Blogger : Know your post editor

I had been using blogger for the past 3-4 years but its only about 6 months that I've identified and started using various elements and features of blogger post editor while posting the articles. I actually don't remember whether these features were provided by Google blogger before or not but I've been enjoying more posting in blogs since I noticed them as the posts looks nice and it adds SEO benefit as well.

If you take a look at the top-right of your post-editor just below the title area, there are 2 tabs:

1. Edit HTML:

Always try using this while posting articles when you are using blogger. Why to use "Edit HTML" for posting?

How to Create A Post or a Page in Blogger without Sidebar ?

How to display custom google search result on your own site when the minimum width required for search results is 795px and your post area is far too small? This question may have haunted you and thats probably the reason you are here.


Using this code, your power to customize the page is not just limited to just removing the sidebar from a specific page. A little understanding of the given code gives you the ability to remove any component from a specific post or page using css.

<b:if cond='data:blog.url== "url of the post or page"'><style type='text/css'>#sidebar {display:none !important}.post{width:150%;}</style></b:if>

The given code snippet removes the sidebar and expands your post area to 150% only in the page with url that replaces "url of the post or page" in the above code.

Insert the code given above between <head> and <b:skin>

Best SEO tips and tricks for Blogger Blogs

Google provides Blogging Platform but it doesn't provide good rankings in search results for granted. There are several SEO holes that you need to fill manually and other holes that you can't fill despite of your awareness due to the fact that you owe no proper control of your blog. Use the techniques listed below to improve the SERP of your blog.

Insert Meta Tags in Template

When you have a self hosted wordpress (wordpress.org), you can use various plugins one of which is All in one SEO plugin which automatically adds meta tags to each and every post and also inserts canonical url property in your theme but in blogger you need to do it manually.

Find this code in you template:

<head>
    <b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>

Copy the given code just below the code given above:

Alexa Ranking is not accurate, easily manipulable

Alexa is one of the leading Web statistics and comparison site in the Internet. It is accurate for the sites with High traffic but not for smaller or medium traffic sites. It can be easily influenced by a single person's use.
Alexa Ranking is taken as reference in Website worth, Website value calculation, Website ranking by Many other sites around the internet. But..

How is Alexa Ranking made? What is it Based on?
Alexa ranking system is based on data it collects from the millions of alexa tool bar users around the internet.
It calculated ranking based on Number of visitors using alexa toolbar, number of pageviews from them and time on site.
So if your website is getting a 10,000visitors but  only 10-20 use alexa toolbar you are likely to lag behind in the ranking to a Blog that receives 200 visitors per day with 50-60 viewers using alexa toolbar.
So I think it's rather irrelevant system.

Publish Your Blogger Blog On A Custom Domain

The flexibility that Blogger.com provides as a blogging platform is the key to its success in internet with over more than 60% bloggers using it to publish their blog. Although wordpress.com blogs possess SEO advantages over blogger.com, the features that blogger provides for free have always kept me away from wordpress.com. Blogger enbles you to brand your blogspot with a custom domain while wordpress.com charges some amount to provide this feature. Read more about the comparison here. 

2 Options for Custom Domain:

• Root level domain: eg.: abc.com
• Sub-domain: eg.: xyz.abc.com

Advantages of Custom Domain Over Blogspot subdomain:

• For the same content and position in search results for website with blogspot.com and .com, people prefer later one.
• People tend to respect sites with custom domain (both root level and subdomain) more than those with blogspot.com.

Blogger or Wordpress : Which one to choose?

Among the several free blogging platforms available these days, Blogger.com (Blogspot) and Wordpress.com are the 2 most popular ones. I have never felt a need to try any other free blog hosting service, besides these platforms. Let us now compare the various features of blogger.com and wordpress.com including their pros and cons (Blogger vs Wordpress).

Features	Blogspot	Wordpress
Templates and Design	Blogger now possess extremely powerful template designer. Besides you can use and edit the thousands of free templates available in the internet as per your taste.