Everything Typepad

What Mobile Designs Exist For Me to Use?

If you've been following our recent posts about mobile designs, you're now familiar with how to switch to a mobile design and you've learned some design principles to apply to your new mobile design.

We're now going to give you an overview of each mobile design option we have to help you figure out which one will work best for you and your blog.

First we have Snap:

Red Snap

Snap is a simple design, with twelve different accents colors for you to choose from.  If you like having a minimalist blog, this one is a good choice for you.

Next up is Sol:

Birdseye Blue

Sol is also of a minimalist nature, but adds more color to your blog, making it stand out.  It has ten different colors from you to choose from, so you can find the perfect color for your blog.

Next up is our Design Lab.  Here's a few examples of the variety you'll see:

Some Design Lab Options

In total, there are eighteen pre-made designs for you to choose from.  They include options with banners and without banners, in darker and lighter colors, and everything in between.

Like one of the pre-made designs but want a different banner or want to make other design changes?  Then choose the design you want to edit, apply it to your blog, and go to Design > Style.  There you can make all the changes you wish, without even needing to use CSS.  Simply select an option like Navigation or Sidebar and edit to your heart's content.

Also under the Style tab, you can find a selection of pre-made Color and Font collections.  This gives you the option to choose even more pre-made design options and apply them easily to your blog.

Colors Collection

Finally, you can also use our Theme Builder's Responsive option:

Theme Builder Responsive Design

This allows you to use the familiar Theme Builder, but also make your design responsive.  If you're scared to dive into the Design Lab, but still want a responsive design, you can use this as a beginner step.

As you can see, there's a great many options for responsive designs with Typepad! You can find more information in our Knowledge Base or open a help ticket if you have any more questions or need more assistance.

Join The Hunt

Today is #NationalScavengerHuntDay. We put together a great hunt for you to explore some of the blogs that use Typepad. Take a moment and see if you can find all the answers. If you submit all the correct answers, your name will be entered for a chance to win a prize! Winners will be announced Wed. May 31^st. Those that did not get all the answers correct, do not worry! You will be entered to win one of three Typepad T-shirts (probably the best shirt ever!) we are giving away.

Prizes

1st prize: $50 credit to their account
2nd prize: $25 credit to their account
3rd prize: $10 credit to their account.
Honorable mention: 3 Typepad T-shirt

Start the hunt!

1. We love holding contests! In March, we announced on Everything Typepad the grand prize winner of Typepad's Random Acts of Kindness. What are 3 of the winner's categories?
2. From our National Pet Day celebration, Smokey helps @KristiEspinasse with her blog... What is the language that Kristi and Smokey help you speak?
3. Botanical Paper Works has a great renewable idea. We would like to know How It Works. What are the four steps?
4. On Typepad’s Pinterest page, name one “Words To Live By”.
5. Who said “I really appreciate the positive, helpful attitude of your staff. Thanks a million!” (Hint: Check Typepad's social media)
6. The Pet Blog Lady has been with us since 2007, What is the title of her first post?
7. Newpath Consulting has a great blog post about Typepad. What do they show you how to do?
8. Laura Smith from GlocMedia recently wrote a great article about the future of SEO. Where is the company located?

Good luck! Submissions are due by Wednesday, May 24th at midnight EST. 

How Do I Switch to a Mobile Design?

A request that we get frequently in our Help Tickets is "Can I switch my design to something mobile-friendly?"  The answer is: YES! And it is easier than you think! With your Typepad account, all of your blog designs are saved. You can apply your saved design to a current, new, or multiple blogs.  

To switch your blog to a mobile-friendly, or Responsive design, we recommend first creating a test blog. When it comes time to pick a design for your test blog under the "Design" tab, we have a huge selection of pre-made designs under the category "Design Lab (Responsive).  We have a selection of pre-made designs under the category "Design Lab (Responsive)":

These pre-made designs can be a starting point for editing and customizing a new design for your blog using the Design Lab at Design > Style.  The Design Lab was created so you do not need to use CSS to make customizations to your design. 

