Improve Your Google Rankings in One Easy Step

Posted: Friday, January 9th, 2009 | Author: David

seo your website Having a top rank in Google is the holy grail for anyone who has a website. Organic Google traffic is free advertising and how most bloggers (especially those just starting out) achieve visitors and traffic to their site. It all comes down to a simple numbers game. Essentially, more traffic = more money-making opportunities from your blog. The question is, how do you get ranked higher for my blog posts using Blogger?

Before I tell you how, let me give you a quick lesson is search engine optimization (aka SEO). There are two main components: “off-page” and “on-page” optimization. “Off-page” SEO refers to tactics such as link building. The more websites that point their links to your blog/website, the better. It’s a democratic way of showing Google that your site must be important if lots of people are pointing to it. Even more important with “off-page” inbound links is the actual link text (anchor text) that is used to point to your site.

Here’s my proof. If you search Google for the term “click here” you’ll see that Adobe Reader and Apple’s Quicktime software are in the top 3 results. Why? Because so many other sites are linking to these two sites with “click here” as the anchor text to download their software. That’s the power of “off-page” SEO which you as a blogger can’t do much about besides writing such great unique content that generates lots of links.

So with “on-page” SEO you have complete control over how well you’re optimized for Google. This includes keywords in your post titles, title tags, using header tags (h1, h2) and other tactics. Now the one we’re going to focus on in this article is the blog title tag.

Title tags are one of the most (if not the most) important “on-page” elements to ranking high in Google. Search engines such as Google weigh the importance of each word in the title from left to right. So ideally you want your blog post title all the way to the left and your actual blog name to the right. Below is a perfect example of how this should look. You can also check out our Premium Revolution Template which is currently using this technique as well.

blogger seo title

Blogger templates by default don’t come with search engine optimized (SEO) title tags meaning you aren’t maximizing your blog to rank better in Google. If you take a look at your existing Blogger title you’ll see that blogger displays the blog name first then followed by your post title. They have it backwards so let’s get your blog setup properly.

We’re going to have to make a quick edit to your Blogger template which might intimidate some of you but it’s very small and painless. All I ask you to do first is to backup your template just in case you make a boo boo. That makes it easy to revert back without much headache.

Step #1

In your Blogger dashboard, go to “Layout” => “Edit HTML”.

Step #2

In the template code, do a search for this: <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>. It’s usually in the first 5-10 lines of code in your template near the top.

Step #3

Replace that bit of code with the following code:
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "index"'> <title><data:blog.title/></title> <b:else/> <title><data:blog.pageName/> | <data:blog.title/></title> </b:if>

Step #4

Save your template and go back to your blog. Click into any individual post and look at the page title.

All your blogger posts are now much better optimized to rank higher in Google. I’m not going to promise you a night and day difference but you’ve taken a step in the right direction. Now just go post unique high quality content so people searching Google will find your blog first!

Ready to super charge your blog? Check out our professional premium blogger templates or make money by joining our blog affiliate program!

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526 Responses to “Improve Your Google Rankings in One Easy Step”

Nourfadly on Jan 21, 2009, 4:39 pm

Yes!! Its work fine with my site…thank you so much for this great tips!

iklangede on Jan 21, 2009, 11:58 pm

So much thanks to your article , that make me know what is traffic, how to get good rank, thanks a lot.

rita on Jan 23, 2009, 3:12 am

Thank you for your post. The code worked like a charm.

ttnet on Jan 23, 2009, 4:13 am

Thanks you very much. This is very cool !

Home Biss on Jan 24, 2009, 11:07 am

Not entirely true. This trick would have no significant impact on Google but it might help bloggers get some extra SEO juices from other search engines.

Anji on Jan 25, 2009, 6:08 am

Much useful article for webmasters
by
http://www.capitalrider.com

heny on Jan 25, 2009, 3:22 pm

nice,,i have made change,

Gaurav on Jan 25, 2009, 11:33 pm

Yeah mate I Will Going To Try It Now ThanKs For it

My Blog: http://www.askgaurav.blogspot.com

Casie Stewart on Jan 27, 2009, 12:50 pm

Wooooooooooooot! Worked great! Thanks a million.

Check it out: http://www.casiestewart.com

Manoj Kumar on Jan 28, 2009, 12:13 am

Thanks for nice info, I have replaced my blog codes provided by you. to

http://trafficneed.blogspot.com

shaju on Jan 29, 2009, 11:06 am

<b:if cond=’data:blog.pageType ==

shaju on Jan 29, 2009, 11:07 am

"index"’><d

lennymauricio on Jan 29, 2009, 2:10 pm

i get the same error message as rafi…

template-blog on Jan 29, 2009, 7:02 pm

I will try this tutorial, thanks

Jon on Jan 30, 2009, 8:43 am

I am also getting the same problem

Faizan Puri on Jan 30, 2009, 11:54 am

@rafi hey m geting the same eror as rafi
plz guys help me out!!

the error is

We were unable to save your template
Please correct the error below, and submit your template again.
Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure all XML elements are closed properly.
XML error message: Open quote is expected for attribute “{1}” associated with an element type “cond”.

Thnx in advance

Kendra on Jan 30, 2009, 4:45 pm

I got:

Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure all XML elements are closed properly.
XML error message: Open quote is expected for attribute “{1}” associated with an element type “cond”.

