This article will instruct you in how to add meta-tags to a Blogger blog, to help improve your page ranking. This is one of many great SEO tricks I'll be adding to the site over the coming weeks.
(If you don't want people to find your blog this article doesn't concern you, but for those who desire search engine traffic meta-tags are important.)
(If you don't want people to find your blog this article doesn't concern you, but for those who desire search engine traffic meta-tags are important.)
Meta-tags are hidden html elements (html is the name of the code used to create websites), that help search engines find and index websites and blogs, by providing information on their individual content. Meta-tags communicate to web-bots (the devices that trawl web-pages, searching for data) what type of content can be found on a site, to help determine whether or not it's relevant to specific search terms. Although meta-tags are not considered as important as they once were, if you have meta-tags you're more likely to feature in search engine results. This is obviously helpful to those wishing to promote a business, or to earn revenue from advertising.
Unfortunately, while many web-services provide a simple way of adding meta-tags to web-pages, Blogger doesn't - which means you must create them and add them to your html code manually. This may sound complicated, but it's actually fairly simple - provided you add correctly formed code to the correct area in your html code (Blogger will reject improperly formed html).
Before you go ahead and create your meta-tags you should understand some important points regarding how meta-tags must be formed in order to optimise your website, rather than being seen as spamming by robots.
- It's very important that you use the correct number of characters and words when creating meta-tags to improve page ranking, as using too many will have the opposite effect, thus lowering your ranking and, therefore, reducing traffic.
- It's also imperative that you use relevant keywords in your meta-tags, and that no keyword is repeated more than three times. Choose keywords that are already used frequently in posts, in your blog description and title, and those in your url address IF relevant. Use a maximum of 200 characters and twenty keywords.
- The meta-tag description should be exactly that - NOT a list of keywords. Describe your blog accurately in a full sentence, with as few commas as possible, using a maximum of 150 characters. This description may appear below your link in search results, so you need to use it to provide accurate information, and to sell your blog to potential visitors by making it sound attractive/useful.
Before you begin adding meta-tags to a Blogger blog you should visit your Blogger dashboard, click on the 'layout' tab of the blog you wish to edit, and click on 'edit html.' You should now download a copy of your blog template as it is currently, in case you make any mistakes you can't rectify. Name the document 'template for (insert blog name here)' and add a number 1. You will no doubt be making further changes to your blog and backing up each template and numbering them in order will help you return your blog to any stage of its creation, should you ever wish to.
To create your meta-tags, simply copy the code from the image on the left into notepad or similar software (this is to remove any alterations in coding that occur when you copy it directly from the screen to your template), and enter your blog title, description, most important keywords, and other relevant personal details into the spaces indicated by three underscores inside brackets (___). Be sure to delete the underscores and brackets before saving, or the html code will be rejected by Blogger.
To create your meta-tags, simply copy the code from the image on the left into notepad or similar software (this is to remove any alterations in coding that occur when you copy it directly from the screen to your template), and enter your blog title, description, most important keywords, and other relevant personal details into the spaces indicated by three underscores inside brackets (___). Be sure to delete the underscores and brackets before saving, or the html code will be rejected by Blogger.
Now all you need to do is to copy your meta-tags and paste them directly underneath the first 'head' section in your html code. This is located very near the top of the code, and will appear on a single line, set several spaces in from the left, with an arrow on either side of the word (so is easily identifiable).
If you experience any problems or are presented with an error screen please read the instructions again to make sure you didn't miss anything, or delete anything you shouldn't have.
If you're still having problems leave a comment and I'll see what I can do - sometimes Blogger make changes to the system and this can cause errors.
If you're still having problems leave a comment and I'll see what I can do - sometimes Blogger make changes to the system and this can cause errors.
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