To Do's - Before And After Publishing A Post On Blogger

Hi friends, I would like to share my to do list with you which I feel, will drive more traffic as well as improve the SEO of your blog. I'm not sure whether my techniques are right but, I guarantee that you will see a change in the rankings on the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc... If you are aiming to make money by blogging, then I highly recommend you have a to do list for every article you write.

Apart from writing unique content and providing the best about a topic, I suggest you to have a simple to do list as mentioned in this post. I would like to make myself clear with the idea behind this post. It's not any where related to content (say an article with a to do list that tells how to write your article more effectively) - rather, it deals with few simple practices related to coding and spreading your article to make the best of out of your content.

1. EQUIP YOURSELF (OPTIONAL)

The first and foremost thing you need to ensure before you publish a post on your blog is to ask yourself this question - Do I have the right tool for the right job? This includes the images or videos on your post and the tools to optimize them as well - say, for example, Adobe Photoshop. I highly recommend you to attach at least one image per post because apart from attracting people to read the post, images convey better meaning than the words do.

I'm sure few might contradict with my point about a minimum of one image per post. To those contradict, just read the following comparison. I would compare a post without image to an editorial page on "The Hindu". Though it is rich with content, only few people have the patience to read them where as, a post with image would be like the first page/sport's page - quickly captures our heart and pushes our mind to read the article.

2. OPTIMIZE YOUR IMAGES (RECOMMENDED)

I'm sure many would do the first step that I mentioned above. That's the basic one! Next, optimizing your images for SEO. This is one of the most important step that every newbie should follow. I know that the pro's would already be doing this. I strongly recommend you to read the following article if do not know how to optimize your images for SEO - 3 Tips To Make Your Images SEO Friendly. It will drive traffic from images and improve your blog rankings on search engines. Forgot to mention that I usually smush my images before I upload them on blogger - to improve the speed of your blogger blog (Speed Up Your Blog - Tips And Tools).

3. OPTIMIZE YOUR LINKS (RECOMMENDED)

This is another important that should be done when you publish on blogger. When you include a link on your post, the default coding on blogger is such that the link opens the new page on the existing page. That is, when people click on the link, they move to new page while your blog becomes inaccessible - it does not open on a new tab/window. It is very important that you make the coding right so that, the visitor is taken to the link on a new tab while your blog still is on another tab.

For example, I recommended the article about optimizing images for SEO on blogger. Did you notice that when you hit the link, it opened up on new tab/window? It did not open on the same tab. If that happens , then it will disturb with the continuity in reading the post. So, optimize your links for SEO and readability by adding the extra codes.

4. FINAL TOUCH (OPTIONAL)

Once you finish writing your article, I suggest you add a line welcoming your readers and encouraging them to comment. Apart from that, let them know they have some benefit when they comment say, you gain back links for every comment you make. I recommend you to read about making your blogger blog dofollow - How to make your blogger blog dofollow? Preview your post before you publish. This is very important for webmasters. Check whether your tutorials are perfect, coding is correct and the text appears the way you want.


5. SPREAD YOUR ARTICLE (RECOMMENDED)

One important thing which every one should do is to spread their article. After you publish a post on your blog, make sure you drive traffic to it. Try entering to discussions and leave a link to your post. Comment on blogs related to your niche. Spread it via the social media. I recommend you tweet your article once after you complete your post. After tweet, a Facebook like. Then, ping your blog - call the search engines.

I have listed the to do list which I follow for every article I publish on my blog. I hope you have one. If not, create one. Please, do share with us if you got some other unique step that you regularly follow on your blog. We would love to hear from you.

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Why Blogger is better than Wordpress??

Most of the times, we see that many bloggers are blog on Wordpress! Even me. But why? We know that Wordpress is better than Blogspot. The reason being, its features like more flexibility, less coding, high end features, a much better interface for multi-author blogs. But, there are many things for which Blogger is better than Wordpress.

HOSTING

If we are going for Wordpress, then we need a self hosted blog and for that, we will need to pay for hosting every month or year. But in case if you choose blogger.com you don't need to pay for any hosting charges. Your blog is fully hosted on Google and if you go with Wordpress (self hosted), well you need to buy a custom domain as well. But, in case of blogger you get your own xxx.blogspot.com and meanwhile, your Wordpress blog is hosted on other company servers where we don't get a 100% up-time, but in case of Blogger you get 100% up-time. Just think about this for second- can Google go down?


HUGE AMOUNT OF THEMES (FREE)

Well, after Google launched it's XML powered themes function, many themes have been developed and most of them are available for free where as most of the Wordpress themes are paid ones. Well, we can take Mukund's My World template which is highly customizable and we just need a little knowledge about html and xml and you are ready to go. Most of the templates listed on Mukund's blog are SEO Optimized & multi-author optimized. So, what more you need?



BETTER FOR NEWBIES

Even when I started my blogging, I started with a blogspot domain because it's simple and easy to use. The interface helps the newbies to understand what blogging is... When it comes to understanding, Blogger will defeat Wordpress in straight sets. You can play a lot with the codes. Most important factor is that you don't need to invest anything. You just start out blogging and after that when you really want to become professional, you can choose Wordpress!

But, I would truly say that when I first saw "EAB - www.newbloggingtipz.com" I thought that it's a Wordpress blog run on Thesis theme. But when I came to know that this blog is hosted on blogger with a custom domain, I was amazed. It shows that how customizable Blogspot blogs can be! So you can choose Blogspot as your main blogging platform too. What actually matters - your content and a better design!!!


MORE AND MORE NEW FEATURES

Blogger has started to introduce many features. The first being - xml driven blog, then a new template editor and now, there is a big change that will soon come into effect. The whole blogspot.com interface will be changed to new look, and that will be really awesome. Take a look at the video below:


We can conclude that we CAN opt Blogspot as our main blogging platform too. It can be easily edited to match with that of the Wordpress features and the dashboard look, well, it's soon gonna change. So, be it blogger or wordpress, enjoy what you do - blogging!!!

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