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Blogspot SEO Help Needed

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Arti
from Mumbai |

Hello Friends,

I recently enabled the 'Meta tags' option found under Settings -> Search Preferences in Blogspot. This now gives me the option of a 'Search description', for every new blog post that I create, beneath the setting options of Labels, schedule, location, etc.

So, my query is-

What should I put in the 'Search description' field. Should it be a single line containing all the keywords or a set of keywords seperated by commas?

Same question applies for the 'Meta Tag' field as well. Innocent

If anyone here has any idea on it, kindly take out some time to help. Smile

Replies 1 to 13 of 13

Aparna Mudi
from Delhi |

set of keywords likely to be searched for related to your post... and as CA said... separated by commas

TF Carthick
from Bangalore |

Our friend Suborup Dasgupta has recently written a beautiful post on this. Please read.

http://subhorup.blogspot.in/2012/06/how-to-create-custom-url-meta-description-blogger-blogspot-blogs.html

I am still too lazy to follow his advice though.

Arti
from Mumbai |

Do it, TF.. dont be lazy. And many thanks for the link, it is indeed a beautiful post and very helpful too. Smile

TF Carthick
from Bangalore |

Think it works if you copy and paste the link rather than clicking it.

Subhorup Dasgupta
from Hyderabad |

no it doesn't, the editor interface doesnt like the words meta description in the url. Innocent

Arti
from Mumbai |

Hmmm.. not working, its redirecting to some other url, any ideas why?

Trying it for one last time, using 'HTML' this time -

Blospot SEO Tutorial

Arti
from Mumbai |

I give up...Innocent Undecided

Arti
from Mumbai |

@Captain Awesome and @Aparna - I was doing otherwise. Thanks a ton! Smile

One more question - Should I follow the same route for the 'Meta tag' field that applies to the overall blog as well?

Subhorup Dasgupta
from Hyderabad |

dang. i came here thinking of responding and found the link to my post here. thanks, TF.

judging by the changes in algorithm in search ranking, my guess is that there is a movement away from meta-tagging and SEO designed specifically to pump up rankings. the introduction of these two features tells me that google is looking at more real and human meta descriptions. i would suggest going with a post description that is a sentence that pulls your main keywords together, rather than a series of keywords. for the meta tag for the blog description, however, keywords separated by commas should work. the search description is for individual posts, while the meta tags are for the blog overall.

my reason for suggesting a sentence for the post description is that now when your page shows up on google search results - or when you post the link on social media - by default it displays the post description as a snippet. so it makes sense to give people a readable and reasonable description of your post rather than a string of keywords.

hope this helps.

Arti
from Mumbai |

Ah! A reply from the SEO guru himself. Smile Thanks a lot, Subho for putting up such a wonderfully helpful post and your reply here. I understand your points especially about the stuffing of keywords.

But one question that concerns me is does Google look at those different words in the sentence we put in 'post search desc' as different keywords or does it take the entire string as one long keyword, which should ideally no be the case? Because if that is the case then, it will hit hard on the  search results.

Another point is that as you have said, a sentence for the post description is good since by default it displays the post description as a snippet. What about the meta tag description then? Will the search result for say ' My Yatra Diary'  show a set of keywords I have stuffed rather than giving a readable and reasonable description for my blog?

Anita Mokashi
from Sunnyvale, CA |

Hi 

I had a query regarding placement of metatag for individual posts on blogger html.I recently started adding meta tags in blogger html. First i added the homepage description meta tag under <head> in html.Then i posted individual metatag below homepage meta tag. but now my individual post also shows the homepage description.Can you pls suggest where should i place the individual post meta tag so that google can read its description rather than homepage description for all posts?

Thanks

Anita

Arti
from Mumbai |

@Anita Sorry, I have no clues about your query, but I was just wondering do we still need to add the 'meta tag' in Blogger HTML manually now that Blogger has made that easy for us by giving us an option in Settings> Search Preferences. Why dont you enable - 'Meta Tags' there.

And then go through the post by Subhorup - link provided by 'The Fool' above. May be that can help you. If not, remember you can always shoot your queries in the forum. :)

Nandita B
from Mumbai |

For your info - 1# Meta Tags applies for both, blog as a whole and individual posts.

