In this Blogger tutorial I will show you the best way to add meta tags to your Blogger blog (Blogspot blog) to improve the SEO of your blog and work around the limitations of the Blogger platform.
I have observed that there are many Blogger help blogs out there telling you to just add meta tags however this will very likely achieve the opposite result from the one you are after. Whether you are yet to add meta tags or you have added meta tags already make sure you read and follow the methods contained in this article to get the best results.
What are Meta Tags?
Meta tags are HTML tags that provide additional information about your blog that is unseen by visitors but available to search engines. The meta description tag, for example, provides a short summary of the page content. The keyword meta tags show the keywords and keyword phrases a visitor might use to find your blog. Because of abuse of meta tags search engines have become smarter and most no longer place emphasis on keywords to establish page ranking however keyword meta tags are still used by some search engines so it is a good idea to include them.
Limitations of Blogger and SEO
One of the disappointing aspects of Blogger is that it is not properly optimized for SEO. Meta descriptions and keywords are not supported by blogger.com by default. Title tags are also not optimized. This means that you will miss valuable opportunities to attract visitors to your blog.
However meta tags and meta descriptions can be inserted into your Blogger template (Blogspot template) to good effect. Fortunately these work arounds will go a long way to improving the placement of your blog in search engine results. Please refer to adjust Blogger title tags for improved SEO for help with title tags.
Simply placing a meta tag description in your Blogger template is problematic because Blogger will use the same meta tags for all pages in your blog. This means that every entry that Google has for your site will show in search results with the same description. This solution would result in reduced traffic rather than increased traffic. However there is a way to add meta tags to the home page of your blog only which will not affect post pages in your blog. In this way visitors will find the home page of your blog in search engines by the use of appropriate keywords and a site description.
How to Add Meta Tags to a Blogger Blogspot Blog Home Page
1. Login to Blogger if not already logged in
2. Navigate to Design > Edit HTML
3. Back up your template as a precaution by downloading full template to your computer.
4. Check the Expand Widget Templates box
5. Find these lines which will be near the top of your template:
<head>
<b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>6. Paste the following code immediately below
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title><b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'>
<meta content='Place your blog description here' name='description'/>
<meta content='Place your blog keywords here(separated by commas)'
name='keywords'/>
</b:if>
7. Enter your blog description between the single quote marks under description. Maximum 150 characters
8. Enter the keywords of your blog between the single quote marks under keywords. Ensure you separate each keyword or keyword phrase by a comma. Make sure your keywords do not exceed 200 characters
By way of example here are the meta tags I use for the home page of Blog Know How:
<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'>
<meta content='Find tips,tricks,tutorials,walkthroughs to customize your Blogger Blogspot blog.SEO,Banners,Adsense,gadgets,fixes,feeds,rss,help for beginner bloggers' name='description'/>
<meta content='blog,blogger,blogger.com,blogspot.com,blogspot,blogging,tutorials,tips,blogger help,customize blogger,SEO,make money,gadgets,Google Adsense,banners, feeds,analytics,solutions'
name='keywords'/>
</b:if>
9. Click on the Save Template button
10. To see your description in action you can either navigate to your blog's home page and click on view source in your browser. In Internet Explorer you will find this option in the view menu. A text document will appear which you can scroll through. You will see your description near the top of the document. Alternatively you can check your description in a free Meta Tag Analyzer tool such as Submit Express or SEO Centro
How to Add Meta Tags to a Blogger Blogspot Blog Individual Post
1. Follow steps 1 to 4 as for adding meta tags to the Home Page
2. Add the following in the
<head> section of your Blogger template. Enter this code below the Home Page code above you have just entered:<b:if cond='data:blog.url == "http://url of your post"'>
<meta content='keywords pertaining to your post' name='keywords'/>
<meta content='crafted description of your post' name='description'/>
</b:if>Here is an example of optimized meta tags for this post:
<b:if cond='data:blog.url == "http://blogknowhow.blogspot.com/2009/05/add-meta-tags-to-blogger-for-better-seo.html"'>
<meta content='meta tags,optimize blogger,blogger SEO,search engine optimization, blogspot,blogger,blogspot.com,blogger.com,blogging,blog' name='keywords'/>
<meta content='Improve SEO by adding meta tags to your Blogger Blogspot blog. Step by step tutorial shows you how to add meta tags to the home page and a single post' name='description'/>
</b:if>
3. Add your post URL, keywords and description. To find the URL of your post navigate to the post's page and copy the link showing in the address bar of your browser including the http:// prefix
4. Click on the Save Template button
5. To check your description you can use the view source in your browser once you have navigated to the post page or a meta tag analyzer
Note: This method is suitable if you have a few key posts that you want to ensure you get maximum traffic on. If you have a lot of posts this manual method would be very tedious. I don't know of any automated method or script to add meta tags at this point but I am investigating it and will keep you posted.
