A Look At The New Blogspot Search Preference Update

Update: A new update to the Blogspot platform that enables customisation of blog search preferences

I was so pleased with the latest update (March 22) to the Blogspot platform I've decided to make a post on it. Major updates for the platform are few and far between and Google seem to be more interested in looks than blog mechanics at the minute; which is why I was pretty shocked to see this come out. If you are ever interested, you can read all the latest Blogspot updates on the official Blogger Buzz blog-site. It's got some good articles and in-depth guides that you might find useful.

In the latest update, Google have focused on improved search preferences; in a nut shell, how a blog is viewed by search engines. So what did Mr G have to say about it all:

"Ensuring that your blog, posts, and images are accurately indexed so they appear correctly in search results is valuable. Today we introduced a suite of new features that enable you to more effectively customize your search preferences. Managing how your blog is viewed by search engines  is an important aspect of maintaining a healthy blog, regardless of whether you’re new to blogging, or a seasoned veteran." 

Posting Schedule - How Often Is Good?

Aim: Explaining the benefits of having a posting schedule and how you can implement schedules into your Blogspot blog

When I first started blogging, I never really knew anything about having a post schedule or plan where I would dedicate certain times in the week to research, write up and promote a particular article. Instead, I would spend hours on end wasting time and being unproductive; sometimes sacrificing other commitments and responsibilities because of it. The idea of having some sort of posting schedule means you are able to focus time and resources into areas that yield the most return. I don't know if you have ever heard of the Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule)? Even though it is usually applies to business, I've been able to make use of it whilst blogging. 

If you're successful, you might have already applied this principle, with or without actually realising it. For the rest of us, the 80% refers to areas we're doing too much of (content creation, editing blog design and time wasting for instance) and the 20% refers to areas we don't do enough of but would benefit from greatly (such as link building or other commitments, responsibilities and hobbies that we're otherwise to busy or wrapped up in to undertake). If you feel like your spending too much time on blogging, but the productivity isn't there, you really need to consider the 80/20 rule; what's the time hog, what's important to the success of the blog that's being neglected, why is this happening and a solution to the problem. Your own personal posting schedule will not only lead to better consistency from one post to another, but will also act as a means of direction to keep you focused on one task.

Blogspot On-page SEO Part 3: It's Rude Not To Invite ALT Tags To The Party!

Aim: How to implement ALT image tags in your Blogspot blog to increase on-page SEO

Optimising images is becoming more and more important in on-page SEO efforts.  It's sometimes not enough to rely on just your written content to implement the optimisation. Introducing ALT image tags to your existing images is a two second fix and can really help boost your Blogspot SEO and ranking in the search engines. Google loves ALT image tags... In Google's webmaster guidelines, they advise the use of alternative (ALT) text for all the images found on your Blogspot blogs and websites.

"Use the alt attribute to provide descriptive text. In addition, we recommend using a human-readable caption and descriptive text around the image."

When a search engine robot crawls a particular blog page, it reads everything found within the source code of that page (titles, body text, meta tags, attribute tags, alt tags and so on) and makes an informed decision on what that particular page is about. It can detect that an image is present (due to the image HTML tag in the blog page source code), but is unable to recognise whats being displayed in that image. This is where ALT image tags come in to play!

How To Choose The Right Subject Or Niche For Your Blog

Aim: Helping you find the right subject or niche to blog about

In my opinion, choosing the right subject or niche is one of the hardest decisions you will ever make in your blogging career. The thing is, there is no definitive right or wrong answer as far as I know! When I talk to new bloggers, I always get the idea that many of them are making the process of choosing a subject too complicated. Don't get me wrong, I have been in similar situations where I've talked myself out of making a blog mainly because I'm asking myself too many questions; Is it worth it? Will I see any return? Will people like and follow my blog? Do I know enough about 'x' subject? Will I ever get to the top of Google with 'x' subject? It's good (in a way) that such questions are being asked. It's also good when we have reassurance off successors in the field that our plan (which in this case is choosing a subject) has the potential of paying off; either in the form of money, traffic or both.

