Blogger Custom Domain: Best Setup for Optimizing your Blog Pagerank!
Ok Blogspot Users — Stop the Whining and Move Over to Custom Domains NOW!
Blog Bloke has exciting news for all his Blokesters and I’m so juiced that I had to take a pill. This tutorial will not only show you how to properly set up your Custom Domain in New Blogger and why you should do it, but it will also explain how to set it up with or without the “www” prefix, why you should get rid of your old subdomain and how to do it without breaking any of your backlinks either.
I continually hear Blogger users lament that they regret ever starting their blog on the Blogger platform. Personally I can understand this because I used to be one of them. But ever since New Blogger came along with it’s robust code and flexibility I’ve come to realize that with a few hacks and some elbow grease it can be just as good as most of the Wordpress blogs out there.
I am a user of both platforms and each has its own strengths and weakness. Wordpress has a definite advantage with its plethora of plugins that are available, but with a little creative hacking I’ve found that New Blogger can accomplish much of the same thing that WP has to offer.
Down the road as coders develop more widgets (plugins) for New Blogger the differences between the two platforms could become even less a bone of contention. And with New Blogger’s new cool features like video and news widgets (see my far-right sidebar) it makes for an interesting matchup.
Nonetheless, I know that hardcore Wordpress users will never be converted and will continue to snub their nose down on New Blogger. But that is not the reason for this post.
What I want to get across is many of the features that New Blogger users envy over Wordpress are no longer an issue, and one of the big ones is using a Custom Domain name.
For those of you who do not know what I mean by a Custom Domain, I am referring to purchasing your own dot com address, such as I have — www.instabloke.com, instead of using the blogspot address www.blogbloke.com.
The custom domains feature is hosted FREE of charge by New Blogger and it never ceases to amaze me how many Blogspot users out there that are still using their original blogspot address. Big mistake!
One of the main reasons I keep hearing why they don’t want to switch over is because they are afraid of losing their inbound links or pagerank. Well friends, that is what post is all about because I am going to show you how to set up your own custom domain and not break your inbound links.
I know that this works because the Bloke has in fact already done it for this blog. Believe it or not it’s true! I’m also happy to report that I’ve finally resolved my DNS troubles with my custom domain.
The other night I stayed up to the wee hours of the morning working with GoDaddy engineer ‘Art’ and we figured out how to get my custom domain working with or without the www prefix, as well as keep all my existing inbound links from my old address(s).
So what are the Benefits of using a custom domain you might ask? Well, rather than repeat myself just read my other post 6 Reasons Why You Should be using a Custom Domain Name for your Blog and it will explain it all for you. Ok, have you read it yet? Good, now that I’ve convinced you let’s proceed to make the switch shall we?
Recently I was asking myself why does Alexa hate me? My odyssey started when I noticed my pal Mike over @ Twenty Steps blog score was almost as good as mine. That immediately got my competitive goat up, and digging a little deeper I noticed that he had a better Alexa rating than I did. So I decided to dig even deeper into the mysterious bowels of Alexa and find out why Alexa seemed to hate me so much.
Eventually I came across this Alexa faq:
“Alexa’s traffic rankings are for top level domains only (e.g. domain.com). We do not provide separate rankings for subpages within a domain (e.g. www.domain.com/subpage.html) or subdomains (e.g. subdomain.domain.com) unless we are able to automatically identify them as personal home pages or blogs, like those hosted on Geocities and Tripod. If a site is identified as a personal home page or blog, its traffic ranking will have an asterisk (*) next to it: Personal Page Avg. Traffic Rank: 3,456*. Personal pages are ranked on the same scale as a regular domain, so a personal page ranked 3,456* is the 3,456th most popular page among Alexa users.”
No wonder Alexa hates me. The poor girl is confused!
Ok, that was enough to convince me to take immediate action, and that my little experiment using my blog subdomain was a big mistake (i.e. blog.instabloke.com).
