Blogger is designed and developed by Pyra Labs in 2003 and later acquired by Google Inc. The Publishing tool has created a lot of job opportunities for webmasters and IT specialists, especially in the area of journalism and broadcasting.
With blogger, you can showcase your ideas through shared text, audio, and videos all at a free cost. Bloggers do not charge hosting fees as other content management do. You do not need to purchase hosting from any hosting service providers in other to begin using Blogger.
One good thing about blogger is that you can design virtually any responsive site and mobile-friendly website if you basically understand the ecosystem, especially how to manipulate the layout and theme customization.
Blogger is a publishing tool that not only gives you the opportunity to write and store but also grants you the opportunity to showcase your artwork to the public through the search engine. The Blogger content management system is awesome when it comes to Search Engine Optimization.
Blogger is owned by Google and you know what that means, however, this does not mean only Blogger Website makes Google first page, what matters most is content publishing is providing ready, quick, and unique content. Google loves unique and valuable content, so if your Blogger blog does not focus on unique or Valuable content you wouldn’t see your blog ranking for any reason.
Advertisement
However, you stand a chance of ranking better among your competitors if you utilize the right strategies in the blogger ecosystem. What I mean by strategy, I mean applying the right technical know-how for search engine optimization and page user experience.
There are about 50 million websites built on the blogger interface at the time of making this post, and more than 1000 Blogger blogs are created every day, which makes it a huge ecosystem with high competition. So to be among the best, you have to think outside the box and do what your competitors are not doing.
What are those things my competitors are not doing?
Well, you never can tell, just try to optimize your Blogger website to a light version, make sure you pass the Google Core Web Vital configuration, and make your website mobile-friendly. Statistics show that more than 70% of visitors come through mobile devices. So, to get that traffic coming through, you have to set your Blogger blog to mobile-friendliness.
Let’s move straight to how to design a Blogger Blog in 2022, the steps or features I will be highlighting here is that of 2022, More features are being created and added yearly, and we would talk about them in our subsequent articles, for now, let concentrate on the features available.
Getting Traffic to your Blogger Blog
- Use email outreach such as Feedburner to collect emails
- Write guest posts.
- Write well-optimized SEO content to make Google first page
- Leverage Social media and utilize groups especially on Facebook
- Publish, Publish and Publish consistently.
How to Begin with Blogger?
You don’t need to buy a hosting service to begin designing and building your Blogger website, all you need is a working Gmail account. Once you have that in place navigate to the blogger.com official website and click on the “Get Started” button to begin building your website.
Follow the on-screen command and choose the right domain address for your new blog, after choosing a domain, you will be taken to your Blogger dashboard where you will find all the features that are available to explore and creating your Blog to suit your business need.
From the options displayed, you will be able to explore and build your blogger blog site to your test.
Below is the Backend user interface for blogger.com
Post – The Post section allows you to view published posts, drafted articles, and categories the post-fall on. You can also choose to delete your article from the section and view post number counts.
Stats – the stats section also allows us to see the total number of posts we have published so far on our blog, view daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and all-time visitors’ count. We can also view total comments made on our blog from this area.
Comments – You can manage comments from this section, mark comments as spam, delete, approve or disapprove comments to display on your blog.
Earnings – The earnings tab is created by Google as a shortcut tool to applying for Google AdSense and start making money from your blog. Note that, you will not be eligible to apply for Google AdSense for now, because your blog is still new. You will be able to get approval after some time when you have met the necessary conditions and policy.
Pages – From the page layout section, we can create static pages for our blog, these are pages that do not change constantly, and they include the Privacy Policy Page, About Us, Contact Us, Disclaimer, and similar pages. You will be able to draft, delete and manage your pages from this area. Use the +NEW PAGE to add a page to your Blogger blog and hit the view button to see how your page looks like.
Layout – Every theme comes with its own layout; the layout is the structure of your blog theme and how users see it from the front end. A layout can be Roll or Grid, 2, 3, 4 columns depending on the structure of your layout. All of these can be seen from your layout section. You can add, move, and edit widgets from the layout section, add third-party script and advert from the layout area.
Theme – There are a few default blogger templates in the area, this section allows you to change your templates from Contempo to Ethereal, and there are Google simple templates to choose from as well. You will be able to customize your blogger templates, upload third-party templates and set your mobile view version from this area too.
If you are not okay with the default templates available on the Blogger.com dashboard, you can still be able to search for FREE or PAID version blogger template and upload in XML file from this section, then follow template documentation to design according to your needs.
Settings – This is an integral part of our blog, the settings you make here determine how your site will be viewed from the front end and search Engines.
From the basic settings, we have the Title; this is where we set the title of our blog, make this unique and make sure you make you of your keyword that fit your blog, keeps between 30 to 60 characters long.
The description also helps us set our site description which enables users to know what our blog is all about, describe your blog here in no longer than 25 words.
Set your blog to English or any other language you wish to display your blog with. Select the favicon and upload a square image to be visible as your site favicon.
Set your site to HTTPS and toggle the button to redirect your contents to HTTPS too. This is effective for search engine visibility and optimization.
You can also add authors from this section and set the maximum post to be displayed on your blog homepage. The setting option also enables you to set how visitors can make comments on your blog, set the time zone and timestamp format.
Another important thing is the Meta tags options, this section sets your blogger blog to search engine, it speaks to search engines and tells Google how your site can be crawled and index. Hence, make sure you add a search description text of not more than 25 words. Leave other settings as default. You will need the experience to set the Crawlers and indexing settings, you can write to us from our CONTACT US page to get this set done for you.
Reading List – From the reading list, you can view contents headlines and excerpts of other publishers, without going through their website. To get this done, use the add site button to add the website URL and hit the “done” button to start receiving content headlines from the desired URL.
7 Steps to Be Successful in the Bloggersphere
- Pick a Keyword Domain name
- Build your Blog on Blogger.com
- Customize your blog to suit your business need
- Write Unique and Valuable Content
- Promote your blog on search engines and Social Media.
- Create an App for your Blog
- Apply for Google AdSense
- Start Making Money Online with your Blog
Why Blogger?
Blogger is absolutely free and does not require any charges, yet you can make thousands of dollars from your blog by just following the right steps as displayed above and creating unique and valuable content. If you still need more highlights or one-on-one training on how to design a blogger blog and make money online with it, please, kindly reach us via our Contact Us page and we would give you a reply in a short time.
You can also see the Comparison between Blogger Vs WordPress to find the perfect CMS that suits your business or personal needs.
Advertisement