Basic Blogger Tips: Why You Should NEVER Delete Redundant Blog Posts

Often regular bloggers find obsolete or redundant posts on their blog, and delete them to tidy the appearance. Today's Blogger tip explains why blog posts should never be fully deleted, and what you should do instead.

We all know what it's like. You publish a blog post when you're tired, upset, angry, drunk - or otherwise unable to judge the relevance or usefulness of the post - or you find an old post that is now completely irrelevant, or - worse still - totally inaccurate.

So, what do you do? You delete it, right?

No... This is a wrong move, and here's why: when you delete a blog post the url (web-page address) remains live, or active, and any search engine results or links posted elsewhere, by yourself or your readers, will pull up an error page.

This doesn't sound too bad, but actually it is. Search engines don't take kindly to error pages, and will rank your blog poorly if there are too many of them. Some search engines will fail to index a blog at all, if there are too many of these error pages.

So, what should you do instead? There are two options; one is to update or edit the post, making it relevant/accurate, or changing it to something entirely different. The other is to remove the content and replace it with a polite message explaining the page is no longer available. You needn't go into why, and a simple sentence or two will do. For example:

 "Unfortunately this page is no longer available. We apologise for any inconvenience."

In addition to the message, you could use also add links to similar posts, or those you believe will be relevant or interesting to any readers who've found their way to the post you've removed, which reduces your chances of losing readers. It also seems more professional than a blank page.

Whichever method you choose, you should remember to edit the labels or keywords, in addition to the blog post itself, as you don't want the search engines to register keyword spamming - that is, use of irrelevant keywords).

SEO Tricks: How To Add Meta-Tags to A Blogger Blog to Improve Page Ranking

This article will instruct you in how to add meta-tags to a Blogger blog, to help improve your page ranking. This is one of many great SEO tricks I'll be adding to the site over the coming weeks.

(If you don't want people to find your blog this article doesn't concern you, but for those who desire search engine traffic meta-tags are important.)

Meta-tags are hidden html elements (html is the name of the code used to create websites), that help search engines find and index websites and blogs, by providing information on their individual content. Meta-tags communicate to web-bots (the devices that trawl web-pages, searching for data) what type of content can be found on a site, to help determine whether or not it's relevant to specific search terms. Although meta-tags are not considered as important as they once were, if you have meta-tags you're more likely to feature in search engine results. This is obviously helpful to those wishing to promote a business, or to earn revenue from advertising. 

Unfortunately, while many web-services provide a simple way of adding meta-tags to web-pages, Blogger doesn't - which means you must create them and add them to your html code manually. This may sound complicated, but it's actually fairly simple - provided you add correctly formed code to the correct area in your html code (Blogger will reject improperly formed html). 

Before you go ahead and create your meta-tags you should understand some important points regarding how meta-tags must be formed in order to optimise your website, rather than being seen as spamming by robots.

• It's very important that you use the correct number of characters and words when creating meta-tags to improve page ranking, as using too many will have the opposite effect, thus lowering your ranking and, therefore, reducing traffic. 
• It's also imperative that you use relevant keywords in your meta-tags, and that no keyword is repeated more than three times. Choose keywords that are already used frequently in posts, in your blog description and title, and those in your url address IF relevant. Use a maximum of 200 characters and twenty keywords.
• The meta-tag description should be exactly that - NOT a list of keywords. Describe your blog accurately in a full sentence, with as few commas as possible, using a maximum of 150 characters. This description may appear below your link in search results, so you need to use it to provide accurate information, and to sell your blog to potential visitors by making it sound attractive/useful.

Before you begin adding meta-tags to a Blogger blog you should visit your Blogger dashboard, click on the 'layout' tab of the blog you wish to edit, and click on 'edit html.' You should now download a copy of your blog template as it is currently, in case you make any mistakes you can't rectify. Name the document 'template for (insert blog name here)' and add a number 1. You will no doubt be making further changes to your blog and backing up each template and numbering them in order will help you return your blog to any stage of its creation, should you ever wish to.

To create your meta-tags, simply copy the code from the image on the left into notepad or similar software (this is to remove any alterations in coding that occur when you copy it directly from the screen to your template), and enter your blog title, description, most important keywords, and other relevant personal details into the spaces indicated by three underscores inside brackets (___). Be sure to delete the underscores and brackets before saving, or the html code will be rejected by Blogger.

To create your meta-tags, simply copy the code from the image on the left into notepad or similar software (this is to remove any alterations in coding that occur when you copy it directly from the screen to your template), and enter your blog title, description, most important keywords, and other relevant personal details into the spaces indicated by three underscores inside brackets (___). Be sure to delete the underscores and brackets before saving, or the html code will be rejected by Blogger.

Now all you need to do is to copy your meta-tags and paste them directly underneath the first 'head' section in your html code. This is located very near the top of the code, and will appear on a single line, set several spaces in from the left, with an arrow on either side of the word (so is easily identifiable).

Paste/type the edited code directly beneath the word head (as shown in the image to the right - please click to enlarge) and press save. You have now successfully added meta-tags to your blogger blog home page!

If you experience any problems or are presented with an error screen please read the instructions again to make sure you didn't miss anything, or delete anything you shouldn't have. 

If you're still having problems leave a comment and I'll see what I can do - sometimes Blogger make changes to the system and this can cause errors.

SEO Tricks for Blogger: How To Choose Successful Blog Titles

Choosing a successful title for a blog post is a fine art that needs to be perfected quickly if you are to attract visitors and keep them on your site. Not only do you need to consider SEO (search engine optimisation) when choosing a title, but you also need to ensure it's interesting enough to make people click on your link over other people's, and to view more of your pages once they've landed on your site.

How to Choose Successful Blog Titles:

Successful titles must be informative, relevant to content, and should contain the most important keywords from your blog post. However, you shouldn't spam the title with unnecessary keywords, as this may go against your site's ranking, and will probably make little literary sense, thus potentially putting off prospective readers. Keep titles short, sweet, and to the point. Use the occasional relevant adjective (a descriptive word, such as 'successful,' as seen in the title of this blog post), or an exciting or unusual-sounding adjective to grab people's attention and encourage them to view your page/website.

When choosing a title, consider how likely it is that people will be searching for your title phrase and keywords, and expand upon it/them slightly, if necessary. For example, if I were to publish a blog post providing instructions in a new jewellery-making technique I'd created, with a name few people would know or search for, it would be sensible to title the post 'New Jewellery Making Technique: (Insert name of technique here), rather than simply naming the technique itself. Additionally, be sure to include the title phrase in your blog content at least once - more often if possible - but without interrupting the natural flow of the text. Also, use keywords from your title individually several times each during the text.

It's often a good idea to write an article using a title and keywords that are very specific and not often used. This increases your chances of appearing on the first page of search results, as there is less competition for those specific search terms. If you set up an Adwords account you are also able to check which are the most searched for keywords regarding your specific content, and to create keyword combinations using a tool. This can save an incredible amount of time. If you plan to publish many blog posts about the same topic (which is helpful for SEO) try to ensure each title is unique in some way.
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