Juan on Jan 30, 2009, 6:14 pm

Hi!
Tank you I´m going to try it, let you know if it works to me.

marta on Feb 1, 2009, 9:02 pm

This doesn’t work on mine….keep getting the ‘not parsed right” error…

I’d love to be able to use this…I always have problems adding stuff so this isn’t a big surprise lol

n75focus on Feb 2, 2009, 9:45 am

Great Tip. I have used it in my blog. Thanks

– unixfoo.blogspot.com

BMA on Feb 2, 2009, 10:32 pm

This is very useful. I’ve changed the code in my blog: http://www.adsformoney.info/

Lena on Feb 4, 2009, 5:32 pm

I’ve put in the code raffi made, it worked but now it says there is a template error:LHS of numeric is null before 19 in data:blog.pageTypehttp://relativefinder.blogspot.com

Leonid on Feb 5, 2009, 11:58 pm

David, it does not work on my blog. http://www.turdesant.blogspot.com
Is that tip appropriate for non-latin charters, as I use cyrillic for articles headers?

faizan puri on Feb 6, 2009, 1:31 am

hey guys m still getin this eror..help me guys!!

ahmad on Feb 6, 2009, 5:51 am

I agreed that title tags are one of the most elements to ranking high in Google because got a lot of traffic from Google after do this tweak

ahmad on Feb 6, 2009, 5:52 am

*most important

Rick on Feb 6, 2009, 1:52 pm

it doesnt work for me I get the error

Please correct the error below, and submit your template again.
Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure all XML elements are closed properly.
XML error message: Open quote is expected for attribute “{1}” associated with an element type “cond”.

Do i replace

with

tores18 on Feb 6, 2009, 5:08 pm

it work….
thanx…

medicate yourself daily on Feb 7, 2009, 2:13 pm

good article

Faizan Puri on Feb 8, 2009, 7:20 am

hey plz guys help me out!!m still getin eror while uploading or editing template….

OBFOREX on Feb 11, 2009, 8:51 pm

Hello,
Really Appreciate for your effort David !
Just implemented “all your tutorial” in my blog, and made some modification for my blog : http://www.obforex.com.
Hope it will be better after that. Thanks for your great work.

Thanks

Joevel Cabrera on Feb 11, 2009, 9:10 pm

Thanks a lot bro! I made it on the 5th times I tried when you posted the correct code.Hope this will work.

Thanks a lot and more success!

jonvex

Paulista on Feb 12, 2009, 2:21 am

Thanks for this. Used it in my blogs and it works.
For some reason i can’t seem to get my blog indexed properly but this sure is a step in the right direction.

http://www.elektroniikkakaupat.com/

Had some other issues with dublicate titles etc. Man blogger is actually hard work to get working properly.

Thanks mate

Zandormaz on Feb 16, 2009, 3:51 pm

Nice trick… Thank you

Techii on Feb 20, 2009, 1:57 am

Thanks a lot for your help. I hope it will help me a lot to get more traffic to my blog I My Ideas

Ragnar on Feb 20, 2009, 5:45 am

Thanks for this one. I used this on my site too.Keep on posting!

joe comp on Feb 20, 2009, 10:16 am

this is good information that i read here.thank you very much.i have to try to change with another template hehehe 😀

Hashim on Feb 21, 2009, 2:56 am

Well even I was experiencing the same issue as others.. then I tried the code posted by David [reply no 29]… it worked fine.. but just tht it showed “” on the page.. then I edited the same by removing , tas from the code and it worked fine..

just for ur info.. the following is the code tht actually worked for me..

ppl who are experiencing the following issue can giv a shot with the above code since it worked for me..

Chanaka on Feb 21, 2009, 5:17 am

Nice Article, I have implemented it on my MP3 blog,

Currently my Google page rank is 1.

Best GPS on Feb 21, 2009, 6:55 am

Awesome technique.
I will do it in my blog.
Thanks.

lenny mauricio on Feb 21, 2009, 8:16 pm

still cant figure it out 🙁

lenny mauricio on Feb 22, 2009, 3:42 pm

yesssssssssssssss it worked!!!! House Music Blog

http://www.publicityrelationships.com

Technology Blog on Feb 25, 2009, 6:47 pm

It’s Not working, i’m also getting the error.

Mohit on Feb 25, 2009, 7:00 pm

David although the code in step3 that is..

is working fine but it shows before the Title of the blog in all the pages. Anyidea how to do that?

Gilsner on Feb 27, 2009, 2:13 pm

Hi David… thanks for this! I, too, was getting the same error as Raffi, Meri and Technology. All I had to do to fix it was replace the &apos in the first line with ‘ and it worked beautifully. So instead of:

put
(David used this format in a Jan 11th response, you can cut/paste it from there if you’d like)

I’d Rather Be A Smartass

Gilsner on Feb 27, 2009, 2:33 pm

Mohit… just take the data:blog.title tag (and the | ) out of the else statement. So the 4th line would be:
!title$ !data:blog.pageName/$ !/title$

*Note: I’ve replaced the brackets so I could display it… you’ll have to replace ! with
PS… David, how would I write code in my comments, so they get displayed, not executed? (I messed up my first post, doh!)

Ron on Feb 27, 2009, 4:41 pm

Guys, i need help, it wont work on my blog!!!

Ron on Feb 27, 2009, 4:47 pm

Oh, I resolved it my self. 🙂

vijay on Mar 4, 2009, 3:55 pm

thanks a lot….it worked. I never realized that. thanks a lot, again. keep up the good work.

Dark Shadow on Mar 4, 2009, 9:49 pm

Thanks for the useful info, u may visit me for amazing stuffs.