In addition to these themes, you can also set up a mobile design using the themes Snap, Sol, and the "Responsive" option of Theme Builder.

OK! You selected your design, layout, and applied it to your test blog.  There are plenty of ways to customize these themes the Design Lab and CSS if you have an Unlimited Plan or higher.  If you have joined the Beta team, you can take advantage of the "Style" option for Nimble Design Lab, which allows you to customize your design without the use of any code. 

Once you have your Responsive design just perfect for the world to see, it is time to apply it to your main blog.  Last Summer we shared tips on how to manage your saved blog designs, which you can apply here.  Switch over to the blog you want to make mobile-friendly and click the Design tab.  Scroll down to "Your Designs" and look for the Thumbnail for your new responsive design: 

Click "Actions", in the drop-down menu, choose "Apply."  Once you click this, the page will refresh with the message "The selected design has been applied to your blog. View your blog" on top.  Congratulations! You just made your blog mobile-friendly! 

A quick note, if you want to make all of your blogs in your account Responsive, you can follow the steps listed.  We do recommend creating a duplicate design for each blog (click "Actions > Duplicate") in case you want to make a design change for one blog but not have it apply towards the other blogs.

4 SEO trends for 2017

SEO is constantly changing, we all know that, but sometimes it is difficult to keep us up to date regarding new techniques, new strategies, new concepts. If I have learned something after many years working as a SEO consultant is that being good at what you do and at your strategies is as important as keeping your eyes open to don’t let yourself lost at the end of the queue.

So here we are, thinking aloud about what SEO has brought this year.

Analyze your CTR using Google Search Console

GSC is one of SEO basic tools that we all must have, it helps us to analyze the results we can’t measure by our own, and from now on, it will bring some light to our keyword strategy – we will know how many people have looked for the keywords we are using.

Google uses CTR (Click Through Ratio) parameter to evaluate if our page is ready to be shown on the first page of results. If it is low, we may lose our position; if it is high, we will be pushed to the top. So the trend and new rule are very clear: use Google Search Console to measure what is the positioning of your keywords and what is exactly your CTR.

However, there are some handicaps you should all be aware: GSC just keeps your history for 90 days, and Http/https as much as desktop/mobile version must be checked separately.

SEO Mobile

More than 50% of searches made on Google are done through mobile phones, which 20% of them are voice searches. So, how do we adapt our content to this voice search? The answer is easy: if people ask, we should reply.

We have to change our content strategy, our keyword research, our way of thinking. Adapting the way we share our knowledge to be caught by Google as a potential answer.

But it doesn’t depend just on us, it depends on Google too. The team is working on Latent Semantic Indexing, a way to understand what people are saying instead of focusing that much on keywords. If Google figures out what you are asking for, it will give you a more specific answer. So we have to work on this too, try to find synonyms of your keywords. The more options we give to Google, the most chances we have to be on the podium.

Penguin 4.0, now working 24/7

Folks, don’t be afraid! The new version of Penguin has arrived more powerful, more effective, more hours… But it will just penalize a portion of your website if it finds something wrong. Times when Penguin used to punish your whole site are gone, now it will just attack the specific sections in an URL that have misbehaved.

However, the bug will be awake 24/7 so please, watch out your links and try to find them in a more natural way. As we said, Google cares more about quality than quantity as we all should do.

Penguin is a filter Google uses to capture sites that are spamming Google’s search results. Webspammers would use techniques that don’t benefit the user, but makes their link come up higher in the ranking. Penguin 4.0 is their latest update to that filter. For more information on how this work, check out "Penguin is now part of our core algorithm" and “Another step to reward high-quality sites”.

The less, the better – pills of content

We all give up reading when articles are too long and full of useless words. But it is also true that we have been creating tons of content to spread our seeds around the World Wide Web, and Google has noticed!

Quantity is not always synonymous with quality and that’s what Google wants from us - we have to write good articles in fewer words, we need to be more specific. At the end, users want to keep the whole an important idea in a quick look and don’t spend too much time in reading something that can be summarized.

