Just like on my main site, Garry Conn dot Com, I am going to be publishing 99 successful blogging tips here. The 99 successful blogging tips found here on this site, Garry Conn dot Blogspot dot Com are specifically geared for Blogger.com bloggers. These successful blogging tips are you for you, they are your special treat and are unique for only Blogger.com bloggers. Enjoy! Ask Questions! Please comment and provide feedback and let me know how I am doing!
Meta Tags:
For years, I never realized that Blogger.com allows their uses to modify and or add meta tags into their blogs. Meta Tags are very important because most search engines uses meta tags as a basis on how they index your home page as well as your individual post pages.
Adding meta tags into your Blogger.com blog will really step things up for you and help increase traffic. Let me explain further with a few screen shots pulled from Google.
This is how Google has indexed their own Official Google Blog home page.
Lets look at some key elements in this listing:
- The Title: Official Google Blog
- The Description: 5/17/2007 09:00:00 AM. Posted by Adam Mat....
- The URL: googleblog.blogspot.com/ - May 17th, 2007 - Simi...
With Meta Tags you can have some influence over how your Blogger.com site is displayed in the search engine result pages (SERP's).
- The Meta Title Tag is easy to modify. This is the actual title of your blog. View screen shot:
See how the title of Official Google Blog matches exactly what appears in the search engines? You can change your title of your blog to include certain keywords that you want to target in the search engines.
Lets look at the description next. On the first screen shot you can see that Google has indexed their own Official Google Blog and has a pretty crappy description. On the next line in your Blogger.com dashboard you will see the option titled description. Logically, you would think what ever you type there is what would also appear in the SERP's as well.
This is NOT the case. This field does NOT write the proper tag to show search engines what your site description is. And that is the reason why 95% of all Blogger.com bloggers get terrible results in the SERP's. The trick I want to show you is adding your own Meta Tags into your Blogger.com blog. Here is how.
Adding Meta Tags To Blogger.com
In your blogger.com dashboard, navigate to your Template / Edit HTML tab and add the following code directly below the <head> tag:
<meta content='ADD YOUR SITE DESCRIPTION HERE' name='description'/> <meta content='ADD YOUR KEYWORDS HERE' name='keywords'/> <meta content='ADD YOUR NAME HERE' name='author'/>
You can use my entry as an example:
<meta content='Successful blogging tips for Blogger.com bloggers provided by Garry Conn' name='description'/> <meta content='Garry, Conn, Successful, Blogging, Tips, Garry Conn, Successful Blogging, Successful Blogging Tips, Blogging Tips' name='keywords'/> <meta content='Garry Conn' name='author'/>
Here is a screen shot example:
So, eventually when Google does index my site the listing on my home page should appear as follows:
Garry Conn dot Blogspot dot Com Successful blogging tips by Blogger.com bloggers provided by Garry Conn. garryconn.blogspot.com/ May 17th, 2007
I am choosing to target my own name rather than any other keyword. If I wanted to totally market the words, "Successful Blogging Tips", I would name my site title that.
Now this doesn't really help too much in the individual post pages, but it does help a lot if your blog is focused on one primary topic. Meaning if you talk about dog grooming and nothing but dog grooming and your meta description explains that your site is about dog grooming, your individual post pages will maintain a level of relevancy based on your site's title, meta description and keywords. The end result is your will not have individual posts pages that appear like this:
The end result is your individual posts pages should appear just like your home page appears, but will pull up better under the keywords you have chosen to target.
Comments and Questions?
I know that I have flooded you with a ton of information. I want you to know that I am here to help you make this modification. Please feel free to drop me a comment and ask questions. My goal is to help you gain a better position in the SERP's. With a few added touches to your blog, I can help you get top positions in the SERP's. Ask me questions, I am here to help. If you feel uncomfortable with anything or don't completely understand what I have written please feel free to comment and ask questions.
