Blogger physiology: 4 things to consider when creating a Blogger post

Blogger is one of the popular blogging platforms, where most of the bloggers start their blogging carrier. Although the powering company of it is tech-giant Google, it has been receiving several criticisms for the services and controls it provides.

Blogger has been updating its services from time to time. The three things that give my above opinion a validity are the launch of four new version (2) blogger templates, the recent launch of free SSL certificate for Blogger custom domain and launch of ads.txt to Blogger. All these services, including all other previous, are the proof of an example that a free blogging platform could be that much better.

Taking these disputes into a termination, I move to the intended topic, things you should take care when creating a Blogger/Blogspot posts.
Also read: Everything you need to know about Blogger

Although the experienced Blogger users have already implemented these ideas into their blog posts, many of us are not conscious of them.

These ideas are not the must-follow rules. But, by implementing these ideas, you will be able to acquire a higher level of SEO score, improvement in the look and feel and generate fast loading page as well. To add more, it will enable you to make a habit of best blogging via Blogger.

Note that these are not the ideas on how to write a blog post instead these are the ideas for publishing the Blogger post properly. If you are searching for the former one, I have already covered that in the post entitled "how to write a blog post for non-native englisher".  Hope you will find that post helpful, at least if you are non-native English blogger.

Without further ado, let me move to the intended topic, the 4 things you need to consider when creating a Blogger post.

Insert URL before you publish

This idea will be valid only when you choose to create a custom permalink for your posts. As custom URL has more SEO benefits, I recommend you to make utilization of this option.

You can easily input custom URL for your post at the custom permalink option available besides the post editor as shown in the screenshot below.

Generally, Blogger auto-creates permalink using the first few words of the post title. This may result in the elimination of the target keyword from your URL. Suppose you create a blog post entitled "how to choose a perfect blogging platform". The URL of that will look like

yourblog.blogspot.com/2018/12/how-to-choose-a-perfect.html

Here, you find that the target keyword blogging platform has been lost. This will not only harm the SEO but also create a confusion in readers. So, to run away from these limitations, you should create an SEO friendly custom URL in Blogger.

Because Blogger doesn't allow to edit permalink after you publish a blog post, you have to insert URL before publishing a blog post.

Many of the blogging beginners make a mistake while inserting a URL, some even leave without editing the URL. And, as they begin to learn about SEO, they regret their post URL. So at last, they either delete the blog post and create a new one on the same title or remain dominated by search engines.

So, you must edit the permalink and make it Search Engine friendly. Here are some tips to optimize the Blogger permalink:

• Make permalink as short as possible
• Insert single Keyword
• Remove short words such as 'a', 'an' and etc.
• Never delete old posts to create a new one on the same topic. Creating same content, again and again, may make you the victim of Google penalty.

Lower the text to code ratio

Why? Because Blogger creates unnecessary codes for your posts you create. Most of us prefer creating a post via post editor, not via HTML editor. So, we don't notice the code generated for our blogger post.

Sadly, while making an SEO audit of this blog on SEMrush, I found an issue with low text to HTML ratio in the blog posts. And, this is the major issue of most of the blogs.

If you ever had an SEO audit of your blog, you might have come across this issue. If you have not checked the text to code ratio yet, there are many platforms online to help you start with this.

What is text to code ratio?
To be simple, it is the percentage of text over the HTML code of your blog posts. For example, if you have a sentence of 30 texts in a blog post and the HTML code of it has 120 texts, then the text to code ratio of that sentence will be 25%.

Some of the SEO experts say lower code to text has no impact on Search Engine rankings while other says it still has an impact on SEO. Whatever is the fact, higher text to code ratio for the Blogger posts has a benefit of decrement in blog load time. It will thereby improve the search rankings anyway.

Some tips to keep Blogger text to code ratio higher:

• Create posts in other document creating platforms and paste into Blogger post editor
• Remove unnecessary formatting
• Host CSS in external drives
• Upload Images at last (Discussed below)
• Don't switch to "Compose" after creating codes (Discussed below)

Upload images at last

You probably have some images or screenshots to insert into your blog post. As images have a vital role in Look and Feel, AdSense approval and Blogger SEO, you will want to insert images into every post you create.

You might be surprised "Why to upload images at last?"

Well, here we go "Why not to upload images at first?"

The first thing you should know is that the word "last" in this case doesn't imply the end of the blog post, rather it implies the time after you create a blog post.

This is because, whenever I uploaded an image followed by resizing (while writing a blog post i.e. at middle), the whole code of the post used to be changed. The most of the change I noticed was the addition of unnecessary DIV tag throughout the post. That leads to the increment in the code to text ratio.

So, never do a mistake of uploading images at first.

At first, create whole content, apply formatting and proceed to upload images to your post. This will certainly help you to create a clean-coded post for your Blogger blog.
Related: Pixabay Review: Get free images for your blog

Don't switch to "Compose" after creating Table of contents

I have already published a post on creating a table of contents for Blogger posts. If you are using the same method to create, never switch to "Compose" after creating it. Because Blogger adds unnecessary URL before the #, usually the post Id which on click redirects the visitors to sign up for Blogger.

So, do not switch to 'Compose' after creating a Table of content. If you want to, don't forget to remove auto-generated URL before hitting publish.

These were the 4 things you need to consider when creating a blog post in Blogger/Blogspot. I called them Blogger Physiology cause they were related to the code generation phenomena of Blogger. If you found these ideas helpful, don't forget to notify me by dropping a comment in the comment section below or by sharing this post to social media.