Blogger SEO Limitations: Why URL Length & Indexed Tags Matter

Working with blogger over the last few months, 2 things have caused me a bit of unnecessary angst:

1. Its artificial limit on URL length (truncates URLs somewhere around 40 characters), and;
2. Its refusal to crawl /search paths for indexing post tags.

Even for an avid user of anything and everything Google - Google Search, Google Apps, Google Reader, Google AdWords, Google AdSense, Google Wave, GMail, Google Analytics, Google Maps, and who knows what else – it was enough to trigger thoughts of Wordpress.

These are serious limitations – and there are others, all unique to Blogger, as far as mainstream platforms go. Why should the Wordpress guys or the do-it-yourself guys, or worse, the have-to-host-it-on-my-home-server guys have an edge on the foremost SaaS player in town, from an on-page perspective at least?

I mean this is Google’s product after all, isn’t it? Could it be that these ‘optimizations’ are not officially endorsed?

You’ll find lots of people telling you that neither limitation matters that much – especially the URL length; some even paint all of ‘SEO’ with the micro-optimization brush, relegating it to the unoriginal who lack substance (Seth said this once, I believe, at the Business of Software conference; may have some truth to it, but for the little guy SEO’s still the make it or break it.)

But according to Google’s Matt Cutts, they do matter, and it’s simply a sliding scale beyond 4 or 5 keywords in the URL [7]:

“We have seen clients use keyword URLs that have 10 to 15 words strung together with hyphens; or blogs - we have seen them even longer there. A typical WordPress blog will use the title of the post as the post slug, unless you defined something different and you can just go on and on and on. Can you give any guidelines or recommendations in that regard?

Matt Cutts: Certainly. If you can make your title four- or five-words long - and it is pretty natural. If you have got a three, four or five words in your URL, that can be perfectly normal. As it gets a little longer, then it starts to look a little worse. Now, our algorithms typically will just weight those words less and just not give you as much credit.

The thing to be aware of is, ask yourself: "How does this look to a regular user?" - because if, at any time, somebody comes to your page or, maybe, a competitor does a search and finds 15 words all strung together like variants of the same word, then that does look like spam, and they often will send a spam report. Then somebody will go and check that out.

So, I would not make it a big habit of having tons and tons of words stuffed in there, because there are plenty of places on a page, where you can have relevant words and have them be helpful to users - and not have it come across as keyword stuffing.

Stephan Spencer: So, would something like 10 words be a bit much then?

Matt Cutts: It is a little abnormal. I know that when I hit something like that - even a blog post - with 10 words, I raise my eyebrows a little bit and, maybe, read with a little more skepticism. So, if just a regular savvy user has that sort of reaction, then you can imagine how that might look to some competitors and others.”

SEO Design Solutions also carries a good write-up of how post tags make a difference – note the example they’re example and test it out [1]:

These keywords are there because they were toggled by users typing in enough searches that a contextual occurrence now binds them under the same umbrella based on the profile of search queries executed.

So, if I wanted to reinforce a broad match topical range of semantics, I could easily implement keywords that were algorithmically related in real time (when looking for tags or additional keyword to include in a post) by using tags or developing related content for the main topic / silo to build into a virtual theme of topical posts.

The “theme” is the main topic and the silos are the supporting articles that reinforce relevance for all things related (based on the array of keyword modifiers). Toggling theme density implies targeting semantic clusters, which is essence is accomplished through the tags becoming links and adding weight to global on page relevance with ease.

The industry thrives off of this evidence-based consensus, turning a blind eye to official announcements from Google itself even. My own research confirmed both strategies make a significant difference so I tracked down Siobhan Quinn, a product manager for blogger, and shared the feedback. Both the JotSpot (Google Sites) and the Pyra Labs (Blogger) acquisitions feel like they haven’t (yet) been absorbed as first-class citizens.

In the end though, it’s not enough to abandon ship! I trust Google will level the playing feel and provide bloggers with a second-to-none publishing experience, free of charge. As for work-arounds (hacks), you’ll have to excuse me if a few ‘index’ pages slip into your feeds over the next few days; here are a few tips [2] that, in addition to the usual template title/meta-tag optimizations, endorse this technique as well:

I generally start with the content - I'll pick a somewhat specific topic to write about (in this case the new adsense email), and I'll write the post. Then I go back and figure out how to market it. Occasionally, if I don't feel a particular inclination to write about something, I do use the Google Suggest (now built into Google front page) to pick a topic to write about. Either way, I almost always use this functionality to refine my keywords when I am finished with the post. How?

Simply go to the front page of Google (not inside of a search, or gmail, etc.) and start typing - see the list of words that pops up? Those are popular search terms that start with what you've typed (note: exactly what is in the box will not appear in the results). Look for words higher in the list - meaning more often searched, but with a lower number of results - meaning less competition. The less letters you type in (the more you can backspace) and still see your "target keyphrase" high in the list, the higher the "value" of the keyword. This does not mean you will get tons of traffic, it just means you will have an easier time getting to the front page of Google.

… on why you’re out of luck with blogger tags [2]:

Remove label and place text links : The label pages in Blogger are automatically set nofollow by Google . So there is no SEO value in keeping the labels in home page . Alternately , you can categorize your posts and include them in single post that can be fixed in homepage . For eg ; Instead of placing the label Blogger tricks and tips , I have written a main post contains all the similarly tagged posts and placed as a text link in my homepage.

In practise, tag links on blogger sport a rel=’tag’ attribute (no sense in deleting this – some ‘related posts’ widgets leverage it); it’s Robots.txt that explicitly blocks /search paths. Interestingly, the blogger search interface accepts wildcards too (also blocked) – had the restricted path been the /search/ folder specifically, this would be accepted:

   1: /search-anything-here/label/some-label

Indispensible Tools:

• Keyword Density Tool 
• Web Master Search Engine Tools
• WebConfs SEO Tools (duplicate content validation tool and search engine spider simulators)
• Fetch as Googlebot (Google Webmaster Tools)
• For more tools, see the Ultimate Collection at SEJ.

Need help with your SEO strategy?

Drop me a line or leave a comment.

References:

[1] – SEO Design Solutions
http://www.seodesignsolutions.com/blog/seo-tips/seo-tips-using-related-search-to-optimize-cms-tags/
http://www.seodesignsolutions.com/blog/seo-basics/using-related-search-to-find-googles-most-search-keywords/

[2] – Blogger SEO Tips and Tricks
http://www.techknowl.com/2009/03/blogger-seo-tips-and-tricks.html
http://www.techknowl.com/2009/01/blogger-seo-on-page.html
http://webupd8.blogspot.com/2009/02/blogger-blogspotcom-seo-optimization.html
http://bloggerblackhatseo.blogspot.com/
http://www.moretechtips.net/2009/03/blogger-seo-tip-use-post-labels-as-meta.html
http://tweakandtune.blogspot.com/2009/03/blog-seo-tips.html

[3] – SEO Best Practices for URL Structure
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-best-practices-for-url-structure/7216/