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”

Vanessa on Nov 8, 2009, 5:28 pm

Don’t know what I am doing wrong but it’s giving me this error message: 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”.

Help please!

joemtsi on Nov 9, 2009, 8:54 am

Thanks! This is great..

James on Nov 10, 2009, 10:26 pm

I used the technique for my blog Expert SEO Servicesreally it works.

jaan on Nov 15, 2009, 8:04 pm

nice technique

derrick on Nov 18, 2009, 6:06 am

hey works fine

new on Nov 19, 2009, 1:10 am

any one check that because i added this few month before bt my page ranking is same

Laurent on Nov 19, 2009, 6:27 am

Hi!
I have the same issue as Vanessa with the following error message
XML error message: Open quote is expected for attribute “{1}” associated with an element type “cond”.

Can anyone help?

weezy on Nov 23, 2009, 6:52 am

Thanks so much, always looking for ways to optimize my blog to get the most results – keep the tips coming please!
http://earnmoneythroughinternetblog.blogspot.com/

Harshit on Nov 23, 2009, 12:55 pm

This trick is not working for my blogger blog.
Check out opening every post , i did the same thing as mentioned here. But no result reflect. Let me know what should I do.

RonZy on Nov 24, 2009, 6:47 am

Hi! This isn’t workin for my blog either. The thing is that i have a template design, and the title of my blog is displaying just “RonZys” not the title of the first post. dont know wat to do. Thnx!

Tess Smith on Nov 27, 2009, 12:18 pm

Hi! Very useful tips for the newbies. Thanks!

Eric Smith on Nov 27, 2009, 4:05 pm

your captica thing is more like an I got you thing it doesn’t work

Info hot on Nov 27, 2009, 9:28 pm

its veri noce for incrase google and other seach engine

joek on Nov 28, 2009, 1:35 pm

Thanks for the great tip. I sure can use it site.

Sahil ZAC on Nov 29, 2009, 10:28 am

please help me…
when i Replaced the code and saved it i got this Message
“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”.”
Can u Help me…

Anne Lyken-Garner on Dec 4, 2009, 11:38 am

Mine wouldn’t save. I got the same message as Sahil ZAC above.

Vinod Kumar on Dec 6, 2009, 4:16 am

Thanks for writing good contents . Its ok , I have applied and got same as your mention result

awanasta on Dec 6, 2009, 10:57 pm

good info thks

Joudie Kalla on Dec 9, 2009, 4:55 pm

Thank you for that. i hope it works. Will let you know. Please check out my blog for food recipes…..

http://joudiekalla.blogspot.com

🙂

aryo on Dec 11, 2009, 7:23 am

Astaga.com Lifestyle On The Net I Love this Information, Thanks David

dedden on Dec 11, 2009, 8:07 am

nice info..thanks for share, i will try

Apa Sih Asyiknya belajar SEO ?

Rian Fitri Nugraha on Dec 14, 2009, 6:19 pm

I like it..i’m waiting for your next info

koming on Dec 15, 2009, 7:53 pm

thank’s for your info

barahona06 on Dec 16, 2009, 2:16 am

thanks,,http://hackeandoelblog.blogspot.com/

venkatesh on Dec 16, 2009, 5:13 pm

thanks it really works but it took its time

ahmad on Dec 16, 2009, 11:10 pm

this tip is not working for me, when i try to save the template, this error occurs

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”.

kindly solve my problem

Ninad on Dec 18, 2009, 12:47 pm

Thanks for this article ….

I have tried this ……..i found it very easy and fruitful to me……..thanks a lot

Dominique on Dec 19, 2009, 10:08 pm

Hi – Your articles have been a God send! Thank you so much for writing them and for the visual aids! I completed this assignment but my url is not changing. Everything in the template looks just as you picture shows, yet when I click on the 1 post I have (I am just getting it ready to launch on Jan. 1, 2010) my blog name comes up first and then the blog title. Is it because I have my own domain name? Could you help me fix it? Thank you.

Dominique

henriwijaya on Dec 20, 2009, 2:46 am

Really nice info.Thx.

Del on Dec 20, 2009, 6:36 pm

Hi, I tried this and it didn’t work. This came out:

Help!

Techdload on Dec 21, 2009, 12:22 am

thanks for this tip. I will implement it on my blog now.

$DRG$ on Dec 21, 2009, 3:48 am

thankz for the info it was really cool hope it workz,

ahmad sutan on Dec 21, 2009, 10:20 pm

Nice info, thanks

John on Dec 23, 2009, 8:12 pm

At the moment I am building a new blog that I want to test out a few different strategies on. I think i will try the strategy that you have provided above. The problem I have found with alot of blogs in my space is the irrelevant information.

Vantage

fatihbulut on Dec 24, 2009, 2:26 am

this code doesnt work with XML, can you correct it?

Click Soft on Dec 25, 2009, 6:34 am

good article thank youfor this

Eric from France on Dec 28, 2009, 2:21 pm

Hello

yeahhhhh

There was so long time that I was looking for the solution

Thank’s a lot

A very Good job, and usefull post

Best regards

sansae1 on Dec 29, 2009, 5:05 pm

Finally, a question to my question to up the ranking of of my blog.

mehwish on Jan 1, 2010, 11:17 pm

thanx for the info

Kristan Franco on Jan 2, 2010, 7:54 pm

thanks! seems like all of use here is niching huh? hahaha

SEO Backlinks on Jan 2, 2010, 8:15 pm

Great tips… this tips realy will be increasing our search engine ranking.. thanks so much.

benehalfirman on Jan 9, 2010, 2:34 am

If I use wordpress template, its same way I should do like this ?? Thank for you articles…

noki on Jan 10, 2010, 10:37 am

yah….its very great tip
THANKS……!

Vincenzo Milanese on Jan 10, 2010, 8:13 pm

Good tip. I will edit my blog site.

term ppaper guide on Jan 15, 2010, 1:49 am

Thank for shared nice trip &trick you are saying right now i will use trip our site.

Colin on Jan 15, 2010, 4:02 am

Sorry to say I’m the odd one out. I have replaced the code as outlined but page title sequence remains as before. Any suggestions David?

Awaris on Jan 17, 2010, 1:32 am

All I get is an error message, like a few people here already said…
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 â��{1}â�� associated with an element type â��condâ��.

Tech Maish on Jan 18, 2010, 10:14 am

Woo Thanks for this great article.

Maria on Jan 23, 2010, 6:26 am

I am seeing a few people have the same error code I am getting:

But, noone has commented back to help fix it, please tell me what is needed to fix this.

Maria 🙂

ratnesh on Jan 25, 2010, 10:18 am

yes , i m having the same problem MARIA,
I GUESS THIS CODE DOESNT SUPPORT XML.

HELO DAVID , CAN U PLS HELP.????