I started my blog on Blogspot about a month ago. Since then, I have learned a lot and wish I would have known what I know when I started. I want to share a few tips in this thread. 1. Register a custom domain right away. If you are serious about your blog, you should register a domain name. First, people aren't going to remember most .blogspot addresses. Second, using your own domain provides more future flexibility. If you want to move to wordpress or another platform, you can keep the same address and just change the underlying page. This is very helpful for link building and other SEO strategies. If you are spending a lot of time link building, then it would suck if you had a ton of links to a .blogspot address and decided you wanted a custom domain or wanted to move to wordpress. 2. Edit your theme or design before you go live. This was another mistake I made. First, I think it important to have a custom template that distinguishes your blog from other blogspot blogs. However, when I started on blogspot, I spent the majority of my time editing the layout and learning how to modify themes. This caused me to neglect the actual posting of content, which is the cornerstone of any good blog. Also, if you are modifying the theme of an existing blogspot blog, it is helpful to start a new blog just for editing the theme. Then once you have a perfect theme, you can transfer the code from this test blog to your original blog. 3. Determine Category/Label Names Most bloggers suggest having about 15 categories/labels or less that organize your posts. When I started blogging, I basically had a category for each post. This method was OK, until I had more and more posts. Then, I needed a category system to effectively label these posts. The problem with changing labels, is if Google has already indexed your page. I think google loves these category titles for indexing. In my stats, I see a large amount of search traffic being directed to label url address (if you click on the label in blogspot you will be directed to a page that has a custom url defined partially by the name of the label). Now if you change the label name, then your the previously indexed label pages that people are finding through Google will link to an empty blogger page. I assume this problem will correct itself over time, but it would be a good idea to have predetermined labels before posting to avoid this problem. Check out online dictionaries in your niche for good ways to categorize your posts. I am not an expert and have only been blogging for about a month, but I think these are some useful tips for new blogspot bloggers that aren't frequently discussed.
Good suggestion buddy..As such there is some changes in blogger.com Recently blogger has introduced robots.txt file, so label pages will not be indexed in search engines. But still deciding the labels before posting is a good idea. I would like to add more suggestions in the list. 4) try to edit template code to add meta data for the blog.
5) Keep posting and posting and posting... (hehehe... im working it on my blog, too! Knowing that it will pay off one day...)
im focused on building content for mine right now, but translating my existing site design into this template is looking... well .. tricky to say the least. Anyone have any tips on doing that part?
For template help, you could try posting your questions at bloggerforum.com. There are some people on that forum that can help you with coding problems. Also, you could check out some of the free templates made by others. The resource section of blogcrowds.com has good blogger templates.
Some more tips Remove Nav Bar Change Blogs Favicon Easy Adsense Integration Social Bookmarking icons under each of your post
I'd like to emphasize #4, good call arpitagarwal82 If I can throw in my 2 cents: -Adding a Statcounter (www.statcounter.com) to your website can be great fun. It lets you know how many people are visiting your site, what links they're following to get there, what search engine words are used to reach your site, the country of your visitors, as well as their browser/screen resolution/etc. This information is really interesting (imo) even if you don't plan on using these statistics to help promote your blog. The service is free, and doesn't install any malware on you or your visitor's computers. -They don't call it the Blogosphere for nothing; get involved in the community, comment on other blogs, get to know other writers, create a blogroll full of links. Don't bug others for a linkback; just link to them and wait for good karma. @mwgr5: With respect to your point #1, I've always been curious about how exactly to go about this using blogspot. Since Google is hosting the pages, is the domain name free? or perhaps just cheap? How would one go about doing this? If you could reply with either your own experience, or a link to a site that details the process, I would very much appreciate it .
Should have gone ahead and Google'd this myself beforehand, no need to answer those questions (forum won't let me edit my post for whatever reason) I'd still be curious to hear about your own experiences using Blogger with a custom domain though, if you'd care to share them.
While It is difficult to determine the exact effect of using the custom domain I think it has done the following. First, I noticed my direct traffic has increased. I am sure it is easier to remember a 2 word custom domain then the blong .blogspot address. Also, I think having a custom domain is just a good long-term idea. If you want to change blogging platforms, you can and you won't lose page rank or visitors. Also, you could eventually sell the custom domain that has many backlinks. You can't really sell a blogspot domain.
I agree with the last option though all options are good enough to be done. I am looking the bookmarking icons plugins for my blog.
u using wordpress. i think its easy to get such widgets 4 WP (its difficult to get more widgets 4 blogger)