Blogspot SEO Rank Report After Four Weeks

Summary: Blogspot SEO jumped from page 3 of Google to the top 5 in just four weeks

I just thought I would quickly comment on my current ranking progress in Google search results. Again, all the SEO tweaks I've implemented on Blogspot SEO have been talked about extensively in the articles on this blog you're able to read for free; so I would assume people following my posts (via feed, email subscription or bookmark) have had similar SERP improvements also. In this particular post, I'm going to focus on domain age and posting quality content Google (and most importantly your readers) want.

The most recent post I've made on Blogspot SEO was published December 13th, which was Blogspot SEO Rank Report After Removing Archive System. This means in just four weeks I have jumped from page three of Google to the top five which I think's amazing! I haven't really done any off-page SEO techniques (such as link building) as of yet, which leads me to believe that my success so far has been down to two factors; domain age and posting quality, unique content.

Blogspot On-page SEO Part 2: Why You Should Ditch The Blogspot Default Feed

Aim: Explaining why the Blogspot built-in feed system is rubbish and how to replace it with a better alternative such as FeedBurner

This is the second part of the Blogspot On-page SEO series. In part one of the series I talked about the importance of including H1 and H2 tags into your posts; something the Blogspot platform misses out on (the post can be found here in its entirety). In the second part of the on-page SEO series I'm going to explain why the default built-in feed Blogspot offers is rubbish and why ditching it for a better feed service such as FeedBurner (for free) is much better for your SEO and subscribers.

Blogspot SEO Rank Report After Removing Archive System

Summary: Blogspot SEO jumped from page 6 of Google to page 3 of Google in under a week after removing the Blogspot archive system

I just thought I would drop by quickly and make a post regarding my current progress trying to get Blogspot SEO ranked high in Google search results. All I have improved upon I've talked about extensively and in detail on Blogspot SEO; so I would assume people following my posts (via feed, email subscription or bookmark) have had similar SERP improvements also. In this particular post, I will quickly be focusing on the SERP improvement Blogspot SEO experienced after I implemented the following fix found in this post 'Why Blogspot Archive Has A Negative Impact On SEO'. I was initially worried that removing the Blogspot archive system might in fact ruin any rank improvements I previously obtained with Blogspot SEO. When changing anything fundamental to your blog source code, you must prepare yourself to be knocked back in rank before advancing forward. You might use a piece of code or on-page SEO fix that could potentially knock you back in Google and forever keep you there. This is one of the main reasons why I always test my SEO guides out first on Blogspot SEO; if the worst comes to the worst it's only going to be me and my blog that experiences the negative effects, not you!

Why Blogspot Archive Has A Negative Impact On SEO

Aim: Explaining why the Blogspot archive system has a negative effect on SEO and how this can be resolved in two easy steps

I read up on an article recently how duplicate content on a blog can really effect SEO. For us as Blogspot users, the archive system can be detrimental to how we rank in Google for any particular search. Google uses two indexes for it's search results; main index and supplemental index (partially removed now due to a Google update). The main index contains the listed results of the top websites for a related search query (if I typed a common search such as 'SEO', the websites Google would show me are very likely from the main index). However, the supplemental index are search results that will only appear if there are very few or no related websites from the main index that matches the users search query. If posts are being duplicated twice by Blogspot (main post and archive post), it's quite possible Google might add that page to the supplemental index rather than the main index. Unless your writing for a Blog with a very unique theme, it's highly doubtful any of your posts are going to rank high in the SERP's. As a twist to the post, Google removed the supplemental index page label in an update, but I still strongly believe that search engines punish duplicated content (on the same website or blog) and consequently rank it lower in search results for your chosen keyword.

Blogspot On-page SEO Part 1: Where's My H1 Tags Gone?