Best Regards, Garry Conn
94 comments:
Very good and useful tip. I will add that after I nail down the keywords.
Sounds good man... again, let me know if you need any help with this. :)
Okay, just went and added that to my site. Now to see it work its magic. :) Thanks again for the help.
Question: Can you explain how to get categories using blogger? Thanks in advance.
Homemom,
You have made a minor mistake...
add this:
'
in front of the word, this in your description.
<meta content=This mother of four takes you on a journey through parenthood as she tries to figure it out, with as little mess as possible. But with three mobile kids, a spit up baby and a Marine for a husband that isn't always possible.' name='description'/>
See the error? This mother of...
should be 'This mother of..
Homemom,
I made a post just for you. Now you can add categories to your Blogger.com blog!
:)
A most useful tip! Thank you!
Guess this is why when you searched my site all you got were all the links with one name. Maybe now it'll change things up a bit. ;)
Oh, just saw your response to me. I've corrected it now. Thanks again. Thanks for the category.
thanks a lot for this great hint garry... I added the meta stuff to my blog.
keep up the good work!
cheers, eldo
hey man your advice was helpful.Your ranking in google seach looks good so far.Any tips on how to improve traffic to my site"n.b i used page elements instead of post.Did i make a mistake by doing so?
I don't think I have done that on any of my blogger blogs... thanks for the reminder.
How could I have forgotten the wonderful joys of Blogger.com. It's a complete different type of blogging and bloggers. Blogger.com bloggers are so comment friendly! Thank you all for the awesome comments about the post. I am very happy to discover that this is helping you all! :)
Ah, and there's much more you can do too... here's a chunk of my Classic Blogger template:
(This first section pertains to GeoURL.)
<!-- GeoURL geographic code -->
<meta name="geo.region" content="US" />
<meta name="geo.placename" content="Odessa, TX 79762" />
<meta name="geo.position" content="31.90024, -102.355146" />
<meta name="ICBM" content="31.90024, -102.355146" />
<meta name="DC.title" content="2Dolphins" />
(Set your site's address bar icon a.k.a. Favicon.)
<!-- Set your site's FavIcon -->
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.2dolphins.com/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />
(This code from Pete Freitag adds RSS feed autodiscovery.)
<!-- Add RSS autodiscovery for site -->
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="RSS Feed for 2Dolphins.com" href="http://www.2dolphins.com/2d_atomfeed.xml" />
Hope this comes in handy!
Hi,
How do I add categories to my BLOGSPOT site?
Thanks for the great tips
Wizardman, you can read this article I wrote titled, "How To Add Categories To Blogger dot Com.
Great post Gary. Can I add meta descriptions to each page in Blogger?
Thank you
You are merely scratching the surface of seo for beta blogger.
By placing static meta tags on each page of your blog, you run the risk of ending up in the supplemental results of Google.
To the bots since the meta tags are static, it will think that it is indexing the same pages over and over.
Unless you can code xml for beta blogger and pull dynamic content from your post title and post content then stuff it into the meta tags to create unique ones for each page, you are better off not adding any at all.
A better work around is to add a conditional statement to the meta tags so that it only appears on the home page of the blog and not on the post title.
Static meta tags repeated on each page is viewed as duplicate content by google unless you are writing unique content do not do this.
Check if you're in the supplemental results after adding meta tags in Google.
site:mydomain.com
It took me a while to figure out the best choice of keywords and then I gave it a try. Kept getting refused saying poor formation and I finally figured out I was missing a space between the ' and the name. Once I got that fixed, it loaded just great.
Can't wait to see how it works.
Hi sir,
I would like to know how to add meta tags for individual posts in blogspot
blog ?
Thank you .
Thanks for a very simple way to explain this I have just added the tags so fingers cross everything should be fine
Gee, thanks for sharing this. I had wanted to write the meta tags for quite a while and has not gotten the hang of it till today.
