Comments on dave^2 = -1: Tweaking your Blogger blog

@Bryan,My main intention behind adding "noindex,fo...

2008-05-20T08:04:16.689+10:00

@Bryan,

My main intention behind adding "noindex,follow" to the non-post pages was to make my blog search results more usuable for me, and it has definitely done that (I chuck stuff into my blog that I think I might need later, so I refer back to it fairly frequently).

I have noticed that I am getting much more hits from search results than before adding this, so I assume it's helping my page rankings overall.

You might want to look at Google Webmaster Tools to get more information on how your site is being indexed. I ended up using that to add some sitemap entries there to make sure all the content gets indexed (I found some older stuff wasn't getting picked up). The entries look like this:

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500
atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=501&max-results=1000

... and so on. The Webmaster Tools also have some stats on the ranks of your pages and when they show up in searches, so that might help you get some information on how the changes you make affect your search rankings.

Thanks for subscribing! Readers (and comments) ar...

2008-05-20T06:57:36.822+10:00

Thanks for subscribing! Readers (and comments) are always welcome...

I'm going to try out the "noindex,follow" trick in the header. Should be easy enough to measure: hits that used to be for the homepage will be transferred to post pages. The theory is that the post pages should have better organic search ranking because the title of the url will match the keywords within the content. When you made this change, did you see an improvement for those pages?

Have you tried this trick for the month archives?

@Bryan,I'd love fixed pages on Blogger, but fudgin...

2008-05-16T15:58:05.969+10:00

@Bryan,

I'd love fixed pages on Blogger, but fudging them with post pages is a decent compromise. And you can always host external JS elsewhere (Skydrive or similar).

With regards to your blog, topic and theme choice, you obviously have great taste! ;-)

I've subscribed btw, so looking forward to learning me some more about TDD and other fun stuff :)

Never spent much time digging through Blogger's te...

2008-05-16T15:33:29.117+10:00

Never spent much time digging through Blogger's template specs -- the conditional stuff opens up a whole world of possibilities.

I wish Blogger had fixed pages instead of post pages. External js files would rock.

It's funny, not only do our blogs share similar interests, but our choice in blogger templates is eerie.

@Hassan,Thanks for the link! I enjoyed your post :...

2008-03-13T19:03:38.184+11:00

@Hassan,
Thanks for the link! I enjoyed your post :-)

This is great stuff mate, I have been using some s...

2008-03-13T12:25:29.192+11:00

This is great stuff mate, I have been using some stuff but not all of them you mentioned. My way was to see something, research and then adopt, your blog helped me leap forward the learning curve.

I have also put some of my own tips (no warranty!) on my blog

Blogging Tips - Get the most out of your blog

@El#,Glad to help. Good luck with your new blog. :...

2008-03-12T15:16:04.881+11:00

@El#,
Glad to help. Good luck with your new blog. :-)

By the way, just because there is a DotNetKick shortcut there doesn't mean you have to use it! ;-)
Save it for the good articles! (er, might have to look at other blogs ;-))

Excellent! Thanks for that Dave, very handy refere...

2008-03-12T14:15:01.061+11:00

Excellent! Thanks for that Dave, very handy reference for how to get the customisations.

I'll add the kick bad and tagcloud soon!

Cheers.
el#