Your Life Your Blog: Search Box

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Happy Monday again, and welcome to another Your Life Your Blog!  I have started adding a blog tip to each post, along with your links, and would love to hear your tips, too, in the comments!

Today’s tip is to put a search box in a conspicuous location on your blog!

SO many times, I read a blog post, then want to link to it later. Well, if your post has been pushed off the front page of your blog, and you don’t have a search box, you may not get the link!  I try to hunt around a little, but many people won’t take the time to click around for 30 minutes to find a post.

Also, sometime I just know that, say… Jen from Beauty and Bedlam will have an amazing idea for a new breakfast dish. So I go to her blog and search “Breakfast,” finding Baked Apple Oatmeal!  Jen gets at least 2 page views and a unique visit for the day.  I might just stick around and browse her other recipes!  If Jen didn’t have a search box- or a breakfast recipe on her front page, I would have bounced off right away. ( In fact, I may just make this tomorrow to last through the week)

There are several ways to get a search box on your blog.

• If you are on Blogger, you can ADD A GADGET, then choose “Search Box.”  Easy Peasy.  You have no excuse!  (ahem… Resouceful Mommy.  She’s got SO many resources on her site, but I can’t find them!)

IMPORTANT UPDATE:  Halelujah!  Resourceful Mommy had added a search box on her blog, which got lost in the recent redesign! I’m going there now to search Disney!

• If you are on WordPress, it’s just as easy.  Go to APPEARANCE> WIDGETS. Add the search box where you want it in your sidebar.

• Lijit Search offers an extended recourse for searching your blog, including your social networks, and your contacts.  The result is that you may get traffic from people searching on another contact’s blog.  They will also provide you with stats from searches coming to your blog.  This is just HTML code that you can include anywhere on your blog.  Click here to find out more about Lijit (I’m not afflilated with Lijit in any way)

If you do one thing today, put a search box on your blog!! What do you think?  Is it frustrating to you if a blog doesn’t have a search box?

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Don’t miss my MomTV Show this week, Thursday at 1PM est!  Jen Hinton and Jo-Lynne Shane will be on GET REAL talking about what to wear to Blissdom Conference!!

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Now let’s LINK!  Hit me with your favorite post from the last week, and don’t forget to link back here so others can join if they want!

Thanks!! (for some reason this code isn’t working in Blogger.  You can just Save As, upload it you your post, and link to http://www.reallifeblog.net/tag/your-life-your-blog/)

<a href=”http://www.reallifeblog.net/tag/your-life-your-blog/”><img  src=”http://www.reallifeblog.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/YourLifeYourBlog.gif” alt=”Blog Tips” width=”125″ height=”125″ /></a>

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