Analyze Your Blogspot Blogger Meta Tags
Once you have added meta tags to your blog you can use tools to analyze them to ensure their relevance. Aim for meta tag relevancy to page content of above 90%. To check this you can use a free meta tag analyzer tool such as Submit Express or SEO Centro
Troubleshooting and Tips
- Observe Character Limits
To avoid problems ensure that you keep within the maximum character limits:Title Tag - Maximum Characters is 60
Site Description - Maximum Characters is 150
Keywords - Maximum Characters is 200 - Title Tag Tweak
If you have inserted the title tag tweak and it is highly recommended that you do so then you will need to add the code above after the title tag adjustment in the<head>section of your template. Read more about adjusting title tags - Keywords
Although some search engines no longer place too much emphasis on keywords some still do so it is worth adding keywords. Avoid using the same keyword more than 3 times. The maximum number of keywords recommended to be robot friendly is around 20. - Problems Reading the Code
Some readers have reported problems with their browser reading this code. Try this document form of the article if this happens to you
In this Blogger meta tag tutorial I have discussed the best way to add meta tags to a Blogger blog (Blogspot blog) to improve search engine results given the limitations of the Blogger platform. In this article you have learned to add both meta tags for keywords and descriptions to the home page. You have also learned how to add meta tags to an individual post. To optimize your meta tags I have included links to free meta tag analyzer tools.
Related Articles
Adjust Blogger Title Tags for Improved SEO
10 Tips to Build Site Traffic for Blogger
List of Blog Know How Tutorials for Blogger Blogs
Add Breadcrumb Navigation to Blogger Blogspot Blog
136 comments:
Thanks,for giving me such valuable information. Great tips. this will help in making my blogs hit the rankings.
______________________________
http://www.ajauctionpro.com/
James good luck with inserting meta tags. Hopefully you will see a marked difference within a short time. This will be very evident if you optimize your title tags as well
Please help I am getting this error message.
TEMPLATE ERROR: Unknown runtime binding: else in widget TEMPLATE ERROR: LHS of numeric is null before 26 in data:blog.pageType == item
How do I fix it?
http://www.thehealthymoms.net
talbertcascia@yahoo.com
Hi Cascia. I have had a good look at your template and even downloaded it to make sure it is working Ok. No problem on a clean install with both title tags and meta tags. I see you have added keywords to your template so I am wondering if your problem is partially fixed. Sing out if it is not. I will email this to you as well.
Also you can email me your template if you still have a problem
I just had my meta tag installed. Thanks so much. I'll keep you posted when I get higher hits. :)
OK Dave good luck with that! It will take a while for Google to catch up
Thank you so much for this and other tips. I added the meta tag, went to the site you mentioned and tweaked the keywords and description, and DELETED the blog description per Blogger. I did it in early June, and I'm seeing a significant jump in the page impression number.
Arevamirpal thanks for letting me know about the success of your blog since installing metatags. I had a marked jump in traffic too plus it helped make some articles surface rather than languish in the background
I know this is not the right post to ask, but do you know how to allow readers to print the post only (without two side bars that I have and header)? Some of my posts are long, and if my readers are like me in any way, they may rather print and read. So, what I would like to do is to change HTML code so that Print Preview will show only the post, and to create a "print the post" button either at the beginning or at the end of each post.
Your various suggestions have been all good and all worked at the first try with no problem, so I rather trust yours than any other blog help site. Hope you could help. My site address is ex-skf.blogspot.com.
Blogging has come to the point where my mother actually heard of it. That means that it is not only popular but becoming somewhat mainstream. As a result, people are really starting to voice their opinions by blogging and commenting on blogs. Voicing opinion is one thing, but when it comes to commenting there is a very useful side effect. Commenting can help increase your website's rankings on certain search engines.