2# Meta description should be the best description of your blog post, to be shown in SERPs just below the Title as a description (Meaning of snippet is different). It shouldn't be more than 160 characters, as lots of SEs don't show meta description beyond 10 characters.

3# Although Google doesn't support meta tags feature, Bing, Yahoo and others support quite well. Be careful while writing meta tags - The permutation and combination should not look like spammy. But, don't waste time for meta tags (1min/post is more than sufficient).

Hope my infos are informative Laughing

Arti
from Mumbai |

Thanks Nandita B! Of course, your infos are informative Cool

The thing is, Blogger has introduced Meta tag features in 'Settings' itself, so we dont have to take any pains of manually inserting things in the HTML code.

For blog as a whole, blogger gives us a - 'Meta Tag' as a field. I guess, it points to the Meta Tag that you referred in your #3. And for each of the posts that we create, they have included a 'Post description', something that I'm mapping to your Meta Description in point #2.

Pls. correct me if I'm wrong. Smile

Shalu Sharma
from Patna, Delhi |

Meta tags are of less importance nowadays. You need to concentrate on keywords, onpage SEO and quality backlinks. 

Arti
from Mumbai |

I didn't know meta tags have lost their value over time. Thanks, Shalu.

Anirban
from Kolkata |

Google does not use meta tags, it abandoned meta tags long back, after it was found that rankings could be manipulated by 'keyword stuffing', so better don't waste time on meta tags. Bing on its part does give meta tags some importance. But then Bing has only 15-20% seach market share !! 

Arti
from Mumbai |

Google does not use meta tags, it abandoned meta tags long back, after it was found that rankings could be manipulated by 'keyword stuffing'

I wonder, why Google has introduced it in blogger then? Innocent

DS
from Mumbai |

Never knew about all this! Will try out the new features introduced by google.
Informative thread Arti!

Arti
from Mumbai |

Thanks, DS! I hope you do it soon!

suresh kumar g
from hyderabad |

You can follow all the steps above , but none of them mentioned about the Country Based TLD redirection. Its one of the crucial in SEO . 

If you browse your site it will open as .in domain, So if someone open in uk, it will be opend as .UK  , So you need to stop redirecting and here is the tutorial , After suggestion this tutorial to one of my friend :) he is earning 3k$ from Adsense alone :) 

http://www.labnol.org/internet/prevent-blogger-country-redirection/21031/

Arti
from Mumbai |

Wow Suresh! Thanks for this share, this looks quite useful! :)

Tony John
from Kerala |

There are some misleading comments above.

Meta tags have NOT lost its significance. What is ignored by Google is "keywords meta tag" but other meta tags like "description metatag" is really really important.

Google ignores keyword meta tag, but does not penalise you for having one, unless you try to spam.

Even though Google does not care, there are so many other sites/spiders/search engines/directories etc that use keywords meta tag. So, I would always use and recommend keywords meta tag (unless Google come and say they hate it, but they never did say that until now).The "description" you enter for blogger posts will be used as "meta description" and that is an important part of SEO, even though it is not as important as Title, Content etc.The blog description you provide in the search preferences under Meta Tags has the same purpose - it will be used as the meta description for the home page of your blog and so it is important. 

DS
from Mumbai |

Very good answer... Learning so many things.

Arti
from Mumbai |

Thank you, Tony John... Keywords for 'blog meta tag' and description for 'blog post search field'. Things seem to be much clearer now.

Roy Mathew
from Trivandrum |

Description should be a summary of the content on your page, usually of about 250 characters. Keywords together can count up to 1000 characters.

Arti
from Mumbai |

Okies, point noted... Thanks Roy.

Anita Mokashi
from Sunnyvale, CA |

Useful info. Thanks arti for posting this comment. even i learnt so many things:)

Arti
from Mumbai |

Learnings galore for me as well... all thanks to this forum and its members, Anita! Smile

Varma
from trivandrum |

Suggesting: Just write Keyword rich article. ( or write article on your own words)

Google doesnt look into the meta keywords or description , so dont waste time on that.

As you in blogger network, you may need to implement Canonical URLs, thus avoiding any issues with multiple domain extension.