Therefore, I believe I will start making a list here and updating as I find necessary.
Before we get started, I want to make something perfectly clear... if you are nervous about making changes, then don't. I ain't no expert and if I break my site, I am somewhat capable of restoring it. Or starting over.
If you're not that nervous, but still, have concerns, you can use the template back up routine to save your good working template while you are ready to make your changes. (Blog - Template - "Backup/Restore" button."
Or, make a fake new test blog, go to settings, and under the "Basic" section select to edit the "Privacy" option, and choose not listed on Blogger and Not Visible to Search engines.
Then below that, under "Blog Readers" set it to "Private - Only blog authors."
Now you can play to your heart's content, BRAVELY going where you would not go before.
Blogger Modification "Hot To" Tips
Font: Changing your fonts to be more readable. AKA, slightly larger:
Click on Template;
Click on Customize;
Go to Advanced and you'll see to the right of the menu, under "Page Text" an option to change the size of your text.
Be aware, this changes all text on a page. (To be honest with you, that works just fine for me.)
You can see the new change in the demo page below the options, and if you like it, click on "Apply to Blog" in the upper right hand corner, and return to your basic control page.
If you're brave or crazy there is another way:
FIRST, use the "Restore/Backup" option in the upper right hand corner. That way if you sneeze while typing and something gets effed up, you can reload your good setup and try again without sneezing.
Click on Template,
Click on "Edit HTML"
Find " .post-body { "
add " font-size: 16px; " or whatever you want to this section
Click "Save Template"
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Setting Up Better Blogger SEO
Despite the lack of control we feel we may have over the inner-workings of Google's Blogger, we do have some control over how our Blogger content gets presented and optimized for search engines and our readers.
First, don't forget internal linking. Whether it be to a related post or your tags, it is a common SEO practice to link to your own content. (Sparingly!!! Don't go crazy/stupid.)
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Image optimization for SEO is also something good. When you use an image, you should save it with the intent of downsizing its footprint. I save my images at 70% quality. This lightens the load of loading the image when a post is visited. Have you ever visited a page where the pic takes forever to load? That's BAD image SEO. Search engines do not like bad image SEO.
Also under image optimization, you should add alt titles to your content images. It helps because search engines also watch images and if there's an alt title with the image, that can't hurt.
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In Blogger, you need to edit your template to help with your blog post titles.
Blogger adds your blog title to your post titles, but does it in the front of the title, and that's not your best option. Why? Because titles are important to web searches. Literally put, will people be searching for your blog's name, or the subject you wrote about? You want the more important part of your titles to be upfront.
To fix this, where you're title goes before your blog name, you need to
Go to "Edit HTML"
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Many suggest creating a Description Meta Tags:
Go to "Search Preferences"
Under "Meta Tags" edit your "Description" of what your Blog is about. That helps because it is sometimes the first line of content some searches dig up before going any further.
Farther down that page, there's the "Custom Robots Header Tags" section folks suggestion making a mod to. Here's what they suggest:
Click on "Edit"
Click "Yes" on "Enable custom robots header tags"
Then choose only the following:
Home page: "all" and "noodp"
Archive and Search Pages: "noindex" and "noodp"
Default for Posts and Pages: "all" and "noodp"
That makes six boxes checked and NOTHING MORE.
Click on "Save changes"
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You should set up a custom 404 page, so if something isn't found, you can apologize and possibly point them to a landing page, your home page or something you want them to visit.
Again, under "Settings," "Search Preferences," right near the top is the "Custom Page Not Found" option. Click on "Edit" and have fun redirecting lost souls.
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