SEO Tips for Blogs Hosted by Blogger

As I have mentioned many times before, practicing good SEO is important if you want to be ranked higher in the search engines.

There are many bloggers out there who are a little confused about what SEO techniques they should be using and which they should pass up, especially the Blogger crowd. Platforms vary, and because the SEO "rules" for Blogger-hosted blogs are a little different than they are for other platforms, Blogger users must take a slightly different approach to optimizing their blogs.

Choose a good title and address.

Blogger makes it extremely simple to edit things like your title and blog description, so there is little room for confusion here.

Choose your name and URL carefully. Your blog's title and address are important, so try to come up with something that reflects the topic(s) you will be covering. You want people to know what your blog is about simply by reading the title and description. I would suggest including keywords, as this will help your site rank higher for less competitive search terms.

Choose your headlines carefully.

One common problem I notice among bloggers is they tend to choose the wrong titles for their posts- titles that do not really describe what the post is about, and don't contain any key words or phrases. This is SEO suicide for some. Some of the best posts I've ever read will never get the traffic they deserve from search engines simply because the authors did not carefully consider their titles before publishing.

While it's a good idea to use titles that are interesting and grab your readers' attention, it's a great idea to make it idiot-proof by including keywords in that interesting, attention-grabbing post title, preferably near the beginning, so your keywords don't get hacked off when the post URL is created during publishing.

Provide quality content.

This rule applies to blogs on any platform. Write original articles that are rich in key words and phrases, yet do not appear to be "spammy". My advice for doing this is to write for your readers, providing them with the detailed content they're interested in, and then tweak the post a little to include specific terms that, when searched for, you would like your post to appear.

Don't go overboard on the keywords though. Keyword stuffing is frowned upon and often punished with a lower ranking. Again, it's best to write for people, and optimize for technology.

Post often.

Like the above, this tip applies to all blogs. Frequent posting for a long period of time will ensure that your site will have a lot of pages, any of which could be found via search.

Frequent updates will also draw in the search engine spiders more often, so feed them lots of quality, keyword-rich content on a regular basis. If you update daily, the spiders will eventually start visiting your blog daily to reindex your site. Slow down though, and the amount of time between visits will be extended.

Label your posts.

Although Blogger doesn't have a category function (which tends to serve as a disadvantage when compared with other platforms), it does allow users to label their posts, like tagging. Insert key words and phrases that describe your posts, and use them as a way to categorize your entries.

Ping your blog.

After posting, you should use a ping service like Ping-o-Matic to let the blog search engines know of your updates. This may help you get indexed faster.

If you've burned your feed with FeedBurner, you have the option of using their free service, PingShot, which sends pings to a few blog search engines and ping services when there is a change in your feed.

Don't ping too often though- once a day is enough for most bloggers. Too many pings can be picked up as 'ping spam' and your blog could possibly be banned from these ping services.

There is some dispute over whether or not Blogger is bad for SEO, period, but overall, there seems to be little discrimination between the free blog host and blogs hosted on a paid or private server. The Blogspot subdomain is far from ideal for many, but if the blogger provides his or her readers with great content and practices good SEO regularly, there should be few problems in achieving higher rank in the search engines.

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Comments

[tinna]

Lovely site my friend, nice to visit

[Chris]

your posts are full of useful info for the newbies, and good reminders for those that have been around awhile. Thanks for all you do Raivyn

[Chris]

your posts are full of useful info for the newbies, and good reminders for those that have been around awhile. Thanks for all you do Raivyn

[Chris]

your posts are full of useful info for the newbies, and good reminders for those that have been around awhile. Thanks for all you do Raivyn

[Johnny Rox]

Raivyn, can I translate this article to Portuguese language, with attribution, and post it in my blog?

[Salome Ada]

Thanks for the great information on Blog. This information helped me for my some websites Blog:

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[Salome Ada]

Thanks for the great information on SEO. This information helped me for my websites Blog:

SEO India

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[web design and development]

I love your post.Good tips what you have given for us.For blogs link exchange is good or not?

[search engine optimization]

Very Good tips. Lookign forward for some link building methods.To you, which is more effective? 1 way or reciprocal?

[Krissy Knox]

I am a little frustrated, because when I chose the name of my blog, I knew nothing of SEO, or even what a blog was! So I did not even think about choosing wisely before I chose a name of my blog. So now I am stuck with "Sometimes I Think." Actually, in a way I like it, and it is recognizable to many, and sticks in my readers' minds. On the other hand, I don't believe it is the best for SEO. I don't want to change it, however. Isn't that a bad idea -- to just up and change a blog name you have had for almost five years?

Let me explain. I had it on AOL before "AOL Journals" (blogs) became defunct. I went through "the migration" (transfer) of my blog to Blogger (blogspot). Meanwhile, I lost my google ranking, which was not bad at all. I am assuming I lost it, because I no longer had the same URL. One must start again and are not recognized with a new URL.

I also had a pretty high score on Technorati at one point (96?). I mean not great - but not horrible for AOL either, where not everybody could comment -- they made people jump through hoops! Anyway, I said all of that to say my Google PR is gone (I must start over with it!). So my question for you is -- should i leave my blog name the way it is even though it won't make the spiders crawl too well? Or will it still? I got indexed with google early and have noticed I AM crawling...

Okay, that's about all i got, except I have to go check that FeedBurner thingy out. And put you on my blogroll! By the way, I found you through BlogCatalog! Keep the articles coming,

Krissy :)
http://sometimesithink-krissy.blogspot.com

[UK Internet Consultants Blog]

Let me try these tips with my blog.And let you know my feed back soon.

[seo consultant]

Nice tips. for a blog, its most important to keep it updated . i have a question with wordpress blog. If i want to change meta robots in any particular wordpress blog, can I do that without downloading any plug ins?

I would be grateful, if you help me on this.

Thanks

[SEO services]

we have to follow Expert SEO tips and advices.that's why you will get some backups regarding your concept.then save your time on business aspects.

[SEO company]

Thanks for the great information on SEO. This information helped me for my websites Blog..

[los angeles seo firm]

in these case, you have to consider how you use these tips in your blog for search engines to crawl your site -- especially in blogger. i am really thankful coz it helped me a lot. good job!

-ricka-

[los angeles seo firm]

Hi guys im back,just want to drop just to say that i apply those tips and its very useful.I found that in search engine optimization,two kinds of tags are important on the website. Keep up the good work and i am looking forward for your next valuable information.

by:ricka

[Search Engine Optimization Service]

Very Good tips. Lookign forward for some link building methods.To you, which is more effective? 1 way or reciprocal?

[Nacheez]

Thanks, I will use this for my blog http://earn-online-for-free-from-adsense.blogspot.com/

[SEO Company India]

No doubt great blogging.. Thanks for posting it,continue the good work.

[SEO]

Thank you for this informative post, I really appreciate sharing this great post. Keep up your work.

[Medical Web Experts]

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[SEO Services India]

Search Engine Optimization is a science that taps into search engine algorithms and a human visitor at the same time. SEO has always been perceived as a science of effective usage of Meta tags, positioning of keywords organically in body text, and careful analysis of keyword density using popular SEO software tools and techniques.

Thanks

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