Useful and Important SEO Optimization Tips for Blogger

If you have stepped in to this blogging platform then you might have heard about Blogger Platform that’s a free startup route offered for free by Google. Anyone can easily create an account on blogger and then start his free blog to share his experiences with the world. Well I am on blogger since 2 years and day by day we come across searching on how we can actually optimize our blog as its blogger is not that great like wordpress but I think that was the one sentence that Google heard and they introduced the search preferences which we will be talking right in this post.

seo-for-bloggers

Well now using search preferences one can easily optimize his blog from top to bottom, he can easily edit the robots.txt file by adding his own rules. We even got the option to redirect our broken links from one URL to another pretty easily. So overall I will say we got pretty much everything from the Blogger Team improving this free platform, well now today we are going to explore how all these functions work and what you should actually do in order to get your rankings higher.

So now lets just jump into the tutorial below and see how actually every single option works, so lets get started.

#1. Optimize Blogger Post Title Tag

Now by default blogger add the blog title in front of the post title, well that does not look SEO friendly to any person and even to the search engines. So its better to shift the post title in front of blog title. Well I have complied a complete post for this tutorial so check the post here [POST-LINK}

#2. Changing Heading Tag for the Post Title

By default blogger implements the H3 heading tag to the post title’s, well that’s not bad but for the optimum optimization H2 or H1 tag is necessary. As it has more importance so we will be shifting the H3 Tag to H2 for the post titles.

Open Blogger > Template > Edit HTML.
Now search for .post h3 and replace all the occurrences with .post h2
Now again search for <h3><data:title/></h3> and replace it with the <h2><data:title/></h2> code.

That’s it now just save the template and you have optimized the post title heading tags for your blog.

#3. Adding Meta Description to Blogger Posts

This was the one major feature that was missing in the free blogging platform and that came along with the search preferences update, well now I have even compiled another nice post that explains how you can actually enable the search description function in blogger easily. [POST-LINK}

#4. Adding No-Follow Tag to all Labels

Labels are another important thing that improves the search visibility, you can easily make some nice SEO Breadcrumb using labels and that makes the layout neat and clean. Well but its important to add No-Follow tag to all the labels so that google does not cache them up and make some duplication.

Open Blogger > Template > Edit HTML.
Now just search for expr:href='data:label.url you might find 2 instances, now just add rel='nofollow' to both of them like in the image below.
If you are using some other template and you did not find anything like above you can make a search for <a expr:href=’data:label.url’ rel=’tag’> and then add the no-follow tag to it like this <a expr:href=’data:label.url’ rel=’tag,nofollow’> that’s it now eveything is done, you can just Save the template and enjoy.

#5. Setting Robot’s.txt file in Blogger

Well you might be having some clue about this one, robot’s.txt is applied to all blog’s by default with their own rules but now with the search preferences option you can easily add your own rules and enjoy full SEO benefits.

To check how your robots.txt file look change this URL with your own blog address http://www.hackinguniversity.in/robots.txt.

Open Blogger > Settings > Search Preferences.
Under Crawlers and Indexing click Edit for Custom robots.txt.
Now just select the whole code provide there and replace it with below code.
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /search?
Disallow: /search?q=*
Disallow: /*?updated-max=*
Allow: /

Sitemap: http://www.hackinguniversity.in/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500
Now make sure to change the bolded URL with your own blog address.
Now the last sitemap line intends for 500 posts, well if you have more then 500 posts then use this tool [LINK} to generate sitemap.

That’s it now just press Save Changes button and its done. Now you can once again check your robots.txt file for the changes you have made.

#6. Customizing Robots Header Tags

Now we even got this awesome feature inside that search preferences update, using this we can easily check mark and manipulate the robot header tags. This can be really useful in many ways, so lets see how it works. Well if you do not know what everything actually mean, then below table would solve your problem.

Directive	Meaning
`all`	There are no restrictions for indexing or serving. Note: this directive is the default value and has no effect if explicitly listed.
`noindex`	Do not show this page in search results and do not show a "Cached" link in search results.
`nofollow`	Do not follow the links on this page
`none`	Equivalent to `noindex, nofollow`
`noarchive`	Do not show a "Cached" link in search results.
`nosnippet`	Do not show a snippet in the search results for this page
`noodp`	Do not use metadata from the Open Directory project for titles or snippets shown for this page.
`notranslate`	Do not offer translation of this page in search results.
`noimageindex`	Do not index images on this page.
`unavailable_after: [RFC-850 date/time]`	Do not show this page in search results after the specified date/time. The date/time must be specified in the RFC 850

Now you know what actually everything mean, we will be checking out the best settings suitable for the Blogger Robots Header Tags. Check below steps.

Open Blogger > Settings > Search Preferences.
Now under Crawlers and Indexing, press Edit for Custom Robots Header Tags.
Now you will see few settings, well just make sure you have check mark’s like below.
Now after you have successfully added all these settings just press Save Changes and its done you have configured the Robots Header Tags settings.

#7. Submitting your Sitemap to Google & BING

Now we have pretty much configured every possible thing in our blogger blog, its time to submit the sitemap URL to Google and BING which will allow faster post indexing and then traffic sending process. Now to submit our sitemap URL to Google you can do that by visiting the Webmaster Tools webpage and for BING you can check there webmaster page.

Visit the Webmaster Tools page for both Google & BING, links above.
Now in Google choose your website and the under Crawl choose Sitemap option and then press that Red button that say "Add/Test Sitemap"
Now just submit the sitemap link you have earlier created above for the robots.txt file just add that and press Submit.

That’s it now submit all the sitemap’s you have to the Google and BING Webmaster Tool webpage. This will all faster indexing of your post & increase traffic.

#8. Redirecting Broken Links

Now we have optimized the blog and submitted the sitemap's to big search giants now its time to maintain error free blog, now by errors I mean many of them like the HTML errors and the broken URL error’s, so to fix them up we have another URL redirection feature available under Search Preferences.

Open Blogger > Settings > Search Preferences.
Now under Error's and Redirection click Edit for Custom Redirects.
Now just choose New Redirect option and then it will ask you to enter those two URL's, one that's broken and the other one that need's to be the actual redirected URL.
So now do not enter the whole URL, as its not allowed you blog address is pre entered, you can just enter the rest part like below.

http://www.hackinguniversity.in/2013/10/advanced-system-care.html
So just enter the BOLD URL, Now after entering the broken URL link, now enter the other one that's the redirected URL link.
That's it now choose the Permanent, if its no gonna change in future and the press Save Changes option to see if its working.

So now using this option you can also redirect any page or any post to any other post or any other page, you got it right. Just change the URL and its done.

So guys now this ends the whole SEO based post for blogger blogs, well hope this will surely help you in getting the most out of your blog, well if you find any problem using or implementing these steps do comment below so that I can help you out.

30 March 2014