Blogging is a fantastic forum for people to share their opinion (positive or negative), tell of their own experience or have a good old gripe session. It seems like some search engines reward a blog that has a fairly active comments section. Provided there is no abuse I think this is a good thing as active comments are one important indicator about how well you are doing at engaging your audience.
arevamirpal what great feedback to hear that you have found my suggestions good and value my opinion. Trust is a great thing! I think I do know a way to do what you are asking and it has actually sparked an idea for a post. Will get cracking on this asap.
I received this error message:
Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure all XML elements are closed properly.
XML error message: The reference to entity "ltb:if" must end with the ';' delimiter.
What did I do wrong?
Thanks
Old Guy what browser are you using please? Looks like the code is parsed but it doesn't need to be parsed. I am wondering if your browser is reading the parsed code in my article. Please come back to me as this shouldn't be happening. If necessary I can email you the code
Hi - Thanks for the post. I am using Firefox and getting the same XML error.
Could you email me the code and your Title tag code, too?
Thanks so much!
Ellen (ellenb71@yahoo.com)
Ellen I have emailed both articles to you. Let me know how you get on. Hope you will call back again soon
I have the xml error similar to the "old guy". I am using Chrome.
my site is www.srilankaequity.com
sriventure@gmail.com
Hi there,
Great post. I've already added my blog to Google as per your advice and I was moving on to trying to add metadata to my blog. I'm having some difficulties with blogger telling me that I need to add end tags to close off (I assume) the 'meta content='...'' tags when I copy the code directly into my template. Thoughts?
Equity Analytic I have emailed you the code. Come back to me if you have any further problems
Will some browsers do not display the code correctly. I have just tweaked it a little to try and compensate for this. If this doesn't help leave me your email address and I will email the code directly to you.
I'm getting the xml parsed thing, too! Can you help? jenx67[at]cox[dot]net. THANK YOU!
jenX I have emailed the code to you. Thanks for dropping in
Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure all XML elements are closed properly.
XML error message: Element type "meta" must be followed by either attribute specifications, ">" or "/>".
That's what i encountered when I'm adding metatags for individual posts. What will I do? I'm pretty much sure that my tags are closed.
Susi leave your email here or sign up to receive updates by email and I can email you the code.
Thank you SO much! I knew very little about meta tags, and thanks to you I was able to add them. Otherwise I would have been in cyber space all night trying to figure out how!
And I am going to bookmark you, make sure I haven't missed anything else :)
M. Stokes it can be a nightmare trying to find the right information on the net can't it? Glad to hear you have bookmarked this blog. I hope you will call back soon.
Thanks very valuable!!! 5 stars.
Great! Thanks for that Health Care News!
Wow, before this I never know that meta tags can be added in this way... I was just simply added them once in "head" seaction last time...
Thank you so much, I'm going to try your method :D
http://www.ziddu.com/download/6057594/Amina.rar.html ,,HEy i cant figure out how to add meta tags properly,plz download my template and check mistakes,
Warm regards
Rafay baloch
http://rafayhackingarticles.blogspot.com
Glad it worked well for you Hannah. Good luck with getting more traffic
Rafay if the problem is with your browser reading the code click on the new link I have added under tips and troubleshooting and have another go. Good luck
This seems like really great stuff. I hope it makes a difference for my blog. Thanks a lot!
Hi, when I take a look at View Source for the POST-specific meta tags, they don't seem to show. The HOME meta tags are there..
Could I be doing something wrong? This is the specific post:
http://how2bfree.blogspot.com/2009/07/ilearningglobaltv.html
Thanks..
Ajdin I took a look at the source of your post and as you say the meta tags aren't there. For meta tags to work on post pages you need to have them within an if statement that points to specific post they relate to. Not sure if you have done this. See my instructions for meta tags for individual posts. If you are still having problems come back to me as I could take a look at your template.
Thanks for nice tips
Thanks Orhunt. Hope you will call back again soon!
Wow. This has to be the easiest way I have ever read for adding Meta tags. I can fix pc's and laptops with my eyes shut but could not figure out how to add this to my blog. Thanks so much for the detail you put in this blog.
thanx..
www.directdownloadhome.blogspot.com
Thanks PCSitePals for the great praise of my blog. Hope you will follow my blog regularly
Superb article and very useful tips , as always
thanx
Hi Tech Priest I see you have been busy today :) Glad to be of help
Thanks, I got the tags set up!
Thanks again for your help!
