SEO for Blogspot – Blogger Blogs
Blogger is one of the most commonly used blogging platforms and I have often received mails and questions from people using blogger that they are not sure how they can optimize it. There are innumerable number of plug ins that are helpful for SEO of WordPress Blogs but as such there are not many options with Blogger. While most blogging platforms, including blogger is basically SEO friendly , people often feel that blogspot do put certain restrictions to freely optimize the blog as per your wish. However, certain small tweaks can make your blog much more SEO friendly. Here are some easy stuff that you can do to make your blogspot pages more SEO friendly. I posted some of these earlier in a SEO Chat post.
You should also note that Blogger Classic is a better option compared to the New Blogger when it comes to SEO. It is much easier to optimize. These suggestions are for Blogger classic.
Title and Meta Tags
a) Blogger used certain strings for post title ( <$BlogItemTitle$> ), blog name( <$BlogTitle$> ) etc. These strings would also work when you put them in Title tags or Description tags. By default blogger includes the post title in the title of the page preceded by the Blog Title. If you have already inserted a big blog title , that would make your post title to be pushed back and your title becomes less relevant to the post. So get to the blogger template and make some changes to this. A good way to put your title, might be
b) Having Different Title and Description for different Pages – We would often like to have different structure for Title and Description for different type ( main URL, Archive pages, Individual post pages etc ) of blog pages. This can also be done !.Blogger uses cerain tags, which you can very easily find if you study the code thoroughly. But I have done that work for you here. For putting any tags on the main blogger page, put them between
Blog Posts
c) While writing your post, don’t stuff them with keywords but keep your keywords in mind and use them wherever they can be applied naturally. Try to use your keywords in post title – remember the post title would also go into your page title. You can read this article for more about Web content writing and Website content
d) Link between posts using suitable anchor texts. This helps your visitors to get reference and also helps in navigation between your blog pages and increased PR flow.
More With Template
e) If you are using a template with a sidebar (most of them are) you can write some optimized text targeting your keywords in the sidebar. Be careful not to spam, It should be informative text about your blog /subject, yet contain your keywords.
f) You will notice that your blog post titles are already in
tags. Search engines pay a little more importance to stuff placed in tags. Try to break down your long posts with sub headings. This will make life easier for your readers and you can use some styles (define them in the template) to get those subheadings to be
.
Comments
g) Keep your comments in the same page as blog post. Blogger gives the option to have your comments in a pop up window. You need to select “no” on that option. You will often have very good content as comments that can highly boost your content.
Links
h)Link out to relevant authority sites or blogs whereever necessary. That would help your readers and would also help search engines. At times people would also link back to you when you link to them but do not link to someone with the expectation of link back. Link only where you think is necessary.
f) Get links to your blog. I don’t think you need more motivation for this but just in case you are wondering on how to get more links refer to my article on how to get free back links
I hope this be of some help to my readers ๐
Related post: How to integrate Twitter with Blogs
Read more on SEO at SEO Consultant India Blog
.
Comments
g) Keep your comments in the same page as blog post. Blogger gives the option to have your comments in a pop up window. You need to select “no” on that option. You will often have very good content as comments that can highly boost your content.
Links
h)Link out to relevant authority sites or blogs whereever necessary. That would help your readers and would also help search engines. At times people would also link back to you when you link to them but do not link to someone with the expectation of link back. Link only where you think is necessary.
f) Get links to your blog. I don’t think you need more motivation for this but just in case you are wondering on how to get more links refer to my article on how to get free back links
I hope this be of some help to my readers ๐
Related post: How to integrate Twitter with Blogs
Hi Saptarshi,
Excellent post; some outstanding tips, which I will be trying very soon. I’ve been using Blogger for 3 years now, but have heard so much about WordPress. Do you think it is worth changing to WP?
Keep up the good work!
Matthew.
WP in itself is very SEO friendly and also being an open source platform has lot of plug ins that can be used to enhance the blog. However, if you already have an established blog on blogspot, I don’t see it worth moving to WP.
Hi again,
Being that WP is so SEO friendly and the particular blog I have in mind is not established, I shall try it out.
Many thanks for the advice.
Matthew.
Hi Saptarshi,
Good info! Iยดd like to add (if you allow me) that blogger takes in count only the first 5 words in the title to name the file of your post, grab the most important keywords at the beggining of the title post to improve your SEO performance.
Cheers!
Good addition !
This is actually an extention of the generic proximity factor that everyone should keep in mind – always keep your keywords towards the beginning of your title ( in this case they would form a part of your URL).
Good information on the table, why don’t you have your own domain?, keep it up
you can also add more like this SEO Guide
Best,
Jag
Linkedin also follow me
“Your site is very informative n helpful .. thanksโฆ..keep it up” .
IndiaSurfer is social news submiting site.submit your posts get more traffic to your site.
that’s good for me ! thanks
nice info your blog
Thank you so much for this very detailed and thorough information.
Finally, something that I can actually use on my own blog!
Great post!
I had the same doubt before.Thanks for your information!
Which platform is best for blogging?