Aim: How to implement H1 and H2 tags in your Blogspot blog to increase on-page SEO

This is part one of Blogspot On-page SEO, a bi-weekly (sometimes weekly) workshop that aims to increase your Blogspot SEO. So what is it about on-page SEO that's so important? For a fact, your blog won't do well in search engine results without proper on-page and off-page SEO. It's my personal opinion that many people neglect the importance of on-page and focus their efforts on off-page only. Have you ever heard of that saying 'Your only as strong as your weakest link'? Think of your on-page SEO as laying a foundation for all your off-page SEO efforts. As we all know, Blogspot isn't really kitted towards SEO unlike that of WP; so it's important if we want to rank high to do the on-page improvements ourselves. This week I'm going to talk about implementing the H1 and H2 tags into your Blogspot blog to improve SEO.

How You Could Be Getting More Blogspot Subscribers In Only 15 Minutes

Aim: How to implement a non-intrusive subscription pop-up box using jQuery

One aspect of running a blog I personally hold my hands up and admit struggling with is obtaining new subscribers to Blogspot SEO; and I would imagine I'm not the only one in this boat. It does essentially boil down to producing content that visitors find interesting and valuable. I've found press-releases to be very successful in enticing people to sign up to a blog in exchange for SEO software and e-books. All in all, I've found it alot harder to gain sign-ups on Blogspot compared to other blogging platforms such as WP. This is not the end of the world though! Why not use a non-intrusive (one time) subscription pop-up box that every person will see when visiting your Blogspot blog. We all have our regular readers and guests that stumble on our blog after searching a key phrase in Google, maybe a shove and an arm twist is all it will take to increase your blogs subscribers.

How You Can Use Post URL's To Improve Blogspot SEO

Aim: Explaining the importance of post URL's and how they can be used to boost Blogspot SEO

Strictly speaking, Blogspot doesn't allow a user to manage the outcome of URL addresses made after a post; an URL is created automatically relevant to the post title. If you have ever looked at the structure of an URL in a Blogspot post, you will see that it consist's of 4 parts; domain name of blog|year the post was made|month the post was made|post title. This structure allows each blog to have a sorting system where a visitor is able to view posts made in a certain month or year. The disadvantage of it all is that it potentially waters-down the SEO for each post. As Blogspot users, we can't really do anything about this unfortunately, or can we?

Discover How To Create Post Titles That Attract Attention

Aim: Showing you how to create effective blog post titles that attract peoples clicks and attention

There are many different strategies that when implemented effectively can draw more attention to your blog posts. The title is not necessarily the end all and be all of a successful blog post, but all the same pertains the obvious potential of a post being read and shared among many, and not just buried unacknowledged in your blog archives. I am not going to go all out and say there is a right and proper way of creating compelling post titles, as this is subjective to only opinion. Ultimately the goal of your post title is to attract people to click on your post and read the first few lines.

How To Add Meta Tags To Your Blogspot Blog

Aim: Explaining the importance of meta tags and how to add them to your own Blogspot blog

Once upon a time meta tags were considered as one of the main factors used by search engines as a means of indexing, titling and describing websites. Even though the latter two of the three are still true in today's standards, the emphasis of using meta tags to index a website has been decreased considerably and put in the shadow of more complex, reliable search engine algorithms. The once then search engine algorithms were abused by spamming keywords and phrases in the hope that websites would shoot to the top of the search engine rankings; thus generating heaps of web traffic and clicks which in-turn would equal money for the webmaster. With all this in mind, I believe the meta keyword section of the meta tags is pretty much useless, and should only be dedicated a few minutes of your precious time. What is really important and critical is the meta description and title sections which I would definitely advise you to spend some real time and thought on.

Welcome to Blogspot SEO

Aim: To provide expert SEO advice, tips and resources for the Blogspot platform

Blogging in general has been around for years and as of February 2011 there is a supposed 156 million English-orientated public blogs knocking around the interweb (figure taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog). Of course, you and I have to realise that these numbers change considerably on a day to day basis which is mad! As a suprising statistic, one out of five people in the world own a personal blog if you were to include all the non-English blogs to the overall total.