Spoonfed SEO Guide For Blogger Users

SEO! SEO! what the hell is SEO? I know many of you guys who own a blog never thought or never find it necessary to know about it. But SEO- Search Engine Optimization is one of the basic thing a blogger should know.

Lets Take a case Study of my current blog to make things simpler.

Title tag.

Have a look at the chethstudios page and you will notice a change in the format when compared to a basic Minima Blogger template.

The Default Title style for free basic blogger templates is " Blog Name: POST Name ". Lets change it to a more neat Format " Post Name | Blog Name " This is one of the basic things a SEO guy will tell you and it surely what our Mr Google will like. WE will use an else tag so that it becomes a bit more SEO friendly.

For Example Lets convert it to:
Free E-Book « The Blogger Template Book | cheth Studios

Have A look at the screenshot:


Dashboard > Layout > Edit HTML and check the "Expand Widget Templates" option.

Important Step: Now as a precautionary measure please download your template so that you have an emergency backup if in case you create any errors :)

First locate the code in your Blogger Template:

<title><data:blog.pagetitle/></title>

and replace it by,

<b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/><b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'> <title> <data:blog.pageName/> | <data:blog.title/> </title> <b:else/> <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;index&quot;'>
<title><data:blog.title/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageName/></title>
</b:if> </b:if>

Sitemap.
Login into Google Webmaster Tools



And Please add a sitemap to your blogger blog. XML Sitemaps — Submit a Sitemap to tell Google about pages on your site they might not otherwise discover. Google adheres to Sitemap Protocol 0.9 as defined by sitemaps.org.


TO add a sitemap you need to add "
feeds/posts/default?redirect=false"

For example:
http://chethstudios.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?redirect=false is the default link to every blogspot blog.
So copy and paste feeds/posts/default?redirect=false code in your "Submit Sitemap" section.

The rest steps are pretty basic so I wont be explaning much on that. Please feel free to ask me if you're still confused.

Meta


When you go to your Edit HTML section you find
<b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>
Exactly below that tag add the following codes.

<META CONTENT='templates, blogpsot' NAME='keywords'/>
<META CONTENT='Design,Photoshop,Icons' NAME='description'/>
<meta content='cheth' name='author'/>
<meta content='ALL' name='ROBOTS'/>

Important changes to be made:
'templates, blogpsot' are the kewords used in the blog.
'Design Photoshop Icons' is the description of the blog.
'cheth' is the name of the author.
Please change these 3 sections accordingly. And dont go to change the values for Robots.Txt


Social Bookmarking

Its loosely connected to SEO but you cannot ignore it altogether! Check out Sudhersana's Blog She has a neat social bookmarking widget very similar to the Professional Wordpress themes.

Here are two formats to include social bookmarks in your blog.




Labels / Tag Clouds for Better Interlinking.



Try NOT to use a Flash Label cloud Widget. THe main reason behind this theory is that many search engines are not fully capable of crawling Flash content yet. And another reason for using a default text tag/ label cloud is that it helps in interlinking your blogger posts. So for building a better Blog choose the Default label widget provided by Blogger. Or you can choose a Blogger Tag Cloud Provided by phy3blog

COMPRESS CSS for Better Page Loading time.

The CSS section of your Blogger template takes up a lot of the overall file size of your blog
pages. This is because each element of your <b:skin> has a lot of unnecessary blank space which may be page breaks, indentations; along with HTML comments.
By eliminating unnecessary white space and HTML comments, you can reduce the overall
size of your blog pages and thereby improves the blog loading speed. The SEO aspect of this is it doesn't put load on your server ( for self hosted Blogs ) and thereby you may not have to worry that your blog goes down.

CSSDrive provides a Free CSS Compressor, and Its pretty easy to use. The css is the code between the <b:skin> and </b:skin> tags. So copy the code and Select the options as shown in this screenshot and hit Compress it!

Please note that you should backup your template before you try editing any part of the template so that you have a backup incase you endup with errors.



1.Compression mode:- Normal
2.Comments handling:- Select Don't strip any comments.

After compressing you maynot feel any change in the speed but trust me a little bit lesser load on your server in advantage anyday!

Recent Post + Recent Comments

Now you may not know why I recommend these two widgets. The main reason INTERLINKING of your Blog Posts. The better the interlinking in your blog it helps the reader and also the Search engines to crawl all your Pages. And also your Search engine rankings.

Its easy to put these widgets in your blog. Go to Dashboard > Edit Layout > New Gadget > Choose Feed.

And copy and paste then in a new widget

1. For Recent comments paste the link below in the feed widget.
http://YOUR-BLOG-NAME.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default

2. For Recent Posts paste the link below in the feed widget.
http://YOUR-BLOG-NAME.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

PS: change "YOUR-BLOG-NAME" to your blog name for example: "chethstudios"

Choosing a suitable Blogger Theme/Template

This is the first and foremost thing you need to do. So if you're not satisfied with your current template then take a look at this Roundup of Best Blogger Templates.

Hope you guys liked this post on how to implement SEO in your Blogger Blog. If you want to see more resourceful posts do drop a comment and also subscribe to our blog feed. Based on the reaction of my readers comments I may post a next level of guide. So do stay tuned to chethstudios.!

Image Credit: Blogger Logo Image