Tuesday, July 13, 2010
1:01 AM | 
Posted by
Sunil Bhaskar |
This is one of the major drawbacks of the default blogger template.When you search for a query in a search engine,it should display the relevant search content first,then the blog or website title,Not the other way around.There are two reasons why this is a detrimental to your blog:
1)If a user's search string is too long,and it is relevant to your blog,then he will see only your blog title clearly,a big portion of your post title (the search query) will be truncated.For instance my search for online consumer complaints Irctc will return two different visuals as you can see below:
But this is wrong as you can very well see the post title is truncated,so the user might actually think that its irrelevant & its a spam(Google loves spam though).Can you spot the term Irctc there?The user wants posts related to Irctc.If he cant find any,do you expect him to enter your site?Definitely No!The final result you loose valuable traffic & clicks.Instead the right way to display the result should be like this:
Can you see the difference?If the user sees material relevant to him he will surely visit the site which is what required.So in short I can say that:
Now replace that line with this;
1)If a user's search string is too long,and it is relevant to your blog,then he will see only your blog title clearly,a big portion of your post title (the search query) will be truncated.For instance my search for online consumer complaints Irctc will return two different visuals as you can see below:
But this is wrong as you can very well see the post title is truncated,so the user might actually think that its irrelevant & its a spam(Google loves spam though).Can you spot the term Irctc there?The user wants posts related to Irctc.If he cant find any,do you expect him to enter your site?Definitely No!The final result you loose valuable traffic & clicks.Instead the right way to display the result should be like this:
Post title + Blog title = Traffic
Blog title + Post title = Diversion
2)The another major problem with this format is that it prevents Googlebots from indexing your site.Without indexing our blog or website will not feature in the Search engines.So its critical that we make a small change in the default blogger template.First headover to Layout►Edit Html►Tick on Expand Widgets and then search(ctrl+F) for <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>Now replace that line with this;
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "index"'>
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> ~ <data:blog.title/></title>
</b:if>
Now your final code should look like this:<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> ~ <data:blog.title/></title>
</b:if>
<head>
<b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "index"'>
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> ~ <data:blog.title/></title>
</b:if>
Well there you have it!You have just made lets say a very vital change in your blogger settings.Now just sit back & be amazed by the way googlebots scramble through your pages & finally you'll get listed in the Searches.Happy Blogging!
<b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "index"'>
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> ~ <data:blog.title/></title>
</b:if>
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