Custom Permalink for Blogspot Blogs
Few months back, Blogspot team added a new set of Advanced Blogspot SEO features which are more than just welcome SEO for a Blogger blog. Though, one thing which I still missed seeing in that update is, option touse custom permalink in BlogSpot. This is one feature, which actually create lots of difference for the SEO of your blog and finally we haveBlogspot permalink options available. Though, before we move ahead and learn how to use it for better SEO of your Blogger blog, lets learn more about Permalink:
What are Custom Permalink
Let me stick to BlogSpot blog here, earlier we couldn’t control the permalink behavior of BlogSpot blogs and by default it used to remove some of the stop words and when you use long title, it removes the extending words from permalink.
Here is an example of normal Permalink vs Custom permalink:
In the second example, I just want to focus on Keyword BlogSpot Custom permalink, and that’s why I removed all other Keywords. Simple but very effective.
Earlier, we had no option to change or configure the Blogger permalink but in recent SEO addition, BlogSpot team announced the availibility of configuring permalink in BlogSpot blog. Unlike WordPress, we can only control permalink on single post level and not on site wide. More over, the control is limited and we can’t strip the month and year from the permalink. Anyways, still this new change makes BlogSpot SEO better.
When it comes to Permalink configuration on single post level, the basic idea is to remove all stop words and use Keywords in your permalink. You can target short-tail or long-tail Keywords, depending upon which Keyword you are targeting. If you are new to Keyword search, You can refer to myBeginner guide to Keyword research for head start.
Now, when you write a Blog post in BlogSpot, simple look for Permalink option, click on it, select custom URL and add your permalink there. I know for newbie, it may sounds like rocket-science to add your own permalink, and I will explain it in simple English below.
When you are writing a new blog post and lets say, your title is
How to do SEO of your blogSpot blog, by default BlogSpot will make a permalink like
http://domain.blogspot.com/yy/mm/how-to-do-seo-of-your-blogspot-blog.html
Instead of using such long Permalink, simple add
How-BlogSpot-SEO or BlogSpot-SEO in custom URL. Remember, your Keywords are separated by ‘–‘ (Dash).Along with it, you can refer to our earlier guide on On page SEO, which will help you to understand how you can target Keywords in a Blog post.For now, you can use following characters in custom URL field (A-Z) (a-z)(0-1), underscore, dash and period. I won’t recommend using underscore in permalink, and if you need more information on the same, check out this video by Matt Cutts
Though it’s a good addition but it will create lots of issues, when you will be migrating from BlogSpot to WordPress. As there are many plugins which fixes the BlogSpot permalink to match the WordPress permalink, but after using Custom URL option, I doubt if we can actually maintain the proper redirection. More over, BlogSpot should also consider giving an option to strip /yy/mm/ from the permalink, because it just adds more character into permalink, and you lose the option to show more Keywords in BlogSpot link. Overall, I don’t meant to bash Blogspot team for adding not so perfect custom permalink option, but it’s still deserve a Welcome from BlogSpot bloggers.