Even though I was using a custom domain, by using the subdomain blog it was splitting my pagerank stats for the same reasons that blogspot users are also being hurt. Don’t believe me? Then take a look at these Alexa stats:
Notice that it doesn’t even give stats for my old blogspot address? Crikey, Alexa doesn’t even recognize my blog! It only shows Blogger’s stats.
So what we have learned so far? It is imperative that you get rid of your old blogspot address and/or subdomains and use your own custom domain instead.
By fixing my DNS settings I solved three major problems:
1. I got rid of the blog subdomain and I’m now using just the www prefix (i.e. www.instabloke.com)
2. I also got it to work without the www prefix (i.e. instabloke.com) just in case someone keys it into the browser incorrectly.
3. I kept all of my backlinks from my old subdomain blog as well as my old blogspot address so I won’t lose any of the links that you kind folks have given me. No links were broken and all of my older posts still work seamlessly just like it used to.
Ok, now try it out yourself. Click instabloke.com and you will see that it automatically redirects to http://www.blogbloke.com/.
Now click on my old subdomain blog.instabloke.com and you will see that it also automagically redirects to http://www.blogbloke.com/.
Cool eh? You will also notice that it works for all of my older posts as well, so anybody who has linked to me before will not be broken either.
Ok, now let’s get down to business and let me show you how I did it:
1. Look at the following pic in my GoDaddy DNS settings.
CNAME Record:
Notice how the “www” points to Google’s host address - “ghs.google.com”.
A Record:
See how the @ sign points to GoDaddy’s forwarding IP address (check with your own domain name registrar for theirs).
2. Next, see the pic below showing how I setup forwarding of my custom domain name to the old blogspot address:
3. Now look at the following pic and see how I setup Blogger to switch to my custom domain. You might want to wait 24 hours before doing this yourself to allow your DNS changes to propagate.
Please NOTE: If you are having problems it’s possible that you may be using Google Apps for your domain, so you must disable it before Blogger will allow you to publish.
Now this is where it gets interesting. Check out my stats below in Google Webmaster Tools and see the difference it makes between using my old subdomain and the www prefix. First, take a look at the old blog subdomain:
Now take a look at the old blogspot address pagerank:
Both are showing my pages having a low pagerank. Now compare that to the exact same site with only the www prefix:
Notice how my pagerank has suddenly move up to medium? It’s the exact same blog, the exact same content and everything! Only the blog name was changed to the www prefix.
WOW! I’m sure that Alexa will now love me and my pagerank should continue to grow as I get reindexed by the search engines.
Are you convinced now? For your sake I hope so. Google has done you a big favor by giving you the option to host your Custom Domain for FREE!
One last thing. This might not apply to you but it will to some. Because I was using the subdomain blog, I had a unique problem. How can I get rid of it without also breaking all of my backlinks?
This is how I did it. I made another A Record with blog pointing to the same GoDaddy forwarding IP address like I did above:
So DO yourself a favor and move over to your own custom domain NOW!
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Thanks for this extremely helpful post, BB! I just followed your instructions on a brand new domain name (doublebassblog.org). One quick question–do I not have to mess with the nameservers in GoDaddy? I did last time, but everything got all messed up the last time I tried moving, so I’m not doing anything that you didn’t specifically post about.
Hi Jason. You are very welcome.
I would just stick to the instructions that I’ve given because it is tried and true… and above all it works!
Even I wonder that why people don’t make a switch to a top level domain when blogger is giving such a nice service and you are giving such a nice tutorial
Beats me
I wrote about improving Alexa rank the other week and it’s worked for me. Twenty Steps has gone from 369,523 to 158,146 in less than two months.
The main points are:
* Install the Alexa toolbar
* Add the widget to your site
* Regularly check your Alexa stats
Bloke,
I was using subdomain “blog” like your blog. Now I’m using www. I made exactly same steps like you wrote above. But when I try to open blog.imessengr.com, it show a an error message : “This website is temporarily unavailable, please try again later.” The A record for subdomain is not on Pending Status. I hope this is a temporary problem. Did you have the same problem ? When it last longer, it will cause my pages removed from google.
