Monday, September 10, 2012

SEO: How does your blog appear in a Google search?


Do you know how your blog description appears when someone does a Google Search?  If you haven't updated your Google Search Preferences then chances are your blog description is just a snippet from your latest blog post or even just part of a random comment.


Go on, go ahead and google search your own blog name. I'll wait here until you get back.
.
.
.
.
....So you're back already? What did it say? Are you happy with what it said?

Did you know that you can make it so that the blog description is actually a proper customised description of what your blog is about; so you can then make it enticing to people who see those Google search results?  If you are interested in SEO (search engine optimisation) this will also assist search engines to accurately index your blog and posts so they will appear in appropriate search results.


how to add metadata for SEO on your blog


I recently changed mine so I am sharing here how to change yours if you have a Blogger blog.  On your blog, click on the tab "design" on the top right hand corner of the screen. Then go down and click on SETTINGS. When the tabs open up the second bottom one is SEARCH PREFERENCES. Click on it.

When you click on Search Preferences the screen will look like this:

how to add metadata for SEO on your blog
This Search Preference option is a relatively new feature in Google Blogger and allows you to easily add Metatags to your blog. Metatags is information about your blog page content in the context for Search Engine Optimization.  I personally am not that worried about ranking high in SEO but I do want my blog description to be accurate.

In the "Metatags Description" box enter whatever information you want about your blog.  I have entered my blog tag line and some descriptions of what I blog about. You are limited to 150 characters so be concise.


You will then click SAVE and your blog search description is saved. It may take a little while for this to appear in google search results. It may even take a day or so while google re-indexes your blog. You may also need to clear your computer's cache for it to show up (I didn't need to but a couple of other people who used this tutorial told me they had to)

This is for the blog only and not for individual blog posts.

how to add metadata for SEO on your blog
So this is how mine shows up when someone googles Lilyfield Life or Life in Lilyfield or even just Lilyfield. 


how to add metadata for SEO on your blog



If you want individual posts to have a description then you need to add a metatag to each post (and you can go back and now add this to past posts already published if you wish).

This is extremely easy to do. When you are writing your post just click on the Search Description field on the Post Settings on the right hand side of the screen.  Fill in the box with a description of the post.


how to add metadata for SEO on your blog


Hope that helps!
cheers 
Fiona


how to add metadata for SEO on your blog



38 comments:

  1. Thankyou so much Fiona, this is really helpful! I'll definitely be having a go at this sometime today :)
    Cas x

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  2. Hi Fiona,

    Oh thank you for this, especially showing how to do each step. I am new to blogger so it really helped.

    Jodi

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  3. Thanks so much for sharing Fiona! Great tips and easy to follow (esp. for this newbie untechno savvy chick!;) Jo xx

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  4. Didn't even know you could or should do this - so thank you for the advice. Have now changed it. Any idea how you can change the key posts that appear under your title in the search results? I have some that are old and not the most popular or reflective of my blog and wonder if you can choose which show up?

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  5. Thanks Fiona, I didn't know how to do that, thanks for the great post!

    xx Karen

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  6. Thanks Fiona! I was wondering my blog looked less that sexy when I searched for it, and now I know why! Just updated mine.

    I have the same question as Mel - how did you get the posts to come up underneath? Or is that automatic?

    Thanks again

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  7. This is fabulous thank you so much!!!

    Tanya :)

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  8. Much appreciated Fiona, have gone through updating old posts. So lovely of you to share this with us all. Thanks heaps!

    Lisa xox

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    Replies
    1. It has definitely worked Fiona. Thanks so much! xxx

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  9. glad everyone liked it. i'll post more hints as i sort out the solutions to blogger issues i have!

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  10. I hadn't really thought about this, but it's super helpful! I'm going to have to do some editing. Thanks so much for all the great details.

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  11. I didn't even think about that. Thank you so much. I already changed my main description. Now on to the articles.

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  12. thanks so much for these detailed instructions, Fiona. It is such good advice. i'm off to change things around.
    cheers Julie Ann xx

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  13. Nice, shame i just switched to wordpress! Oh well I'm sure you can do same in wordpress, just need to figure out how.

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  14. So good to know! I need to fix that in my Wordpress.:)

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  15. Yes, that is VERY helpful! Thanks for a good tutorial. :-)

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  16. Thanks, this was really interesting. How funny, my blog's name is Lilly's Life.

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  17. Fiona, this is a very informative post. Thank you.

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  18. Oh, I just did it - very exciting - thank you so much for that! :-)

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Thanks for taking the time to comment! Sorry if you have trouble commenting, you can always email me at lilyfieldlife@bigpond.com