Blogspot

Blogspot: How to insert an internal cross-reference using anchor points

In case anyone is still trying to figure our how to insert links within a single blog, try this remedy. No guarantees, of course, but it worked for me....

A.      Inserting an internal cross reference using anchor points

If you are someone who authors quite long blogs as I do, it can be helpful to your readers to provide links within the blog to other paragraphs or footnotes. 

I haven't so far found an option for creating internal links within a single Blogspot blog – the default option seems to be creating links to external sites via their full URLs. 

You can, however, insert appropriate HTML code to create internal links yourself, since Blogspot does allow access to the HTML version of your blog directly via the 'Compose/HTML' toggle switch (mid-left of the display). This may seem daunting if you haven't handled HTML code before yourself, but it is worth a try, even if you have no experience of HTML programming (I didn't !). You won't lose your blog, since it's already stored in multiple version in the Google cloud.

To insert the necessary HTML code for a cross-reference, you need two separate elements:

1)      An ‘anchor’ point – this goes at the point where you want the hyperlink to start in your text. It looks like this:

<a href=”#example _anchor”>anchor text1</a>

2)      A reference point – this identifies where you want the user to jump to in your blog when they hit the hyperlink. It looks like this:

<a id=”example_anchor”>anchor text2</a>

Notice that although “example_anchor” must be exactly the same to tie the hyperlink and its reference together, you can have different text representations at the start and end points. You also need any splits in the “example_ anchor” ID represented by underscore (_) characters and not ordinary spaces for this to work.

Editing your blog’s HTML Code is relatively easy – just Toggle to ‘HTML view’ via the Compose/HTML toggle switch and find the appropriate start and finish points in your blog text. (Hint: use the search button to find the text references – scanning through HTML text manually to find the reference you want can be hard work !). 

Once you've found the hyperlink entry point (in this case 'anchor text1'), simply replace it with: <a href="#example _anchor">anchor text1</a>.

Now move to the reference point (in this case 'anchor text2') and replace this with:

<a id=”example_anchor”>anchor text2</a>. 

If you've got the syntax wrong, the HTML editor will highlight the errors in red. If not, you can now revert to 'Compose' view and update your blog. Once updated, the internal links should work OK.

Also, make sure you get the two elements the right way round - it's easy to mix them up when using the method for the first time.

Blogspot: How can I check who's looking at my blog ?

The Blogger software already provides a useful internal 'Stats' option which you can find on the main menu. This will give you limited information on the number of views each of your blogs has had over various periods. You can get a little more info by clicking the 'More on this Blog' button as to which types of platforms your viewers are using. It won't, however, give you as much info as Google Analytics. 

So why not just use Analytics ?, I hear you ask...unfortunately, therein lies the problem.

My own experience has been that Google have made rather a mess of the transition between the old 'Universal' (UA-) properties and the current GA4 ones, and this has complicated the process of connecting websites with Analytics. The transition was supposed to occur seamlessly in preparation for the planned shutdown of monitoring of all Universal properties in July 1st. To cut a long story short, it didn't....

The Universal properties are no longer being monitored, that's for sure, but the 'seamless' migration hasn't happened, for Blogspot domains at least. Although you can attempt to set things up yourself, I've found from bitter experience that Google's instructions are excessively complex (as for most things !), and don't actually achieve the end result when you follow them. I would therefore hesitate to encourage anyone to waste time attempting it.

I'd therefore recommend anyone wanting tracking to stick to the internal Blogspot option - at least that still works....