Hi Protesto. If you followed my instructions exactly then it’s probably because the DNS settings have not fully propagated yet.
Wait 24 hours and if still hasn’t resolved then you might want to contact your domain registrar to check it’s settings. Sometimes these things get stuck and need a little kick.
Hmm. So Mike, if we scratch Alexa’s back, it will scratch ours? Doesn’t that lend credence to my belief all along that the blogosphere is indeed rigged.
Thanks for the tip bro.
So I decided to scratch Alexa’s back and downloaded the toolbar..it wouldn’t work on Mozilla, only on IE, and I added the widget to the sidebar. I’ll let you know if my score goes up.
The custom domain switch will have to wait til I have a webmistress help me out!
I just want to say that I’m not an Alexa fan and the toolbar is considered data mining spyware by some antivirus software. It can also slow your browser significantly when using it, so I’m not advocating that anyone install the toolbar.
Rather than use the IE toolbar, install SearchStatus Extension for Firefox. It doesn’t slow the browser in the slightest and gives you some other great info including nofollow links, link reports and keyword density.
Adding the toolbar is a key part of improving your rank. Alexa is based on page impressions registered through the toolbar so without it on your own browser, you’re missing hits.
Am I the only one who thinks that is a ridiculous way to determine the authority of a blog. It is biased and encourages everyone to game the system. No wonder I’m turning into such a cynic.
I just moved my blog successfully to http://www.doublebassblog.org. Your advice worked like a charm–thanks a bunch!
Woohoo! Another happy customer
Bloke,
Do you have a cname record for blog pointing to @ as well ?
I still get the same error message (”This website is temporarily unavailable, please try again later.” ). I already asked godaddy support for help but they said that they don’t support customers if any customizations made on DNS settings. I already set all setttings back to default but it didn’t help…
No, my settings are exactly as you see them. Blog points to the IP address 24.202.189.170 in the A Record. I should also point out that it goes in the A Record - not the CNAME Record.
Whomever you talked to at GoDaddy is giving you the runaround because they don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t understand the Google setup.
I had the same problem so I insisted on speaking to their best engineer. That’s how I got a hold of Art on the phone and demanded that it be fixed (in a nice, but assertive way :).
I recommend that you call Art to help you. He is a supervisor on the night shift (Pacific time) and is knowledgeable and also helpful.
Tell him that Blog Bloke sent you.
“Am I the only one who thinks that is a ridiculous way to determine the authority of a blog. It is biased and encourages everyone to game the system. No wonder I’m turning into such a cynic.”
The roots of this are back in the mid 90’s when Netscape Navigator was trying to challenge Internet Explorer as the browser of choice for the geek generation. The Alexa toolbar was part of the installation for Navigator and so became used as a metric as far as the tech savvy users were considered.
When you think about it, it’s all very Firefox vs IE, isn’t it?
Bloke,
I finally solved the problem. A Record “blog” didn’t work for me. Instead of this I’ve created a subdomain “blog” with subdomain control panel and redirected it permanently to www.imessengr.com . Now all my old links are back. Thank you for your help.
Mike, I’ve intentionally avoided Alexa all these years because of it’s notoriety as being spyware. It’s really a shame that it has somehow entrenched itself as being necessary for some monetizing schemes. The same could also be said for services such as Technorati which has also been proven to be biased with its metrics as well as notoriously buggy.
Protesto, the A Record is a better solution and should have worked. The problem has to be with GoDaddy and sometimes their settings need to be reset at their end. Nevertheless, if it is working for you and you are happy with it then that is great to hear. I would be interested in seeing your setup so would you mind sending me a pic by email for me to look at?
Hey Bloke,
Our 2Dolphins is a Classic Blogger-based blog that’s FTP-published to our own domain. Been this way for over 3 years.