What do you think about these changes? Have you already started to follow these trends?

This article has been written by Laura Smith, a copywriter for an SEO agency in London.

Interview with Lisa from The Pet Lady Blog

We recently interviewed the owner of PetBlogLady.com Lisa Taron. We wanted to learn more about her blog and share with our readers what makes her blog unique. The Pet Blog Lady is a great blog celebrating the pets we all love so dear. She has been with Typepad since 2007 and still loves working with Typepad. She enjoys writing about her pets, promoting what she believes in and great giveaways! She has a giveaway running right now to win a Plush Replica of your pet! Read the interview and then enter her great giveaway! 

1) Can you tell us about yourself and your blog?

I'm a very happy 50-something gal living in Canada, working my way through life as we know it. (My blog readers and social media followers are mainly from the USA) Every day I live with the full intention of finding joy in this crazy world. I have an obsession with squirrels and sloths and of course pets.

My blog PetBlogLady.com is all about celebrating the love we have for our pets, with interesting articles, product reviews & launches, guest articles and giveaways.

2) What is your process for writing a blog post?

I look for topics and items of interest that appeal to me and which I feel other pet lovers would find the same. Just recently I have realized that I need to make it more personal so I’ll be letting my quirkiness come through. The ABOUT ME page kind of gives people an idea of how odd I am. But in a good way. I also welcome Guest Writers, who share their passion for pets like me.

3) What is the funniest thing that has happened to your blog?

A few summers ago (2013) I raised 35 frogs right from the small tadpole stage. To this day, my tadpole raising posts has received the most “hits”, leading me to believe that people out there are interested in doing the same thing. I had so much fun raising my “frog babies”, which were all returned to nature once they were grown.

Check out her adventures raising frogs at BioBubble Giveaway - My Tadpoles Grew Up!

4) What is your favorite feature in Typepad?

Oh my…..there are so many. I’d have to say the ease of adding items in my sidebar is my favorite feature. I think I have been a Typepad user since 2007. 10 years! That’s 70 in dog years!

5) What other programs/software do you use to help with your blog?

I use Picmonkey for photo editing, Buffer to manage my social media posts and GiveawayTools.com for my contests.

6) What is the most important thing you have learned from blogging?

That I could learn how to do it! The support at Typepad is incredible too, and if I am stuck, they are there to help. They recently created a mobile-friendly site for me, and I’m sure I tested them with my anxiety and whining. It’s my baby! But in the end, I was more than happy with the results. I am certainly a Typepad Lifer.

7) You have a few minutes, what is your go to tip about blogging?

To have fun and be yourself! For those that look to monetize their blog, it’s important to have integrity. It’s easy to “sell out” and take money from companies that you don’t truly believe in. But don’t. Be true to your principles, be firm when working with companies in regards to your rates and again, have fun. Did I mention having fun.

8) What blogs do you follow?

I follow several blogs, but my top three favorites are:
Kols Notes – a DIY Dog Blog
FidoseofReality – A canine health, humor, and wellness resource for dog lovers of the highest order
Go Pet Friendly – A Pet Friendly Travel Blog

9) What is one goal for your blog in the next 6 months?

I have just started offering a newsletter and in six months, I hope to have a good number of subscribers. The newsletter will have exclusive offers, fun DIY projects and giveaways.

I am also looking to start a side blog, all about sloths. It will bring together many resources from the web about these adorable creatures, along with Videos, everything sloth-related as far as gifts and products and my ongoing musing about my Sloth Obsession. You know… the usual. I haven’t come up with a name per use for the blog, but now that I am somewhat savvy at using Typepad, it should be easy to start another one.

About Lisa

The Pet Blog Lady, aka Lisa Taron, lives in Winnipeg, Canada. In her fifties, she has two university degrees, 4 diplomas; has changed career paths as many times as lightbulbs, is obsessed with sloths and squirrels and loves being a pet blogger. She is a kid at heart, with 53 being the new 10. In her spare time she loves illustrating, riding her bike, volunteering and reading non-fiction.