OK, so I do understand this and how to do it. Just added general meta tags for my whole blogs. But it looks like if you want to add them for every post that eventually your template HTML code would get very long. Would this slow down the load time for the blog? Would it be a better idea to just add meta data for some of the key individual posts? Very useful post here!
Nice to know you got your meta tags set up Mike. Sing out if you need help with anything
Hi Sharkbytes. Setting up meta tags for each individual post is a bit of a hassle but I don't know of a way round this although I am looking into it. I think that if your blog has lots of posts this could be very tedious and yes will eventually slow loading a little. As you suggested as long as you make sure your key posts or those less likely to be found otherwise have meta tags you are on the road to getting good traffic.
why i have receive my blog spam after
put this metatags???
Hi ferradyse, I couldn't check out your blog because I got the following message "under review due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations".
This code has no additions so will not be responsible for the spam. What you include in the tags however may be attracting spammers. Looks like you need to take a good look at your blog since Blogger has put it under review for possible content violations
hi, thanx for the great article. however, i want to ask if i will be adding the details on each detailed posting as detailed above,
thanks for the great work.
Stanley you can add the details of every post you have made if you have the energy to do that. Or alternatively just add meta tags to the main index page. Follow the instructions for individual posts for the greatest control over your posts. The search engine will crawl your blog and update the description
Hey thank man, superb artical.
http://bestofthewebandme.blogspot.com/
Sunny glad you found this article useful to you.
Glad you enjoyed my post about Meta tags for Blogger xaivierchia
thank for your sharing
Tags are most important aspect of SEO, and specially if any one running its personnel blog then these are must. Really a nice sharing.Thanks
This is very useful info to me as a new blogger. But i still not in top 10. Any advice?
Oop! Sorted.
It was that line:
Now fixed. Thanks.
Thanks so much for posting this! Super-helpful.
Thanks this was exactly what I want.
Great tutorial,
Tommy
http://apps-4free.blogspot.com/
Thanks for information, I will add meta tag, Check my blog- http://www.gulftech.blogspot.com
Thanks for sharing these great tips and clear instructions!
Nice article,i have gained a lot of interesting information about SEO from reading your post.It is really helpful for beginners who have just started their blog.Thank you.
thx this is very useful for me
ROCKING ...
thanks for help..
SEO Friendly . :)))
check out ma blog .
http://www.maslanews.blogspot.com
http://find-free.blogspot.com
Thanks for the article....
Thanks for this post. You help me to understand a lot about meta tags and seo. Thanks!
nicw Post!!!!
pcmobileshelper.blogspot.com
Pc Mobile Help and Mobile Tricks
mobiletrickspc.co.cc
Mobile-Tricks Home
If you have problems with a parse error try using the code in this document form of this article
Nice Post..Thanks for sharing....
This is very useful,..
you're Blog is very informative
thanks :)
These are great tips you have here. Thanks for sharing this nice information.
hey Thanx For Your Help. And Please Visit My Blog.
http://streamtv24.blogspot.com
I can see that you yourself have not used this method of editing meta tags for your blog blogknowhow.blogspot.com. Why is that? When it is so useful & important why haven't you used it to optimize keywords & rankings?
Hi Faizy. You are correct that I don't use this method for every article on Blog Know How. To be honest I just don't have the time to implement. What I have done though is selectively choose some key articles and given them a boost by creating meta tags for the post page (surrounded by an <if> statement of course). Also I have meta tags for my blog main page so that search engines display what I have crafted rather than what they choose for any links to my home page. Happy blogging!
Hey, this is my first comment on your site. I’ve been reading it for a while in my RSS reader but haven’t commented before. Anyways, thanks for the post.
The meta tags on the pages of your website are important SEO elements that you should pay close attention to. These meta tags are your first line of communication with search robots and the quality of your tags will help your website's search engine ranking a lot.
Wow AWESOME guide thanks for sharing http://simplyhack.blogspot.com/
great effort. i was benefited by this.
http://abhishekinfomatics.blogspot.com/
Nice Article ...
http://jameelamiri.blogspot.com
Thanks for the post! I'm a beginner. I tried it and it works. Thanks man!
nice thanks post
http://1best1.org
Thanks for posting this,i found it to be a much clearer way to add the tags on each post than any others sites i have looked at.
thanks you very much
Thanks for this, been looking for ages on how to add them to post.
Common things but it's very useful for blogs in SEO point of view.
