Blog optimization

optimizing a particular post in blog

[venus]

When we write a post in a blog, the title of that particular post appears like "title of the blog: title of the post"
I just wanted to know that if there is any particular way to optimize this particular blog or post and what could be the possible ways to do it.

[encyclo]

What blogging platform are you using?

[mayest]

One thing to check is to see if you have a relevant Meta Description in the head when the post is viewed by itself on the page (in EE this would be called a single-entry page, not sure what you are using).

Also, this is probably just personal preference but I would reverse your title. Seems to me that it should be: "title of the post: name of the blog". It probably doesn't matter to search engines, but I think it is better for when people bookmark your post.

[venus]

Right now I have two blogs. One in blogger, the other in Wordpress.
In case of blogger, it shows
"title of the blog: title of the post"

in case of wordpress, it is
"title of the blog; title of the post"
.. I really don't know how to fix it.. please suggest

mayest, I use Firefox.. and do have a meta description tag for both blogs. But I'm clueless about what to do with the title.

[ergophobe]

Venus,

This used to require a plugin and whatnot, but as of Wordpress 2.5, this is built into core and into the theme.

So if you're getting your title in the form "My Blog >> My Post" it means that in your theme's header.php you have something like this

<title><?php bloginfo('name'); ?><?php wp_title(); ?></title>

Find that and reverse it

<title><?php wp_title(); ?><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></title>

Now this is going to give you something like
">>My Post >> My Blog"

To fix this, you have to send optional arguments to wp_title. It's arguments are like this

wp_title('sep', echo, 'seplocation')

Where
sep is the actual separator you want to use (-- or ¦¦ or ») in quotes.
echo has to do with how you want to return the information. Just set this to true without quotes
seplocation is whether the separator appears to the left or the right of the title. Since in your case, the title is first, you want the seplocation to be 'right' (in quotes).

So you end up with something like this in the end

<title><?php wp_title(' ¦¦ ',true,'right'); bloginfo('name'); ?></title>

You can use the headspace2 plugin to manage custom titles for archives, categories, front page, author archives and so forth.

I have no idea how to do this in blogger, but it looks like there are plenty of HOWTOs on the subject [google.com]. I think one of those results should work for you.

[venus]

Thanks a ton for the suggestion ergophobe :)
I'll try implementing them in my blog. Recently, I've used allinseo plugin.. that solves that problem to some extent.

[ergophobe]

The All-in-one SEO plugin is great, but you may also want to check out the Headspace2 plugin and Joost de Valk's plugins.

I'm not recommending one over the other and I go back and forth on it myself depending on the situation. There's a lot of overlap, each has at least one thing it does better than the others, and all three (counting Joost's combo of plugins as one) are absolutely top notch... just different. You may like one better than other, though if AIOSEOP is working well for you, I would probably leave well enough alone.

[venus]

great! I'd give it a try..
I've been using all in seo plug in and as yet.. its fine..
But I'll try my hand with others as well..
Thanks for advice :)

[ergophobe]

I've had a little bit of contact with the authors of all three too and as near as I can tell, not only are the plugins all top-notch, but the developers all seem really great. But, for example, I had one site where Joost's Google Analytics plugin worked, whereas the others didn't.

So I think even if you have a favorite, it's worth knowing about the others.