Great information you have here Garry! thanks. I just implemented some of it in my own blog on blogger.
Thanks so much Garry. I just started out blogging and hopefully this will help!
http://picturiapress.blogspot.com
WOW...I wish I had read that years ago. Thank you so much!!
http://www.joicohairproducts.com
Thanks for the help! Hopefully I can get a little more traffic out of this!
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 "/>".
This error comes up when I add the code to my template... what do I do?
hello Gary, I just did the meta tip you posted in your blog hope it will work. Im still new in blogging and in optimizing my blog, hope i can ask you for other tips.
thanks a lot Gary!
I am a newbie who is still figuring out what blog marketing is all about.I just added meta tags to one of my Blogs and already feel like a queen.
Very useful information,Thanks a ton.
I can't tell you how happy I am with this post. Thank you.
Just awesome!!! thanks a million for your article. I am bookmarking it now. Many, many thanks.
Thanks Garry - I found your information easy to follow and very helpful.
Will this work with the new Layout?
thnx man. just used it on http://myonlinecinema.us
This was a very useful and helpful post. So how long does it take before Google realizes it?
After searching for hours trying to figure out how to do this (plus learning/attempting to understand along the way), your post has been the biggest help!
I love that you add graphics to actually SHOW where to add the tag instead of just writing it out and assuming I even know what the heck I'm doing!
So thank you, at at the risk of sounding unintelligent: me like da pictures. Tonga tonga! (*cave man style*)
This post was very useful thank you.
For so long my blog has been unsearchable except if I tuped my name and was very very specific. I'm now hoping with the keywords it may appear in a few more search engine results.
http://vanterheyden.blogspot.com/
that is my blog - do have a look if you get a moment
Garry, thank you . Thank you very very much. i spent long hours and try a lot tips that was other webside show me. But onlu you one is useful.
Thank you.
Garry,
Thank you very much for this useful tip. Much appreciated!
Good info. But hmm.. to echo the sentiments of 'MauiBob', is there a way to add unique meta descriptions to individual posts on Blogger?
Best,
Suz (a.k.a. Lil' Boozie)
"3 Troopin' Travelers"
To monitor my web blogpages i use the free tool web stats:
http://www.webseomasters.com/free-website-statistics.html
I realy helped me to improve my webpage rank on google.
Thank you very much. iam trying to upload meta tag since long time but your post helped me a lot. thank you very much..
http://sapmmhelp.blogspot.com
thanks, just added it garry. Im crossing my fingers that it will do wonders. Thank u so much
your tip was really cool. thanks.
thanks man
I added to my blog www.mobilephone-tracker.blogspot.com
Hi Gary,
A informative article.But,as u mentioned this does not always help individual pages.
I have made a small twaek and made my meta description as something like
Blogger|$BlogItemTitle$|$BlogDescription$
This actually works very well for google since my blog article description shows as the description.
However,this doesn work that well i yahoo search i guess.
But,i have been happy with the organic results i got from google
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 "/>".
this is wat i get after following ur step.
Thank you so much for sharing code to me!
Great post. But its well know to the one who is already a good coder, a web designer. He always gives some tries like this. Even I done this to few of my blogs.
Thanks for your help gary.
Thanks for the info!
After two plus hours of searching I finally found the secret if you're getting that error message...just paste your code in here, hit Parse, and a new code appears like magic that works perfectly:
http://intelligentmoves.blogspot.com/2009/01/parseconvert-html-xml-adsense-code.html
Enjoy!
Luckily it didn't take me too long to find you. Thanks for providing this info! It worked beautifully.
superstuff.co.cc
ladieannhats.blogspot.com
Thank you I had a different format that wasn't working in Blogger, Now I see why, thank you.
Thank you for this! I found this to be very helpful and easy to apply. I've been wondering how to do this for sometime now. Again, thank you!
