Blogging is cool. Isn’t it? Tonnes of blogging tips can be found today on the internet. Just a mere Google search will let you access these tips freely. Now talking more about these blogging tips, today I am here to share a few very essential tips for those blogging on Goggle Blogspot. I came across these tips very recently and find it worth sharing to my readers. Just a quick note, these tips are meant for the Blogspot users not the WordPress users. While one of the tips deals with the usage of newly added SEO features in Google Blogger, the other tips let you know how to have a better control over your Blogspot blog through minor tweaking in the blogger template.

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So, here are the tips which every Google Blogger user must know  -

Prevent your blogger images from being pinned

Pinterest is currently the hottest social network on the web. The site is fast catching up with the  other popular social networks like facebook and twitter. Now for those having their accounts on Pinterest must be knowing that Pinterest is a place to showcase pictures, images or graphics. Either you can share your pictures by adding a link from the web or you can even upload your images or graphics and share with your fellow pinners.

Anyone is free to share anything and everything provided it doesn’t violate Pinterest terms and conditions, which has been revamped very recently to make it look more legal and effective. Now, it hasn’t concerned me a lot but maybe few of you might be concerned of the fact that what if I don’t want my blogger images to be shared or pinned on Pinterest. Is there any way to prevent the same from happening as I am very serious regarding copyright infringement..!

Well, there is a way out for the same. To avoid your blogger images from being pinned, just add the following piece of code in your blogger template.

Add the above code to section of your blogger template code. Make sure you have the backup copy of the template before making any changes. Add it and save the final template. Now if anyone tries to pin your image to the Pinterest, an error message will popup -

stop_pining

The above message ensures all your images are prevented from being pinned. Try testing it yourself..!

Prevent Blogger blog redirection to country specific urls

This again is an issue with those blogging on blogspot platform. All blogger blogs hosted on blogspot domain are now redirected to country specific domains. For example, if you are trying to access blog abc.blogspot.com from India, the blogger will automatically redirect you to abc.blogspot.in. Same happens from any other country like Australia, Japan, etc…You will be automatically redirected to country specific domains. You may not like it but Google has implemented this a few months back just to make it easy to block any blog or a page in a blog in a country but still making it accessible in other countries. This is being seen as a selective censorship from Google.

Anyways, Google might be happy with all these but bloggers shouldn’t be. Redirection to country specific domains have certain disadvantages as mentioned below.

  • The social stats from your blog are most likely to be diluted as the urls for the same story will be shown different to different visitors from different countries
  • The same problem occurs if third party commenting systems are used like those from disqus or facebook comments.
  • Failure to implement a proper canonicalization may cost some Google juice as people may start linking to country specific pages.
Now looking at the disadvantages above, it has now become must for bloggers to get rid of this redirection to country specific domains. And is very easy with just a few lines of code to be added to your blogger template. Add the code mentioned below in the section of your blogger template code. Make sure you have the backup of the template first before making any changes -

This simple script parses the domain name (document.location.hostname) of your blog page and if it includes a country-specific URL (like blogspot.in), it will force-redirect the visitor to the blogspot.com address.

The above script has been tested out by me. It works without any problem…!

Making use of Google advanced SEO features

Well, I think Google Blogger is now getting fully ready to compete with WordPress. Atleast, I have to say the same after looking at some very recent additions made to the blogger. The latest in the offering is some cool SEO features which I feel is late to arrive but nevertheless it is a welcome move from the blogger team. These SEO features are very easy to understand for any blogger and I have started making use of the same to make my blogging more effective in the long run. To start with, you can now add a search description for your blog. The search description for your blog will appear same as it is in the search results. To make use of this feature, check out your Blogger Settings. You will find a new option under it – Search Preferences. Click on the same to start playing with the SEO features. The below screenshot gives an idea of the same.

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SEO for Google Blogger

And to add to it, Google has a done a great thing by extending its SEO functionality to the blog posts. Just like adding a description for your blog, you can now add a description for your individual posts as shown below -

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SEO for Blog Posts

And another good thing to happen with blogger is an option to make your links “nofollow”. This was not there earlier but now it is seen whenever any link is added to any text while writing a blog post. Below is a screenshot of this new feature -

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Define a dofollow or nofollow link

Well, now you can do a lot more than you would have imagined in the past. Blogger is surely getting better and better with time. Glad I have been blogging on the same for all these years. Honestly, I feel I have nothing to lose. People may brag about being a WordPress user but time has come when things are getting balanced with Google now getting heavier on sites which have been making use of extraordinary SEO tips and tricks to rank well. I will be out with a post on the same topic very soon. For the time being, I am leaving you with these vital tips as explained above….Hope you like it. Please do share your thoughts if any…!