Blogger is a free content management system and publishing platform from Google. Most people know it as Blogspot as well. It is because the sites are given .blogspot.com subdomain. We also started our journey the same way in this industry from a blogger site. It is free, simple, and very popular. Actually, Blogspot is not the most versatile platform for publishing but it is pretty great. Many people use it for blogging and everyone wants to do the best SEO and gain organic traffic. So to help everyone, we have listed 7 top Blogspot SEO tips and tricks using our experience.
Many people choose Google’s Blogspot or WordPress to explore the world of blogging. They are easy and provide a good opportunity to learn. Many people already have a google account so signing up for Blogspot is also very easy. This is why many people choose it. In our list of best free hosting sites and services, we have kept blogger at the top. Users can simply point their domain to the Blogspot site and use it as a normal domain. Blogger acts as CMS for the website after pointing a domain to the Google server.
There are many reasons for people using Blogspot for blogging either with a custom domain or without a custom domain. One of the most important reasons is that it is free and it has about 100% uptime. The second reason is easy signup and the third reason can be easier maintenance. There is no need for managing servers or taking care of the complex backend. This is why many people like it and choose it. So if you are among those people and want to improve SEO for higher traffic, you might find these tips useful.
1) Content and Presentation
There is a saying “Content is King” and this is the key rule in the content market. Everyone always recommends writing for the reader and not for the algorithm. It is undeniable fact that technical SEO is important but the more important part is content. When a reader comes to your site, they must find the information they are looking for. The article should not be anything out of the topic. It should be as deep and as engaging, it could be. However, the content should not be just long in order to just have more word density. Google wants higher content density and words because it shows there is more information but unwanted information can irritate readers.
Presentation is another skill that one must learn. It is very important to present correct information and data in the correct form. Sometimes listicles can be a good form to show your reader while sometimes just plain paragraphs can be also good. In some cases, it is very important to list important things point-wise. Similarly, data inside the article also needs presentation in a correct form such as graphs, pie charts, lines, and photographs. All these help your readers understand better and they stick more with the site. This reduces bounce rate and increases their time in the blog.
2) Post Title, Images and Keywords
All of the BlogSpot SEO tips are incomplete without good post titles, keywords, and images. These help the search engine get a good idea about the content and also let people know about the post. Make a practice of using catchy but true titles because they attract users. A reader will only open your article from Google if they find the title interesting. Then they start reading and that is when content quality comes to play.
When the algorithm gets an idea of the content, it is ranked better. When writing posts, do good research on the topic and find keywords. Target them and try to make the best post title that matches the content and has the target keywords in it. Keyword research is a vast topic of its own and it is better to go through several sources for learning it. While writing articles, always be careful about keyword density. Do not overoptimize or cram the words as it can turn to cannibalization. Write the posts in a way such that the keywords and content feel seamless and natural.
Just as other aspects, image optimization is also very important. The photos and images should be relevant and of smaller image sizes. They should have a proper caption, file name, and good alt tag. A caption should describe the contents of the image well for the user and browser. Differently-abled people also use screen readers and in that case, captions play a huge role.
3) Site Template and Design
After content, there is always the design. It is because design creates an impression on the user. When a user sees an attractive and well-managed website or blog design, it creates the impression of professionalism. This creates trust in the site and brand. Thus the chance of a visitor returning increases. Design is also important because search engines want to rank websites that are helpful to users. Websites mainly need to have good navigation. This helps users to find content easily. Page speed is another important aspect of ranking. It is very important to choose a fast, responsive, and fluid design theme.
Installing a template is very easy in the Blogspot dashboard. You can simply search in Google and get many free and paid themes. Free themes also have a very good amount of options but they have backlinks to the developer which many people don’t like. However, for starters free themes are can be very helpful to gain traction. You can find a large collection of free responsive blogger themes at Colorlib. We have also used their themes in the past and they work great.
In order to install a template or theme just download the HTML file and upload it in the “Theme” section. Make necessary changes in the layout part as well. Do check page speed using Google’s Page Speed test tool. We also recommend using good sidebar items and other gadgets to make the user experience better.