Am I deciphering what you’re saying correctly to mean that I can finally move up to New Blogger? There are a few of the features that I’m itching to use but thought I couldn’t do so…
I don’t have any big problems with (Classic) Blogger except for the clunky way it handles comments and the fact that I can’t seem to kill off the NoFollow code…
I kinda equate Alexa ranking to those cheesy infomercials hawking “collectable” Nascar plates - that is, what makes them “collectable” is, well, that someone declared them to be so.
In other words, how much good does Alexa ranking do you anyway - or is it just some kind of a weak self-propagating hoax where we believe Alexa-originated hits to be important because, well, Alexa says they are? And since so many other bloggers have bought into the idea, it must be true.
Hi Rob. New Blogger still handles comments the same way as classic does so you will get no benefit by moving over. You will however get the new features such as labels, widgets, custom domain for free, etc.
I couldn’t agree more with your assessment of Alexa. It’s all in the eye of the beholder. It’s the a-listers who have managed to game the system and use it to give the perception of its importance and their blog authority. And of course the rest of the sheep will follow the pied piper.
As for myself the only reason I’m showing interest is because I have to play the game if I want maximize the monetization of my blog.
It sucks, and don’t I know it.
Thank you for this tutorial. I could not get my custom domain to work with blogger until I read (and followed) your post.
You are most welcome Meena. Please drop by again.
Nice little Alexa redirect on the header, BB
I have poked around the internet regarding this subject quite a bit, and this is the ONLY post out there that provides a 100% effective method for successfully setting up a Blogger Custom Domain. Every other source (including Blogger itself) has some sort of screw-up. If I notice that a site is using a Blogger Custom Domain, I will often type in or leave out “www” (depending on whether or not it is in the address bar). Over 50% of the time (and this happens on fairly prominent sites) I will be redirected to a GoDaddy parked page.
Anybody who is planning on setting up a Blogger Custom Domain absolutely must follow this advice. It’s the only method out there that works flawlessly.
Thanks Jason. I was also one of the frustrated and there was nothing out there that seemed to work or had all of the pieces to the puzzle. So I spent hours on the phone with GoDaddy’s top engineers (who didn’t know how to do it either) until we finally figured it out.
Cheers!
…BB
What about those of us who don’t use GoDaddy? I am signed up with 1and1, and I can’t seem to get this problem resolved. Any suggestions?
Unfortunately I haven’t used 1and1 so I can’t help you there. You will need total DNS control and if you have it then the procedure should be similar.
You will need to find the DNS control in your domain dashboard. Check their help files and if that doesn’t work then contact them. Telephone is best when it comes to these things otherwise you might be playing tag forever.
Refer them to this post if they still don’t get it.
Thank you ever so much for this timely tutorial; it worked perfectly!
Well, I tried to work with 1&1 and their technical support was not helpful. Now I am seriously considering transferring to GoDaddy. Do you think that’s the way to go at this point?
I have all of my domains (last count around 20) with GoDaddy. Their prices are reasonable and they give you total DNS control. If I’m not mistaken they will also give you a sweet deal if you move your domain over to them.
Thanks for dropping by tub and I’m glad that it helped.
I’ve changed my url from blog to www like yours and I’ve noticed a huge increase on number of visitors. Thanks for this setup bloke.
You are welcome Protesto. Did you notice that I also answered your question about titles:
http://www.Blog Bloke.com/2007/07/successful-blog-seo.html
I already found this method on somewhere else, but thanks anyway. It will help others
Btw, if you use a header image instead of blog title, you’ll not use H1 tag anymore. So if you use H1 tag for post titles, wouldn’t be good for SEO ?
Use CSS for your H1 tags.
Thanks Bloke.
I have another question. Do these Alexa redirection links really work ? Did you notice a jump on number of visitors ?
It won’t affect the number of visitors but the rank is improving.
