The Real Blogger Status

Your blog depends upon traffic for its success - and similar to custom domain migration, will suffer a period of lower search related traffic, while being upgraded to HTTPS. Larger blogs get better search reputation, all other details being equal. While your blog is being reindexed, after you enable "HTTPS Redirect", you will have a blog with two different base URLs - and both URLs will reference two smaller blogs, and have lower search reputation. All posts in your blog will not be reindexed under an HTTPS URL, immediately. Some posts will remain indexed under the HTTP URL, as others are re indexed under the HTTPS URL, one by one. While being reindexed, your blog will look like two smaller blogs - and both URLs will suffer from lowered search reputation.

Some blog owners speak / write in multiple languages - and want to interact with their different readers, separately, in each different language. Blogger, and Google, support the need for publishing multiple blogs, each written in a different language. The "hreflang" tag, added to a blog, identifies other blogs, published to different languages, with identical or similar content.

Making a blog searchable is the first step in getting search traffic, and readers, for our blogs - when we want them visible to the public. Not all blog owners want their blogs visible to everybody. Complementing the ability to publish a blog, and have it visible only to invited readers, Blogger gives us the ability to make the blog invisible, to the search engines. If we want readers for a blog, and do not have a private reader audience in mind, we first make it visible to the search engines.

Many blog owners want the legendary wealth, from publishing a Blogger blog, and adding AdSense ads. Not everybody understands the AdSense review process - and the fact that "Congratulations!" is only the beginning .

Some blog owners, who publish multiple blogs with different subjects, may decide that some subjects would be better discussed in a different blog. With various posts published in one blog, the owner may decide that those posts should be published in a different blog, to continue discussion. The question now is how to move posts, from one blog to another? The dashboard "Export / Import" feature, which is now labeled "Import & back up" , lets us copy pages and posts from one blog to another. Just copying all pages and posts, though, will create problems with duplicated content.

Knowing how to read, and follow, sitemap entries is a useful skill in diagnosing many Blogger problems. The Blogger generated sitemaps, which apply to each blog, index both pages and posts. This blog, like every other blog, has two sitemaps, automatically generated . " sitemap.xml " (posts) roughly duplicates the "Archives" gadget - but has advantages, over the gadget. " sitemap-pages.xml " (static pages) is not redundant, to any Blogger accessory.

Some blog owners use FaceBook or Google+, and share blog posts - and ask what effect sharing and +1 / Like has , on search reputation. What is the purpose of getting +1's? The search engines most likely have no special processing, for social action like +1s and Likes - but indexing of content will include social shared content, and notifications of +1s and Likes, from FaceBook and Google+. A blog post, shared or given a +1, will become part of a Google+ stream - similar to a Blogger blog comment, that is Google+ hosted . The search engines index Google+ stream posts, as they index blogs. There will be similar action from FaceBook content.

One hot Internet topic, these days, involves specialised ("vanity") domains. The hot names seem to change, by the week. This week, enom is hyping ".family", ".live", ".rocks", and ".social" . Other registrars may have other recommendations. The blog Address (Name) is a key blog identity element , in a well designed blog. It's visible both to people, and to search engine crawlers. The requirement that addresses must be unique is a supposed benefit of vanity top level domains - but vanity TLDs, alone, will not provide blog uniqueness. There will always be competition for some names, in any useful Top Level Domain.

Some blog owners do not completely understand the concept of meta description, vs meta keywords - and how blog search reputation can be affected. We see occasional questions, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . I know how to enter meta info on each blog post under the Search Description field - but do I have to put all permutations of a subject in the Search Description? Here, we see the possibility of unintended "keyword stuffing", and degraded search engine reputation.

Some blog owners setup a blog - then a social media account or two - and immediately, start advertising each new blog post in social media. Later checking Google and other search engines, they find that the blog is now indexed - but the index entries point through the FaceBook, Google+, and / or Twitter posts. The blog, under "blogspot.com", is nowhere to be found, in any SERP entry . Not everybody realises that Blogger promises anonymity , when properly setup - and that anonymity comes with a price .

Besides optimizing post content , to make the blog easier to read and encourage readers to remain. you have a similar task in optimizing the blog structure. The posts content is what people read, when they are in the blog. The blog structure is what you similarly need to optimize, to get people into the blog.

Along with consistently using Jump Break, properly sizing and wording of important post sections can make the blog pages neater, and easier to read. You see my opening paragraph, above. Sizing and wording of important post sections, such as the opening paragraph, helps make the main page layout more consistent - and gives a slightly more professional look to the blog. And, a cleaner and more consistent page layout, to complement a carefully structured blog , encourages readers to read more of the blog.

We see an occasional question about search indexing, and visitor activity, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . How do I find out what search queries are used, to bring my new readers, to my blog? This owner is thinking about how to get more traffic - the right way. You can use the Stats - Traffic sources dashboard page, and examine the top 10 Search Keywords, used to find your blog. Depending upon how large and popular your blog is - and what browser your readers use - you may or may not find out as much as you would think, however.

Several owners of large blogs (500 posts and up) are reporting problems with indexing, in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue . I have over 2500 posts, in my blog. Each sitemap page, which should contain 500 posts, shows only 150 posts. This reduces my indexed posts tremendously! This blog owner did nothing to cause this problem. Upon investigation, we have discovered that both blogs using the classic feed based sitemap , and the current automatically generated sitemap , are missing sitemap contents, equally.

Blog owners use many techniques for getting new readers - and for keeping existing readers happy. Some blog owners use techniques which work inconsistently, because they are not designed to work the way they are being used. Some blog owners becomes concerned when their blogs, listed in blogrolls on other peoples blogs, don't seem to be updated as regularly as they would expect. Blogrolls are good tools for getting new readers, in a casual manner. They may not be as good, for predictable, scheduled visitor activity.

We see new blog owners ask the obvious question, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger . How do I help people Follow my blog? There are several tools for community building , or Following - and different people will make different choices, which to use. The choices depend upon the community that any blog serves - and the purposes for following .

Long ago, Google provided Google BlogSearch, as one a way of surfing the blogosphere . One of the challenges of using BlogSearch was that we were never sure what we were surfing. Some people wanted to see only "blogspot.com" published Blogger blogs - and other people wanted to see all Blogger blogs, including those not published to "blogspot.com". Some ingenious blog owners published "Blogger blogs" of doubtful integrity, simply using the URL of "blogspot.com" - and people accepted such blogs as righteous, simply because Blog Search would list them in a search page.

Occasionally, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger , we see a blog owner who wishes to use static pages for blog content - and wants the blog visible, in search hit lists. I set up search gadgets for my blog - but have noticed that the search only seems to work with posts. How do I make my pages searchable? The blog owner does not understand the original reason for having static pages . Many blog owners use static pages for content viewable by visitors - but intentionally not indexed, by search engines.

Some blog owners use Blogger, as a lightweight website platform. A normal Blogger blog consists of posts, which are published as dynamic pages. Static pages, used in a normal blog, are extra content - that's typically hidden from direct view, and intentionally not indexed by the search engines . A website, on the other hand, will typically use static pages as content. Static pages, by default, are not used as blog content.

Abuse / Malware / Spam classification of Blogger blogs - and the inevitable bogus fuzzy classification - has been a part of Blogger life, for several years. Recently, we explored known effects of bogus classification, upon reader and search engine reputation. It's not a pretty picture - but it's also not likely to go away, as long as abusive persons, such as spammers , operate in the Internet world. Owners of blogs spuriously classified are not likely to be very objective - but we cannot avoid reality.