These are the things that I will make sure I do before hitting the orange publish button on blogger. Some bloggers might miss this because they may think that it won’t affect their blog but in terms of SEO and whatnot, it does.
Frankly speaking, I don’t give a damn about SEO but I do want people to find my blog and I do want my blog to be easily accessible to everyone.
Photos
I have recently stumbled upon this article about saving images for web and I realised that I have been doing it wrong since the beginning. Now, here’s what I always do before:
- transfer images from DSLR to computer/choose stock photos
- if the images do not need editing (brightness, contrast, etc) I will proceed with uploading them on my blog post
And then, I realised that all of my images were blurry despite having them taken with a DSLR. I googled the solution and I found out it was because I uploaded those images without resizing them so for example, if an image is 5000px x 3000px, when I upload it, it will shrink to my post width (700px) and it will lose its clarity.
So I went ahead and basically resized and reuploaded all of my images. It was a pain in the arse but I would rather have that than the heartache I get when I see blurry images on my blog.
But there was one more thing that annoys me: my blog weight, basically how many seconds needed to load my blog. I get so antsy when my blog is taking so long to finish loading although everything is loaded but you know that loading/circle thingy on your browser tab that keeps on circling and when it stops it shows your blog favicon meaning that your blog has finished loading? Yeah, that thing.
Then I found out it was because I didn’t optimise my images. Do you know what I feel when I found out? What the fish. Now I have to optimise and reupload images on 100 posts. 100! So now I’m in the process of optimising and reuploading images on my blog.
So these are my new steps for photos:
- transfering images from DSLR to computer/stock photos
- editing brightness, contrast, etcetera..
- changing image size to 1000px so if I change template in the future with a wider post area, my images will still fit full width
- saving for web (stripping down meta tag/data about your images etc..)
- optimising images to either 60% or 80% quality, around 150kb in size for each photo and I do not suggest going lower than that as it will ruin the image quality. Blog ringan tapi gambar tak HD pun tak boleh juga.
- uploading them on blogger post editor and choosing Original Size, NOT medium/large/x-large
- inserting the title text and alt text
The 6th step is very important. If you choose anything other than Original Size, your images will not take the width of your post area. 700px post area, 450px images? Not cute.
I know it’s a lot to do for a photo but it is necessary. However, I rarely do the 7th step because I don’t feel the need to. It helps with your SEO, nonetheless, so it’s entirely up to you.
Text
Never ever center your text. You shouldn’t justify your text too but I like my text to be symmetrical on both sides for aesthetic purposes so I do justify them. I like having one line break before and after images, too. Makes it look even cleaner.
I never use coloured fonts or setting text size or font on blogger post editor because I like to be able to change the font through the proper template editor so all of my posts will have uniformed typography. Please be aware of line breaks. Always preview your post before publishing.
Always proofread your posts for grammar. If you don’t know a certain word or if you’re not sure of certain grammar rules, google it. This is important if you’re writing in English.
Now, some people might think that label works just like keywords that would help with SEO but it actually doesn’t. For example, you’re writing a blog post about makeup reviews and you label it as makeup, makeup reviews, eyeliner, sephora black eyeliner, black eyeliner from sephora, beauty reviews, and etcetera.
You should not do that because it doesn’t help with search engine at all. Labels only help you in categorizing your blog posts, that’s it. Use all those keywords on Search Description instead. You should also write a short summary of your blog post in the Search Description to help with SEO.
Schedule
I have been getting into the habit of scheduling my blog posts instead of publishing it right away. Study shows that users read blogs the most in the morning so I publish my scheduled posts at 8 am on any day of the week.
For filler posts, I do it around 7-10 pm but I get less engagement and pageviews so that’s something you should take into consideration before hitting publish.
If you spend a lot of time on your killer post, you might want to consider publishing it in the morning for more exposure.
I hope you learn something new from this post to apply on your blog. Please let me know what you think!
