4 Things You Can Do In Blogger That I Wish I’d Known Sooner

I am completely self taught in Blogger and every so often I will discover something that makes me think ‘I really wish I’d known that sooner!’ It’s crazy to me now how simple some of these tips are so I thought I’d share them in case it helps any of you to improve your blogging knowledge too!

(Plus some of these will make you look like a badass html / css coding expert even though your knowledge only really extends to inserting a page break – shh I won’t tell anyone if you don’t!).

 

How To Speed Up Photo Uploads and Make Them Shine!

As you can probably tell from my blog I like to use lots of photos. I also like them to fill the width of the page so that they align with the text. It might be personal preference but I think that this:

…looks a lot better than this:

I used to just upload my photos in JPEG format in their original size and then select the image size ‘Extra Large’ in Blogger. It looked okay but with my slow internet connection the upload could take 10 to 15 minutes just for a handful of photos and they didn’t fill the whole width of the page.

Then I discovered how to upload the same number of photos in 15 seconds flat without a faster internet connection, and make them fill the page at the same time!

Here’s how:

1. Work out the width of your blog content area in pixels. (For me this took a bit of trial and error, but I now know it’s 770px).
2. Create a copy of your photos (keep the originals in case you ever want to print them!) and resize them to the width you worked out in step 1. Make sure that the height remains in constrained proportions so as not to distort the photo.
3. Now upload the resized copies into Blogger and watch that progress bar whizz across the page!
4. Once uploaded, select ‘original size’ for each photo and voila – your picture now fills the width of your page.
5. Now just follow steps 2 to 4 whenever you do a blog post. It cuts down on both photo upload AND pageload times, so will also help keep people on your page!

NOTE: You may need to experiment with the alignment to work out whether ‘Left’, ‘Centre’ or ‘Right’ works best with your template.

Custom Blog Post URLs

I never used to know what the link to my blog post was until it had gone live! This was extremely inconvenient and meant that I couldn’t schedule any social media shout outs with the link until it had published.

Then I discovered that you can set your own custom post URLs.

1. In the ‘edit post’ page on Blogger, select the ‘PermaLink’ option from ‘Post Settings’.
2. Enter a bespoke url name. I like to keep mine short but descriptive.
3. The full URL link will then be displayed which you can copy and paste to start scheduling links like a pro! Click Done.

Search Engine Descriptions (Meta Tags) 1: Posts

For the non techies among us who want to improve their SEO, these last couple of tips will help!
When you use a search engine the results display the name of the page, the blog address and then a short description underneath. This is what helps people to decide what link to click on from the search results returned.

Did you know that you can specify what the search description says and therefore entice people to click on your link?

For example here’s one of mine:

1. In the ‘edit post’ page on Blogger, select the ‘Search Description’ option from ‘Post Settings’.
2. Enter the description you want to display in search results. Keep it short, just one or two sentences.
3. Click Done. 

Now when you publish your post, you will see that search results contain this description instead of just the first lines of your post. Just Google a few and take a minute to pat yourself on the back!

Search Engine Descriptions (Meta Tags) 2: Your Blog Name

You can change the main description of your blog too. A good clear description will increase the chance of clicks to your blog, so it’s worth the 1 minute taken to implement it.

1. Go to the Blogger Dashboard and then navigate to Settings > Search Preferences > Meta Tags > Description.
2. Click on Edit and select the ‘Yes’ box to Enable Search Description.
3. Enter a descriptive name for your blog and then select Save Changes.

It took a couple of days for this to update in search engine results, but now when I search for ‘Loved By Laura I see this:

I really do hope that this has helped some of you. If you’d like to see any more of these type of posts then please do let me know. Also if you have any posts like this yourself feel free to share the links in the comments below!