Blogger Bloke,
Will my custom domain name recieve the credit for my hits, or will search engines credit this to my blogspot address?
Hi Nellie. I won’t argue with you that Blogger is probably a better choice over Wordpress free.
But the good news is you don’t have to switch hosts to enjoy control over your own domain name.
All you need is a few bucks (about the cost of a latee at Starbucks) for your own url and Blogger will do the hosting for you FREE!
Go for it girl and get some control back into your virtual life
Cheers!
Yes, your custom domain will get the pagerank credit, and that’s the whole point for getting off blogspot.
Cheers!
I would love to switch over to my own domain, but I’m stuck at .blogspot.com for one reason:
I’m broke. On a budget as tight as mine, the cost of domain name registration and hosting is just something I can’t do. I’ve owned my own domain(s) in the past (and blogged there using Moveable Type … this was back in the late 90s to about 2003 - when I had a nice job in web dev), and yearn for the respectability and legitimacy it would offer. Plus, I’d love to be able to be in control of my entire site - I hate running validators only to find that *my* code is good, Blogger’s isn’t. I’m in the process right now of becoming more serious about things, though … so when my current job search becomes fruitful, that may need to factor into my budget.
As far as site maintenance, the one thing that I like about Blogger is that the design (with exception of the nav bar) is completely under my control - I do use the classic style, and edit the HTML. As far as I can tell, with WordPress free this is either extremely difficult or impossible. The drawback is the inability to create static pages - I nearly switched over to WordPress free for this, but after looking into it, learned that they don’t allow advertising (the ‘group’ I’m involved with has some advertisers, who donate to charitable causes … but that was still a ‘no-go’ on the free site)… and the thought of not being in control of my design/content unless I pay bothers me. Still working this one out.
I’ve gone on much longer than I’ve intended, but wanted to add a reason that some people may not switch over. Also say that I just discovered the site, and appreciate the tips - so many places are focused on WordPress, it’s nice to be able to actually implement the strategies and not just go ‘well, yes… that would be nice, but…’!
this is indeed a great tutorial..well explained.. and clearly written..
If I have discovered this 3 weeks back then perhaps I shouldn’t have encountered much problem with the famous www and without www problem when using the custom domain.. because I can follow step by step what you have written..
I’m using a domain from NETFIRM now and custom domain works fine with me.. with or without the WWW… with a cheap 4.75 dollar a year domain….
Woohoo! And another happy customer
What if we never had a “blog” subdomain. Do we still need to put “blog” in the A (Host) section? I have “www” directed to Google’s server in CNAME. I just forwarded my custom domain to my blogspot.com url. I still can’t get the no-www url to forward though. I’m hoping the settings will kick-in soon. Do I have to have a blog “subdomain” to have my www and no-www url to work? I think your discussion about a “blog” subdomain has me confused.
Hi Tall Guy.
Like I said earlier, the “blog” subdomain issue is optional (only for those who are already using one). So in your case you can just ignore that part. But be sure to follow the rest of the directions exactly as shown.
Give your settings at least 24 hours (depending on your domain host) for the settings to propagate.
If it is still not working after 24 hours then go over the directions carefully again and make certain that you haven’t made a mistake. Otherwise, give your domain host a call and ask them to investigate because this definitely works.
your solution was the easiest to follow out there and the only one that worked for me. thanks!
That’s good to hear Echu and thanks for letting me know.
Can you explain how you got it too work without the www prefix also? I have a domain already, but forgot to make it work without the www prefix. I use godaddy and blogger.
Just follow steps 1 through 3 JohnS0N.
I’m sorry, you only mention that you have setup to work without the www prefix, but not how you did it.
It is shown for the host name “www” which is pointing to ghs.google.com, there is no cname record for no www prefix. What is the name for that and does it also point to ghs.google.com.
I’ve read your whole post three times but can’t find this information, can you add it to the post?
Hi johnsOn.
What I said was this method works “with or without the www prefix”.
