Blogger Great New Features

Have you seen Blogger's great new features yet? I think Blogger has made great advancements because these new features are extremely important blogging tools, which have been sorely missed by Blogger users. In my last new features update I showed how Blogger had introduced 'Stats' something which bloggers welcomed with open arms, especially the fact that it allowed you to see where your traffic was coming from and what your popular keywords are. Blogger's great new features this time are bang on! Let's have a look:

Warning: please do not skim this post. There are so many important details you MUST do with your Blogger blog now.

See also: Blogger's amazing gadgets

Blogger great new features

The first thing you would've noticed when you attempted to write a new post this week is the font size. We've had to do without h1 font size for a long time. As you know, this size of font is very important for SEO on your blog. It's the biggest size font you could have on your blog. It tells search engines that whatever is written in that  font is very important to the page and indeed the entire site. 

To access your h1 tag go to 'Create new post'. Highlight the word/words you want to make bigger and click on  your 'Normal' panel. Toggle around with the 4 options a bit. Blogger great new features above is the 'heading' font which is the biggest one. Other new blogger features below is a subheading. I hope you've switched to the new Blogger dashboard because all of the following is set out to match this. If you haven't, I'm sure it still applies. If you would like to switch and enjoy all the new blogger goodies, just go to your dashboard and click on the link that asks you if you'd like to switch. 

Other cool new blogger features

Still on our tool bar (in create new blog post mode), starting from the right, there are three new icons. The first one allows you to write from right to left 

like this

The second from right allows you to switch back like this. The third allows you to choose a different character-based language to write in, and the fourth transliterate into a different language like थिस एंड एनाब्लेस में तो व्रिते थिस. Cool, right?

New Blogger features in 'setting'

Blogger has also introduced some great new features in setting mode, which are extremely important for your PR rating and SEO. Please don't leave these for later. Do them now. Go to Dashboard - Setting -; Basic; then look at your Description. Make sure you have a description that includes your keywords for your blog before we move on. Don't leave your description panel empty. Save your work.

We're still in Setting. Now click on Search Preferences (we've skipped some options in the middle. This one is near the end). This is the key element of the new features we came here to look at.
We'll start with META TAGS - Description. This shows up when your blog appears in search engines. You have 150 characters to enter your meta tags - enter a phrase that helps users see what your blog is about in search results. Show them why they should click on your blog instead of others. Write a compelling summary in 150 characters, so it's best to do this in a word doc where you can chop and change and check  your characters. When you're ready, click edit and paste what you've written. Save your work.

Now, move down the page and look at Errors and redirections. Click on Custom page not found and edit.
Now we'll write a custom message for your readers who click on a page which no longer exists on your site. Save changes. Here's what you'll see if you end up on a page which is no longer found (404 page) on my relationship blog.

Just as a reminder (still in Setting). Click on Other and scroll down to the bottom of the page to makes sure you have your Google Analytics code in the relative panel.

More SEO related Blogger feature (no-follow links)

Recently I wrote about the things I did to lower my bounce rate. One of them was making sure external links and internal links all opened in a new page so that readers stayed on my site for as long as possible. Please go to the article where I've gone into it in depth. Under the heading 'I opened links in a new window to lower my bounce rate' I showed you an image of the pop-up box that helps you to do the above with one click. You'll notice that there's now an additional tick box area. This one is massively important because it allows you to choose whether you want a no-follow or a do-follow link.

At the right of your window when you're writing a new post, there's a panel called, Search Description. You can now describe - in a snippet - what each post you write is about. This will show up in search results and give your blog a better chance to be seen and clicked on. Darn it! Now I have to go over all my old posts to add these. :-)

Time saving new blogger feature

This one isn't brand new, but I thought I'd mention it here too. In the new Blogger dashboard, Click on the blog you want to work on. Then from the menu on the left, click on Post. You'll see that there's a panel (enclosed in the red rectangle below) on the right which lets you search for posts by their tags or key words. So when you want to link to a particular post you did 2 years ago, just type in the title or tags and a few articles will pop up for you to choose from. Really helpful!

Blogger great new features in uploading pictures (and adding alt tags)

The worst feature about blogger used to be that you had to add alt tags to your pictures in a very roundabout way. See here to read why optimizing images is important to your site. Try adding an image now! Not only can you now add pictures from your mobile phone, you can do all sorts of other clever things that help with your SEO. Click on the image icon in 'compose new post'. Once your chosen image has been uploaded to your new post, click on it. You'll see a pop up box that now allows you to add an extra large image (a new feature). It will also show you 'properties'. Click on this. From here you can add a title to your picture and an alt text easily!

Which one of these features do you think you'll use most? Have you discovered any Blogger new features you want to share with us? Please share this article if you've benefited from it so all Blogger users could start using these amazing features. Please visit our How Do I Blog page where we collect all sorts of helpful articles for new bloggers. If you need to look up some writing jobs, the link will show you some great ones. This list has just been updated so even if you've visited it before, have another look. I'm sure there's something there for you.