Does it look any better? Not really, although it's not fully tweaked. This is all about complete control, *AND*, more about SEO! That's search engine optimization. After a while, it became readily apparent you have to be blogging on blogger.com for YEARS to get a decent ranking in a Google Search. Like the famous HeadHardHat, for example. But it wasn't just that we had a low ranking; in effect, we were not listed on Google at all! Not as a stand alone listing for the blog. We did get our Links page on the website pretty high in the rankings, and our listing on the Outdoor Blogger network eventually got up to about page 5. But I would sometimes look 30 pages deep, and we were not listed in a search of Geocaching blogs, period. I don't think I ever went higher than 30.
Google owns Blogger, kind of strange, eh? Wordpress Geocaching blogs, even if rarely posted to (Examples, The Madcacher Blog by the guys who bought Navicache, and "Find your Geocache" by the lady who owns the website EatStayPlay.com) they skyrocket to the top of a search. The final straw was when a teenaged cacher from Wisconsin, I believe (who asked to exchange links with us) showed up on page 2 within a month of starting his wordpress blog from scratch. Also "The Bitchy Cacher" (a year and a half old wordpress blog that gets posted to once a month at best) sits firmly on page one of a Google search, along with the formidable Geocaching.com blog.
I won't give any numbers, but traffic to the Blogger.com blog decreased sharply over the last 5 months or so, not that it was ever that high, being ignored by Google and all. So thanks for letting me vent; that's why this post is here, and not an announcement. There's no whining in the announcments section. And let me know what you think.