4) Navigation and URL Structure
Create everything on the website in clean and neat form. Make good menus for easier navigation so that users can easily go to the desired places. When people can easily see your great content, they tend to go there. In a blogger, the menus can be created simply by giving specific labels to the articles. These URLs of labels can be placed in the menu for easier navigation.
In order to have good navigation, URL structure is also very important. It helps people and search engines such as Google to understand them better. If the article or post has a permalink with words that match the content title, it is much better. If the URL address has random numbers and letters with no structure, it is bad for everyone. When writing the article and before posting, go to “Custom Permalink” instead of “Automatic Permalink” under the Permalink option at the right-side panel. Try to put keywords in the permalink URL address. This is a much better practice and it is recommended on all platforms.
Interlinking articles and posts are also very important. Link the related articles in your blog to give your readers a good experience. Users can read related posts and this also increases the CTR. It can also help to decrease the bounce rate on the website. If you are adding an external link but you don’t want to send link juice and let Google know to not associate your site with the outbound linking site for ranking then use rel=”nofollow” attribute.
5) Basic Information, and Settings
It is very important to put basic information on the settings of the blogger dashboard. Fill out all the information such as the name of the blog, title, and description. You may need to set these things in the template HTML code also. You should mainly set them in the Settings. There are sections such as Basic, Meta Tags, Crawlers and indexing, Errors, and redirects in the settings page.
Under “Crawlers and indexing” there are options to enable custom robots.txt, and custom robots header tags. It is good to enable these settings and this opens suboptions for configuring custom robots.txt. It also allows configuring custom robot tags for home pages, posts, pages, archives, and search pages.
Generally, when Google crawls the website or blog it indexes many pages. A lot of pages will be indexed on the search result which isn’t required to readers such as search results, archive, menu, etc. These may help users in navigation while browsing the site but there is no use for them in the search engine index. We can remove those to make the index clean. All we want is the indexing of all articles and good organic traffic. Therefore go through options and select “noindex” for unwanted pages such as archive and search pages. For custom robots header tags for the homepage, posts, and pages leave them without touching.
6) Analytics, Webmasters and SEO Tools
It is very important to look after your data. Google Blogger provides important information in the “Stats” section. It shows data for posts, daily traffic, post views, location, and sources. Connect your blog to Google Webmasters and Analytics for more data. Verify the blog or custom domain website with Google Webmasters. It is quite easy and provides a lot of tools for understanding and improving the SEO of the blog.
Install the Google Analytics code on your site and keep updated with it. Analyze traffic, demographics, popular content, and users regularly. See how the people are browsing the site. Filter the most engaging content and searched keywords. Write more about them and you can gain good traffic. Among all, taking full benefit of Google Analytics is the top Blogspot SEO tips anyone can give.
All the information from Webmasters and Analytics helps you to know your audience and their preference. You can write better articles for your readers when you know what they like the most. These also give you an idea about search queries and keyphrases. Take ideas from them and implement them to improve your content. If you want to learn Google Analytics then Google provides free classes at their online academy. These are very helpful and I have also taken them.
7) Keep it Clean and Moderated
Keep your site manages and content clean. Don’t use flash files to make your site look ugly and slow. Most importantly don’t put too many links, banners, and advertisements. These things irritate users and that can be bad for your readers. It is true that advertisement keeps blogging alive but it should be limited. There should not be pop-ads, disturbing full-page roadblocks, and sensitive ads. Keep away from those things to keep readers happy and make your site fast.
Experts of Google search recommend keeping the comments section clean as well. It means that moderate the comment section regularly and removing unwanted spam links, and disrespectful and sensitive comments. All these things affect overall brand image and google SEO ranks in SERP.
Make your website easily navigable and post regularly with relevant content. The articles or posts must be simple and easily digestible. Understand that the web is a dynamic place and it keeps on changing. The search algorithms also change regularly so try to keep up with them. If you have anything on this topic, do share it with us and help others.