Thanks for publish.
pctipsinfo.blogspot.com
Thanks for sharing
Thanks for sharing information.......
seo hawaii
The information in this blog seems to be beautiful and also interesting.
Thanks for sharing. This kind of article is to give a good idea to increase the traffic of your blog. Meta tags on your blog are good to get a huge of traffic and Page rank.
A helpful for post begginers..
Pretty good post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed reading your blog posts.I hope you post again soon.
thanks i will try it...
I agree with this post. Add Meta tags are such effective factor for bloggers. I prefer to add tags in blogs.
I followed everything on this post and didn't encounter any errors. Thank you so much for sharing this. I'm a noob when it comes to these things. :)
Mobilelitratista.blogspot.com
GREAT IDEA THAT IS WORKING FOR ME THANKS FOR THIS POST
It is true that meta tags is very important if you want to get some good traffic from search engines?
seo philippines
Thanks it worked, i was not a techy to understand if it has been in the coding language, but now i did it and changed the meta tags section - my blog www.jobsgoabroad.blogspot.com
Thanks Dude........
http://photoshop-architect.blogspot.com/
thanks for the tips!
Thanks for great article. I'm using it for my blog and it seems to be very efficient. Thanks a lot.
my blog: http://gradedreaders.blogspot.com
thx for share, greeting from newbie blogger
Voucher Hotel Murah di Rajakamar.com
Blogging is a fantastic forum for people to share their opinion (positive or negative), tell of their own experience or have a good old gripe session. It seems like some search engines reward a blog that has a fairly active comments section. Provided there is no abuse I think this is a good thing as active comments are one important indicator about how well you are doing at engaging your audience.
What an article ! This is a must read for every blogger using Blogger.(since Blogger isn't as good with SEO as WP)
You have explained all the much needed in a very well way "._."
That’s is very nice post which you sent on this site its maybe very helpful for people and me also it’s a real good job which you doing .
Hail the man! Thank you!
Thank you. It works.
Thanks for the info. It helped out greatly!
SEO ClickBump
Looks like this blog might not be active any more? In any case, thanks for the concise explanation of how to add meta tags to my site. I knew there had to be a way ....
Good tips, must try this out!! Thanks 4 share it!!
It’s a very nice post of you . you doing a good job keep it up its very beneficial for us and it’s a latest information for us.
Thanks for describing in details. I had implemented this meta tag tweak in my blog today itself.
Nice info...
This post very helpfull
Thanks
Hei guy, this is a cool tips, i want to try your best tips, thank's..
thanks for the tips!
http://onlinephotoshoptutorials.blogspot.com/
Thanks for the tip. Made the changes easily to my blog by following your step by step instructions :)
THANK YOU.
http://www.flowingevents.com
Thanks for the tips with your help i have just started modifications on http://nepalisongs.rabinsxp.com
Thanks again for the worthy tips :)
excellent site, very very helpful, you have displayed a wonderful example of a great site, Thank you very much.
Thanks for the tips, very useful. I was wondering if you could tell me why different meta tag checkers say different things? While one says I have both a description and keywords, others won't find the description, or anything at all! Is this likely to be a fault on my behalf?
Green Kermit I just checked and you are right about the meta tag analyzers displaying different results. Nothing you have done if you have followed the instructions. Try entering meta tag analyzer in Google search and you will come up with many different variations. Use them as a guide only. Thanks for your query.
Very descriptive post and very useful information to optimize a blog. Thanks learned so much from this article.
Thanks buddy..
Great tips. this will help in making my blogs hit the rankings.
I really appreciate your blog post, looking forward for more posts from you.
Seo classes
This is really a great post my friend. I think my blog will rank better with your help!
Thanks a lot!
Lowongan Kerja : I will appreciate this tutorial
i just did what you explained and within 7-8 days i got increase in traffic.credit goes to your tutorial
Thanks
hi,
Thanks for giving information about tag setup.
Thanks, it works for me.
thanks for your very nice article
These are some great tools that i definitely use for SEO work. This is a great list to use in the future.. More Details
thanks a lot, now my site description has changed in google search results,
Regards,
Ajay Kumar Kalva
Everything is fine, am happy about your blog. Thanks admin for sharing the unique content, you have done a great job I appreciate your effort and I hope you will get more positive comments from the web users.school websites uk
Thank you so much for sharing a great article. Keep up the great work!
Twin Cities Web Design
Post a Comment