If you are absolutely certain that you have followed the instructions exactly then the problem must be with your URL provider, i.e. GoDaddy. I cannot provide support for them.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but this post receives hundreds of hits per day and it most definitely works as you can see from all of the positive comments.
I was under the impression that all I had to do is buy a domain from blogger and they would set it up. But after reading your post, Do you think doing this manually will be better? or the only way.
Hi Curtis. Unfortunately it’s either my way or the highway. One million happy customers and counting can’t be wrong
Thanks!
I purchased my domain and went through steps 1 and 2 but while waiting for dns changes to take place, I tried typing in www.growingthumbs.com -my domain. And got a 404 error and then I typed it in without the www and I got forwared to my blogspot blog. Any Idea’s why it’s doing this? Thanks Blog Bloke
Disregard the last comment, I did step 3 and everything works fine. Thank you! the address works with the www and with out the www. Same result. Again thanks!
One Million and one happy customers!
Welcome to the community of professional bloggers Curtis. Cheers!
…BB
Dear Blog Bloke,
I hate writing this. Everyone else has been so successful. I followed steps 1 and 2. When I do step 3 I get a page that says nothing is there (sorry, I don’t know what you call this). I’ve called godaddy twice. They say it is working and, sure enough, I can type in my custom domain name and it finds my site, only it still has the blogger address when in the address bar. Of course that’s because I switched back to host on blogger when step 3 didn’t work. I just tried step 3 again and then got the error page. The one thing that I can see that is different is that on godaddy my page doesn’t look like what you showed. On my page the www still point to @. I mentioned that to Nick (godaddy helper) and he said that didn’t matter with the way I was forwarding. Sorry to be so lengthy and possibley crazed. I just hoped you had a suggestion. Your whole post was so fabulous and made me so lust after my own custom domain name.
Blessings,
Sharry
Hi Sharry. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you different. This method works and must be done exactly as shown.
Change your “www” prefix to point to the Google address as shown. Make certain everything else is exactly the same as well, then and allow 24 hours for it to propagate.
It will work… BB
Thanks, Blog Bloke. The first thing I did this morning was look at your response. I will call godaddy again. I tried to do it on my own, but the @ wouldn’t budge. Looks like that is something from their end. The minute I found your site, I added it to my feed. Awesome!
~Sharry
Sharry, if the “www” prefix is stuck then they will have to fix it at their end.
If the person at GoDaddy still gives you a hard time just tell him or her this setup has been ratified by supervisor ‘Art’, and hundreds of blokesters out there are currently using it.
Otherwise, demand to speak to a supervisor or Art himself if he is available.
Dear BB
I am such a wimp! I hang my head in shame. D. at godaddy talked me into doing something called “masking” which he said would do what I wanted. My fingers are crossed that I won’t have to call them again. Shall I still do step 3 of your tried and true method?
~Sharry
Sorry Sharry, but it sounds like you got a hold of another turkey. There’s lots of them around.
You should NOT mask your URL forwarding. That will defeat the everything.
I’m sorry to say this, but as arrogant as it may sound — it’s my way or the highway. Nothing else works, and hundreds of happy users will testify to that.
This post gets hundreds of hits a day and I’ve received just as many kudos because it really works. And it’s the ONLY method that works as promised.
So you’ve got to be assertive girl. Next time tell them to visit this post if they still don’t get it.
Geesh, they should be paying me for all the referrals I’ve sent them and they still can’t get it right.
Anyhow, you don’t need them. You can do it yourself in your own GoDaddy dashboard.
Go for it. It won’t hurt a bit — promise.
Okay, I’m convinced. I’m about to leave town for a week, but as soon as I get back I will do exactly what you have said. You have been patient. I’ll let you know when it has been done right.
Dear Blog Bloke,
True to my word, I’ve fixed my settings as your tutorial explained. While I was on hold with godaddy, I finally noticed what I needed to do to change it myself. Which I did. Now I will see if t