Recent Post

Win a Plus Replica for YOUR Pet!  Cuddle Clone Giveaway!

Social Media

The Pet Blog Lady is on Twitter and Facebook! 

25 Mobile Design Principles from Google

Americans spend on average 87 hours a month on their smartphones. That is a lot of time looking at a mobile device. This makes it very important to have a great mobile experience for your readers.

Google teamed up with AnswerLab with the goal to establish mobile site design best practices. They created a great PDF you can download: Principles of Mobile Site Design: Delight Users and Drive Conversions. The 25 principles can be grouped into five sections:

• Homepage & Site Navigation
• Site Search
• Commerce & Conversation
• Form Entry
• Usability & Form Factor

 The infographic below shows the principles under the five sections. Below the infographic you will see how you can implement some of these principles on your Typepad blog.

Making your blog mobile responsive is easy within Typepad. We have many beautiful themes you can choose and customize. We recommend you create a test blog and go to the Design tab > Choose a Theme > Design Lab (Responsive) to select and customize one of our mobile themes.

You can create your own homepage by creating a page and then selecting it to be a Landing Page.
You can customize a navigation bar within your theme as well. 

Google can help make searching your site easy! They have a Custom Search Engine feature that you can add to your blog. Readers will be able to search your site with the speed and convenience of Google. Go to Custom Search Engine, then click on the Create a custom search engine button. Paste in the URL to your blog, then click on Create. Next to Add it to your site, click on Get Code. Copy the code and then log in to your Typepad Account. Click on Blog tab, then click on the name of your blog. Click on Design, then the Content tab. Search for the Embed your own HTML module, then click on Add this module. Label the module, then paste in the code. Click on OK, then Save changes.

Going mobile can be the boost you need for your blog. Reach out to us if you have any questions about the Google's design principles and how to implement them. 

Comment for help, or click on Help > New Ticket within your account. 

Forward your email to Outlook

Continuing in our email domain series, we are going to learn how to forward your emails to your Outlook account. After you have purchased your domain and set up your email address, you can forward it to Outlook. For Outlook, you will need the IMAP and the SMTP. We recommend you save this information somewhere safe. You will also need the email address (username) and password for your webmail account.

Reminder: If you misplaced this information you can find it in your domain account. Go to domains.typepad.com and log in. Click on My Account, then under Manage Free Service type in your domain and select Email Services from the drop down. Click on Manage Users/ Accounts, then you click on the email address. Here you will see the mail settings information.
If you forgot your webmail password you can reset it here too. To log into your webmail go to: http://webmail.yourdomain.com (replace yourdomian.com with the domain you purchased). 

The following instructions are for Outlook 2016. The instructions for each version are similar. If you would like specific instructions for the version you have, check out this great post Outlook Email Setup from Microsoft.  After you select the version, click on Other Email Account (or I don’t know).

Let’s get started

Open Outlook 2016. Click on the File tab, then click on Add Account. Click on Advanced Setup, then Manually setup or additional server types. Select POP or IMAP then click on Next. You will be taken to a window to add all your account information.

In the Add Account window, you will enter all the information you saved. Under User Information, include your name and the email address you want to add. Under Server Information, change the Account Type to IMAP and put in the IMAP and SMTP information. Under Login Information enter the email address and password for your webmail account.

Click on More Settings. Under the Outgoing Server tab, then select the box for My outgoing server requires authentication. Click on the Advanced tab, change Use the following type of encrypted connection to SSL. This will change the Incoming server (IMAP) port number to 993, that is what you want. Change the Outgoing server (SMTP) port number from 25  to 465, then click on OK. This will take you back to the Add Account Window. 

Click on Next to test the connections. Once the tests are successful, click on Close. Last, click on Finish to complete the set up.

If you have a gmail account you want to forward your emails to, check out our post Forward Your Typepad Email To Gmail. If you have an email client you would like instructions for, let us know in the Comments. We would be happy to provide more how-to's.