Hi
You have a great experience about seo as I read on your profile. I thanks for sharing your experience for new blogger like me, I am in problem plz give me a solution, acutally my post title in H3 tag. Plz give me solution and tell any seo friendly blogger template. my blog is http://wwww.etaxindia.org. If you want to get paid for it I am reading to that. thanks in advance.
Hi Pankaj, I checked your site and I must say it is a really useful one. Also I like the template – its very clean and simple.
I do see that even the basic SEO stuff that comes by default on blogger is missing in this case, I presume you have done some changes to the code while installing it. If you want me to work professionally on it, please do send me an email in the address provided in my sidebar.
Hi Saptarshi,
This is very excellent post about blog. It is very useful for every one who want to make their blog attractive. Thanks to give this information.
Many thanks for the advice.
Neeraj
Our It Vision
I have my own blog in blogspot platform.But people are telling that wordpress is good for blogging.What is your opinion?
Blogger is a powerful tool for both marketing and sharing. Anyone finding this post will be able to optimize their blog in just a short while. Amazing!
Awesome; I was looking for a checklist like this. Thanks for sharing — very informative!
Nice info on your blog.
i have got more information through this blog i think WP is the best blog to do blogging thanks for ure suggestions for how can we do blogging
——————————
robkendrick
seo
Hi,
yes very Interesting and insightful article. thnx for sharing.
Regards,
I am also interested in latest news, sometimes i posted on my blog
SEO Services
The big problem with SEO for blogger is un availability of feature that can create unique Title, You are right that we can short the default blog title and rest of space can be used to optimize title.
Awesome article. The problem with blogger is, it is a bit rigid, it does not allow changes to meta tag such as description at runtime. I struggled to make the description of blogger look like the title of the blog, but no success ๐
Sandeep
Technical articles on C#, ASP.NET, Architecture
I think blogspot its the best for free blog
Yeah! super tips!
although I don’t understand all of them.. I’m still learning:)
TNX!
your tips are awesome
nice post men
wanna try it too,
keep posting
Thanks for the sharing of such information. we will pass it on to our readers. This is a great reading. Thanking you. seo news
Hi Saptarshi,
I use the new blogger and added the code example from http://iseoblogger.blogspot.com/2009/08/show-blog-post-title-first-on-search.html in my code right above the line.
Is this enough or should I still follow your instructions?
Hi Edwin
Actually Google has made some changes to the new blogger format and I am not sure if it would work or not. I would suggest you keep a copy of the code before making any change to the new blogger template.
I also suggested a hack for the new blogger platform to make it more search engine friendly at http://seo-kolkata.blogspot.com/2008/01/seo-for-blogspot-blog-new-blogger.html – however, due to the changes Google did, that code does not work any longer.
If optimization is your key focus, I still think Blogger classic is much better to work with.
Saptarshi,
Thanks for the very very quick answer ๐
Well, at least the code is making the website more user-friendly. In my browser tabs, the article title comes before the blog title. I like that.
I’ve another question. I borrowed this code from some SEO expert website (I modified it a little for my own site):
meta content=’usability blog, tips usability, usability tips, usability consultant, usability sites, usability vlaanderen, ergonomie, fusion usability recept’ name=’description’/
meta content=’usability, usability blog, usability tips,tips usability, usability tools, usability site, ergonomie, usability vlaanderen, usability engineer, usability consultant’ name=’keywords’/
(!!! I removed the ‘<' and '>‘ at the start and end of each line !!!)
I did this pretty soon after the start of my blog and I have to admit that it helped a lot: my site raised significantly in the search results of Google.
The drawback is that it’s looking ugly in Google search results. It looks like:
Usability Vlaanderen – [ Translate this page ]
9 feb 2010 … usability blog, tips usability, usability tips, usability consultant, usability sites, usability vlaanderen, ergonomie, fusion usability …
usability-vlaanderen.blogspot.com/
Ugly, without a doubt. ๐
What’s your opinion, should I change it?
Is it better to use a ‘proper’ and meaningful description line?
what you have done is not correct and trust me removing those “<>” isn’t helping your site any bit. It must be due to some other factor. I would suggest you get a meaningful description in proper format.. that would also increase the click through on your search results.
Saptarshi,
Thanks! I will change it today.
But no worries, I used the ‘<' and '>‘ in my code, I removed it in the above comment else the system would not accept my input.
Hey, good one! Thanks for sharing this.
This very very useful and interesting article about SEO .
it have all necessary information to SEo beginners.
continues to great this job.
Thank you for the great infprmative post, I am sure that this information will be helpful to many other bloggers.
Thanks you Mr.Chaudary, for the informative site reagarding SEO tips..well,i sure bookmark your site as it very much impressed me..thanks..keep on upgrading ..keep rocking
Hi Roy,
I really felt fantastic, by seeing your site & blog..The tips which you have mentioned are too good.I need to follow these tricks which helps me in my work.I appreciate your work.Keep going..
Good Luck!!
The post is absolutely fantastic! Lots of great information and inspiration both of which we all need! Also like to admire the time and effort you put into your blog and detailed information you offer
Good to know about that how title and description is being added in Blogger but what whats about title, $BlogTitle$ this. What is the purpose of two time titles?
Great thoughts, this is one of the best ideas I’ve ever heard. I will look forward on reading some more of your post.
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