://redirect.alexa.com/redirect?www.blogspot.onlinespectrum.com . Replace http://www.blogspot.onlinespectrum.com/ with the URL for your website. Leave this redirected URL in blog comments as well as forum signatures. This redirect will count a unique IP address once a day so clicking it multiple times won’t help. There is no official proof that redirects positively benefit your Alexa Rank, so use with caution.
10. Post in Asian social networking websites or forums. Some webmasters have suggested that East Asian web users are big Alexa toolbar fans, judging by the presence of several Asia-based websites in the Alexa Top 500. I suggest trying this only if you have the time or capacity to do so.
11. Create a webmaster tools section on your website. This is a magnet for webmasters who will often revisit your website to gain access to the tools. Aaron Wall’s webpage on SEOTools is a very good example.
12. Get Dugg or Stumbled This usually brings massive numbers of visitors to your website and the sheer amount will have a positive impact on your Alexa Rank. Naturally, you’ll need to develop link worthy material.
13. Use PayperClick Campaigns Buying advertisements on search engines such as Google or Exact Seek will help bring in Traffic. Doubly useful when your ad is highly relevant to webmasters.
14. Create an Alexa category on your blog and use it to include any articles or news about Alexa. This acts as an easily accessible resource for webmasters or casual search visitors while helping you rank in the search engines.
15. Optimize your popular posts Got a popular post that consistently receives traffic from the search engines? Include a widget/graph at the bottom of the post, link to your Alexa post or use Alexa redirection on your internal URLs.
16. Buy banners and links for traffic from webmaster forums and websites. A prominent and well displayed ad will drive lots of webmaster traffic to your website, which can significantly boost your rank.
17. Hire forum posters to pimp your website. Either buy signatures in webmaster forums or promote specific articles or material in your website on a regular basis. You can easily find posters for hire in Digital Point and other webmaster forums.
18. Pay Cybercafe owners to install the Alexa toolbar and set your website as the homepage for all their computers. This might be difficult to arrange and isn’t really a viable solution for most. I’m keeping this one in because some have suggested that it does work.
19. Use MySpace This is a little shady so I don’t recommended it unless you’re really interested in artificially inflating your Alexa Rank. Use visually attractive pictures or banners and link them to your redirected Alexa URL. This will be most effective if your website has content that is actually relevant to the MySpace Crowd.
20. Try Alexa auto-surfs Do they work? Maybe for brand new sites. I think they are mostly suitable for new websites with a very poor Alexa rank. Note that there may be problems when you try to use auto surfs alongside contextual ads like Adsense. They aren’t also long term solutions to improving your Alexa Rank so I suggest using with caution.
There you have it… twenty ways to boost your Alexa Rank and increase your site’s monetization potential.

Since moving to his own domain (from Blogspot) in the middle of January 2007, Dosh Dosh has moved from a rank of around 3 million to the current Alexa rank of 21, 709 within two months.

According to Dosh Dosh the increase in web traffic was due to

"The growth has been consistent and I think most of it was due to the fact that the content on Dosh Dosh is orientated towards webmasters. Another plausible reason is because overall daily traffic for Dosh Dosh has been growing steadily day by day.

The increase in Alexa Rank was also partially due to the fact that I’m active in several webmaster forums, notably Digital Point which sends me some visitors every day. Getting stumbled and receiving thousands of visitors in a day has also undoubtedly helped to increase Dosh Dosh’s Alexa Rank."

How do I get started with Alexa?

There are two easy ways to start using Alexa.

If you are using Internet Explorer, download the Alexa Toolbar. If you’re using Firefox, download the SearchStatus extension which displays the Alexa Rank, Google PageRank as well as other useful features.

I highly recommend that you use Firefox and SearchStatus instead of Alexa toolbar, which I find to be more bulky and less useful.

Can one actually game or manipulate the Alexa Ranking?

This is the biggest question of all and lot are behind this to find it's answer but,

I and of course many other believe that there are methods which will allow you to easily bring an Alexa ranking in the millions down to the 100,000 level. However, bringing it past the 10,000 or 1,000 mark is a considerably more difficult process, because of the stiff competition among websites.

Some have adamantly stated that there are no proven ways to game Alexa(o really), while others have claimed that auto-surfs and scripts do work to some degree.

I will not take any sides because I can’t guarantee that auto-surfs or other artificial methods will have similar effects for every blog.

Therefore the easiest way to know to know if any of the tips mentioned in next post really work is to actually try them for yourselves and monitor the results.