Gary Conn,
Thank you, thank you!! I've been reading and searching the web to learn how to write META tags and insert into my Google Blog. Your well illustrated, concise, Blogger specific,and correct information is the only reason I have just now successfully inserted META tags into my template. I'm now a new fan of yours.
Thanks Mouch!
You saved me two hours :-)
Thanks for posting, "After two plus hours of searching I finally found the secret if you're getting that error message...just paste your code in here, hit Parse, and a new code appears like magic that works perfectly:
http://intelligentmoves.blogspot.com/2009/01/parseconvert-html-xml-adsense-code.html "
It worked like a charm...the FIRST time. Thanks to Garry for writing this article, too!
Thanks so much!
than u very much......
i am added meta to my blog
Great!
cool ,bullseye
Thank you so much for this! It was very helpful, I just added metatags to both my blogs.
Thanks Mouch!!!!
You also saved me two hours of research than another two to actually 'parse' it. :-)
Thanks for posting, "After two plus hours of searching I finally found the secret if you're getting that error message...just paste your code in here, hit Parse, and a new code appears like magic that works perfectly.
Not sure why this wasn't mentioned in the actual post, but I'm glad it got posted. Thanks again!
I was actually able to follow these directions and it worked! I had tried other people's directions and failed. Thanks so much!
great tips i will try this one out with my blos am open to changes just to improve my SERP. thanks for sahring
I have added the meta tag info and it appears to be working fine.
Will a single meta tag entry suffice for the entire blog or do we need to add meta tags to all the pages.
Garry,
Could you please instruct me on how to add a moving image to an article in my blog.
Thanks,
Maurice.
I wanted to let you know that I blogged about your tips today here:
http://lenoxknits.blogspot.com/2009/03/seo-for-dummies.html
I am so thankful for your well written tips for this blogging newbie. Please keep sharing!
Hi Garry,
I write about a lot of different things for my blog such as fashion, beauty, food, dating, etc. As an example, for beauty I wrote aboutGiovanni products.If someone puts Giovanni in a google search how can I have my blog come up in that search
Garry,
I can't seem to get mine to work. I get this msg:
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 "/>".
What did i do wrong?
never mind, i figured out my mistake.
thanks for awesome tips!
i added this to my blog about a month ago and it still hasn't taken effect, how long does it take to work?
Gracias!
Finally I added meta tags in my blog.
I have launched my blog just two months ago and I was thinking to add some important meta tags like Description, Keywords and author. Using your step by step guide on how to add meta tags for blogger blog I could successfully added those meta tags in my blog at http://makemoneyonlinemeans.blogspot.com
Thanks for these tips and info.
Cheers buddie used it on
http://gptonlinemoneymaking.blogspot.com/
thanks a lot! very usefull!
Does this put the tags on every page of the blog? Does it make sense just to limit to just the home page of your blog? If so, is there an easy way to do this? Thanks!
Great tips. Thanks!
Thanks for such useful & Handy tip
this is what i was searching ....
really a helpful blog!
thanx keep blogging!!!!!!!!!!!
great post,thank you for the research on meta for blogger.
http://zwholesale.net
Thanks a lot. I am making use of this and it has definitely helped in being recognized by search engines.
i am so glad that i stumbled upon this article coz i´ve been thinking of ways to improve my blogger blogs..thanks a lot.
a wonderfull post by wonderfull person thanks again.
it worked on my blog
www.mobmani.blogspot.com
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 "/>".
I keep getting this message even though I entered the code correctly. What's going on here? I saw other people are getting it too?
thank!
Many thanks.
Thanks a lot it works :)
this didnt work for me. i still dont see my blog on Google. please email be back at Osae0101@hotmail.com
good but wont it be the same for every page?
Thanks, Garry. I've added many more Meta Tags beyond what the search engines will likely print in the SERP's. Please confirm what the average length of the printed tags is (and that it's worthwhile to add the others to presumably help rank the blog even though they won't appear on the page).
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