10 Things To Consider Before Choosing Any Blogger Template

Blogger is one of the greatest platforms to start your blogging career. Blogger by default provides you with a good of set basic templates to get started and also there are thousands of other third party templates available on the internet but there are many questions asked related to them.

• Are they well shielded from hackers and spammers? 
• Are they really well SEO optimized? 
• Are they made easy for search engine robots and crawlers to crawl? 
• Are they compatible for all browsers?

Actually No! Yes Truth Hurts. Most of those templates are well formatted with good designing, widgets, social sharing buttons, subscription widgets, etc But are poorly SEO optimized and optimized from inside. Only 28% online templates are specially made with keeping SEO in mind whereas some are advertising optimized or monetized and some are suitable for just personal blogs or portfolio.  
Choosing a near perfect template which suits your style of blogging and for your online blogging career can be a headache especially when you have so many options to choose from. Most of us just look the design and select the template. But there are lot more things to consider like SEO, Load time, Browser compatibility and much more. Today I will provide you a list of things to check and take into account before you choose a Blogger template to avoid or at least to minimize any kind of problems or frustration in the future. So let's get started.

Look and Feel

Whenever you look at the demo of the template, the first thing you will see is the look of the template. Make sure the template looks neat and clean and the overall structure is not messed up. The template should offer easy readability. You should also have a look whether the template uses default standard web safe fonts or Google fonts. If Google fonts then you need to change it or reject the template simply. If you are looking for a template for your personal blog, then do have a look at the typography used in the template.

Easy Navigation

Make sure the template is easy to navigate. Because for a better user experience, easy navigation is really important. Basically here you need to have a look at the navigation menus, page navigation, blog search etc . Have a look if the navigation menus have a drop down feature because once your blog gets popular and when you have lots of categories and also remember that in the future, this feature will prove to be useful. Page navigation on the other hand is for navigating from page to page. Usually most Blogger templates come with Older Posts, Home and Newer Posts links which is enough but the numbered or image page navigation is preferable.

SEO Optimized

One of the most important things to consider is whether the template is SEO optimized or not especially when you are looking to get yourself or your blog noticed by the people. You don't need to be an SEO expert for analyzing the template. You just need to look at the basic SEO stuff like if heading tags are used properly or not. This can be easily done by opening the source file of the demo page

Features & Technology Used

Do check that the template is using latest features and widgets. With technology I mean the use of CSS3 and HTML5 features. Though they are not necessary but it is always good to walk with the time. In all you should avoid templates that were made years ago which uses old markup, depleted tags and properties.

Space for Advertising

If you are looking to earn from your blog, then you must have a look if there is enough space for displaying ads in the sidebars, header, etc. Have a look at templates which are advertising optimized or some are filed in the category of AdSense optimized or I would like to say monetized.

Page Loading Time

Page load time is another important factor you should look. The blog load time is mainly affected by the use of images and JavaScript. Make sure that the template uses limited JavaScript and do not use too much of images for styling purposes which can be easily done with CSS and new CSS3 properties

Cross Browser Compatibility

One of the most common mistakes we make while choosing a Blogger template is that we do not check it in different browsers. We just choose a template on the basis of what we are seeing in the current browser. We do not check whether the template and its other features work fine in other browsers or not. Not all people use the same browser as you are using. So do check the template in at least Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer. You can also use some services like Browsershots which can check the compatibility in various browsers with different versions.

Check Responsiveness

Responsive web design is gaining a lot of attention and getting increasingly popular. A responsive template is the one which can nicely fit on mobile devices or on any screen having any dimensions. If the template claims to be responsive, then do check the responsiveness on your phones and different screen width. You can even check the responsiveness by re-sizing your browsers in different dimensions. Try re-sizing your browser on the blog and you will see how it looks . You should also appreciate the author who made a responsive template because it's not easy at all to make one.

Template Support

Do check if the author of the template is available for help. Although there are many blogs which help people to solve their template issues, it is always good to have the author of the template for any help because they know better about the structure of their template and they can solve the problems much faster. You should possibly download the template from his/her official blog and ask for help on that blog. Also have a look at the recent comments on the template and see if the author is responding.

Ease of Use

They are many templates which come with a compressed CSS and markup. 'Compressed' here means that the comments and line breaks are removed from the CSS and HTML. It is usually done to reduce the overall size of the code but there is no major difference and it won't help in decreasing load time so avoid it . Compressed CSS and HTML are not easy to read and customize even for a good web designer. So, choose a template whose CSS and HTML is not compressed.

Anything left?

I just hope I have covered the details of almost every part. If you got yourself into any trouble just do not panic, bring a cup of coffee on your table and start posting your queries on this page. Technical queries will always be discussed here. We hope you find this little effort useful. My personal suggestion is that if you are really serious about SEO and blogging coming new MHT designs are what you must try out. Care less about Fancy colors and animations and value more the core structure and SEO value of a template. Coming MHT designs are the best when compared to several designs available online that offer just design value and are unfortunately poorly coded inside that badly impacts search value. Yes truth hurts!

Another good news is arriving so stay tuned! Peace and blessings buddies! :>