Optimize Blog Articles On Blogger

Optimizing blog articles on Blogger

Blogger is an excellent free blog writing platform provided by Google. The problem with Blogger is sometimes you have to get creative in applying different search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to improve search rankings.

The title of your blog article is probably the most important element, because it contains the focused keywords you want people to type in the search box to find your article. The templates used in Blogger, by default, place the title of your blog in front of your article title. Let's do a little exercise just to better show you what I'm talking about.

Step 1. Open a blog article on your blog.

Step 2. Right click on the page and select "View Page Source".

Step 3. Click anywhere on the page and then select "Ctrl + F" (You will now see a search box.)

Step 4. Type <title> in the search box and hit "Enter". You will now see the title tag highlighted.

View source code for blog article

Highlighting title tag in articles source code

So, if your blog is named "Lets Go Blogging" and your article title is "Using Social Media", here is how your article will be delivered to the search engines:

Lets Go Blogging | Using Social Media

Most people will not search for the name of your blog and every article on your blog will look almost identical to search engines and that's just not good. We need to switch these around so the title of your article appears first. It just makes more sense and it will improve your search rankings.

Step 1. Log in to your blog "Dashboard" and select the particular blog you want to edit.

Step 2. Select "Template", then select "Edit HTML"

Editing HTML in Blogger template

Step 3. Click anywhere inside the code window and select "Ctrl + F" and a search box should now be visible.

Searching for title tag in Blogger HTML

Step 4. Type or copy and paste the following in the search box -
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>

You should now see the title tag highlighted.

Step 5. Delete the title tag <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title> .

Step 6. Replace this tag with the following code:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> | <data:blog.title/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title> </b:if>

Step 7. Select "Save Template" and the title is now better optimized.

If you want to see if everything worked properly, just go back and do the same thing we did in the first exercise above. Open your article, right click and select "View Page Source". You should now find that the title of your article appears before the name of your blog, as it should.

I have just co-authored a new book, "Writing Better Web Content", with my friend and colleague, Dr. Deborah Bauers. It's a valuable resource for all web content writers. If you want to take your blog writing to a whole new level, you need to check it out.