Blogspot is the sub domain used by Blogger.com. It is nothing but a platform that lets you create your own blog for free. Yes, that’s correct. You don’t need to pay a penny to become a blogger on Blogspot. While it is well suited for beginners and new learners, Blogspot does come with its own set of limitations. This is the reason why WordPress has been gaining popularity among the masses. However, a big chunk of budding bloggers still use BlogSpot for creating content. This blog gives valuable insights into how SEO can be utilized to better the ranking of your blog on this platform.
1. Custom Domain
Get rid of the BlogSpot domain and get your own customised domain name for improved SEO ranking. This should be the first step when you create your own blog. This will help you create a website which will help your blog establish its own unique identity. You will need to purchase a domain name to be able to set it up on BlogSpot.
2. URL Link of Post
The Permalink, meaning the permanent link which will be designated to land the reader on your post, plays a significant role in how well your post ranks. A couple of simple rules to be kept in mind while finalizing your BlogSpot permalinks are:
- Do not exceed 50 characters in your title
- Do not include any stop words such as a, an or the in your permalink
Removal of stop words can be easily done while editing the permalink. It is best to use keywords in your permalink without making it look too needy.
3. Keyword Optimization
Maintaining the keyword density in your blog is critical for attaining a good blog ranking. Less use of keywords will result in lower ranking for your blog. On the flip side, if you stuff your blog with too many keywords, it could look like a spam post. Maintain a healthy ratio of about 2% keywords per post. Make sure you include only the necessary keywords that go with the post title of your blog. Once you are done writing your post, go through it once to see where you can insert relevant keywords without leading readers astray. You can even use content optimization tools like copywritely.
4. BlogSpot Labels
Labels contribute tremendously to the keyword density of your blog post. It is ideal that you refrain from categorizing labels. For instance, if you are writing about android and you use “software” or “technology” as your label, you miss out on using keywords like “android technology” or “android mobile technology”. Related posts are also impacted by labels in BloggerSpot. Therefore, refrain from having the same label for several similar posts.
5. Blogger Post Title Formatting
As far as BlogSpot is concerned, the title of your blog will play a major role in garnering much-needed attention from readers. In order to ensure that your blog ranks well in search results, you will need to ensure that it is SEO friendly. Perform keyword research, narrow down on a primary keyword and include it in the title of your post. Try keeping the primary keyword as the first word in your title post because that’s where the search engine looks.
6. Format Images
Once the blog post title has been taken care of, the next step is to ensure Image Optimization. This can be done by making sure that all the images that you post in your blog have alt tags and title tags. Other blogging platforms like WordPress use plugins to achieve this. However, while using BlogSpot, you will need to do this manually. Once you upload your images, manually upload tags for each one of them for SEO purposes.
7. Add Meta Tags
Meta tags, in simple words, are snippets used to describe a post’s content. They are HTML tags which prompt search engines to identify various details, like title and description, for a URL. Meta tags appear in the source code of the page and are primarily small descriptions that tell search engines about a web page.
Primary keywords must be inserted in not only the title of the post, but also its description and footer text. This helps in bettering search engine ranking for the blog post.
8. Nofollow links
Links that have their HTML tag as rel=”nofollow” are termed as Nofollow links. Adding this tag simply tells search engines that they must ignore that particular link. These links are most unlikely to impact rankings on search engines as they are omitted from passing PageRank. Nofollow prevents external links from impacting the quality of the post as well its search engine ranking.
9. Comments on Post
Your blog is likely to receive comments from readers. In order to prevent spam comments, it is important that you mark your comments section as “nofollow”. While replying to comments on your posts, try and use the keywords that you have used in your blog. The keywords included in your responses will be counted in the total keyword density of your blog post.
BlogSpot, despite its limitations continues to be the preferred choice of many users looking to start their own blogs. It is easy to use and comes absolutely free of cost. Being Google’s blogging platform, it offers its users the trust and ease of convenience to create content without having to worry about being a novice in the world of blogging. If you get your basics with BlogSpot right, you should be able to generate a good amount of traffic for your blog. Once you have enough experience with blogging, you can move on to more complex platforms like WordPress. Once you get a hang of how a basic platform like BlogSpot works, moving to any other platform for blogging will be a cakewalk for you.
