A while ago I received a comment from CJ in which he was asking for a widget or gadget to automatically implement the "Meta Description Hack" for Blogger. I didn't notice the comment back then (awfully sorry for that), but recently, as I was looking over those comments I decided to take up that challenge. Below is a small javascript application you can use to generate custom meta descriptions, keywords and title tags for Blogspot blogs, as well as a video tutorial on how to use it.
Step 1
For how many pages would you like to create custom meta tags?Step 2
Is your homepage among these pages?yes, the first description and keyword tags should be for my blog's homepage
no, all meta tags are for other pages on my blog (usually post pages)
Step 3
Should the code include the hack for swapping page titles with article titles?yes
no, I've already added that piece of code
Step 4
How should the title appear for a post page?<post title> (Eg: Custom Meta Description)
<post title - blog title> (Eg: Custom Meta Description - AgaWebs)
| Page 1 | |
| URL: | |
| Keywords: | |
| Description: | |
| Page 2 | |
| URL: | |
| Keywords: | |
| Description: | |
| Page 3 | |
| URL: | |
| Keywords: | |
| Description: | |
| Page 4 | |
| URL: | |
| Keywords: | |
| Description: | |
| Page 5 | |
| URL: | |
| Keywords: | |
| Description: | |
109 comments:
What a great idea you've done here! Many people will love this little tool you've done especially with the video as well. For many people who don't know how to do meta tags and title tags with the blogger platform they'll be thanking you for this.
Keep up the great work! I can see this blog post spreading across the internet quickly.
Sincerely,
Jamie Boyle
Learn How To Make Money Online
www.makingmoneyforife.com
Thank you for your comment, Jamie. I hope you're right about the post spreading quickly :)
Thanks for this tool I see how it could be very useful. I have a question though and was hoping you could answer, seeing so far you've had the best info. I've read.
Is there away to do this automatically for each of my blogspot posts?
I have a lot of posts and adding a meta description manually for each one is a lot of work and I haven't found away to do this on auto.
Hope you can answer and thanks -Taylor
Dear Andrei,
Hello, my name is Sudirdjo Widjaja from Indonesia. I have a little questions about problems with Google Webmaster. I was hoping if you could help me on this matter.
In Google Webmaster Tools, I kept having these 2 issues:
1. 11 pages/ posts of Duplicate Meta Description
2. 11 pages/ posts of Duplicate Title Tags
Even after I followed your instruction by using your javascript application for creating custom meta dan title tags for Blogger.
Please allow me to provide you with some data (URL) of my blog:
URL of my blog: http://juragan-dinar-irak.blogspot.com/
title: JUAL BELI DINAR IRAK IRAQ | KURS DINAR | DONG VIETNAM
description: Melayani Jual Beli Dinar Irak Iraq, Dong Vietnam, Keuntungan Investasi, Kurs Harga Mata Uang, TANGAN PERTAMA, JAMIN ASLI Sudirdjo Widjaja 08176963938
keywords: Kurs Dinar, Jual Dinar, Beli Dinar, Dinar Irak, Dinar Iraq, Dong Vietnam, Mata Uang, Irak, Iraq, Harga, Kurs, Uang, Investasi
-------------------
And 2 examples/ posts of those 11 pages/ posts that have issues with Duplicate Meta Description and Duplicate Title Tags:
URL of Post no. 1
http://juragan-dinar-irak.blogspot.com/2009/02/sejarah-dinar-irak_3463.html
title: SEJARAH DINAR IRAK
description: Sejarah Dinar Irak sejak tahun 1932 sampai dengan sekarang
keywords: Sejarah, Kurs, Harga, Mata Uang, Dinar, Irak, Iraq, Sejarah Dinar, Dinar Irak, Dinar Iraq, Sejarah Dinar Irak
-------------------
URL Post no. 2:
http://juragan-dinar-irak.blogspot.com/2009/02/kisah-nyata-dinar-kuwait-yang_8593.html
title: Kisah Nyata Dinar Kuwait
description: Kisah nyata Dinar Kuwait yang diharapkan terulang kembali pada Dinar Irak Iraq
keywords: Dinar Kuwait, Kurs Dinar, Jual Dinar, Beli Dinar, Dinar Irak, Dinar Iraq, Dong Vietnam, Mata Uang, Irak, Iraq, Harga, Kurs, Uang, Investasi
As you can see that I have made different description for each, but still I still couldn’t resolve these 2 issues I mentioned above. I also used your javascript application for creating different meta descriptions and title tags for them.
This is what I have in HTML form, that I cut (from Agaweb) and paste into my HTML page for homepage + 2 posts above
head
b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'
meta content='Melayani Jual Beli Dinar Irak Iraq, Dong Vietnam, Keuntungan Investasi, Kurs Harga Mata Uang, TANGAN PERTAMA, JAMIN ASLI Sudirdjo Widjaja 08176963938' name='description'/
meta content='Kurs Dinar, Jual Dinar, Beli Dinar, Dinar Irak, Dinar Iraq, Dong Vietnam, Mata Uang, Irak, Iraq, Harga, Kurs, Uang, Investasi' name='keywords'/
/b:if
b:if cond='data:blog.url == "http://juragan-dinar-irak.blogspot.com/2009/02/sejarah-dinar-irak_3463.html"'
meta content='Sejarah Dinar Irak sejak tahun 1932 sampai dengan sekarang' name='description'/
meta content='Sejarah, Kurs, Harga, Mata Uang, Dinar, Irak, Iraq, Sejarah Dinar, Dinar Irak, Dinar Iraq, Sejarah Dinar Irak' name='keywords'/
/b:if
b:if cond='data:blog.url == "http://juragan-dinar-irak.blogspot.com/2009/02/kisah-nyata-dinar-kuwait-yang_8593.html"'
meta content='Kisah nyata Dinar Kuwait yang diharapkan terulang kembali pada Dinar Irak Iraq' name='description'/
meta content='Dinar Kuwait, Kurs Dinar, Jual Dinar, Beli Dinar, Dinar Irak, Dinar Iraq, Dong Vietnam, Mata Uang, Irak, Iraq, Harga, Kurs, Uang, Investasi' name='keywords'/
/b:if
Even if check the source of those 3 pages (homepage + 2 posts) I did have different Title Tags, Meta Description and Keywords for each, but still Google Webmaster Tools still telling me that I have this duplication issues.
Please help me Andrei, please pretty please, anykind of help would be much appreciated.
Best regards,
Sudirdjo Widjaja
That's useful for small blogs. However, it becomes impractical with upwards of 500 posts like I have.
Hi Everyone,
Thank you for your comments. Now let me see if I can answer some of your questions:
@Taylor: there are custom third-party plugins for Wordpress blogs which allow blog owners to create meta tags for each post. These add-ons create several text input fields on the page where you write or edit your articles and they use the text you fill in to generate meta keywords, description etc. tags. If you're looking for a similar plugin for Blogger, there aren't any (at least none that I know of). That's because Blogger doesn't use PHP as its server-side scripting language like Wordpress does.
Moreover, these plugins can be installed only if you're hosting the blog on your own server or on a web hosting account and even with a plugin such as this, you still have to manually write the actual content of these tags.
If you're looking for a tool which may generate descriptions automatically and based on the text in your articles, note that search engines already do that for you. For example, Google analyses the content of your pages and creates custom snippets below your links on its result pages. You only need meta description tags if you specifically want to emphasize certain aspects of your story and aim at being listed higher for specific keywords, in which case you have to write those descriptions and keywords manually.
Long story short: unless Google incorporates something like a SEO pack on the Blogger platform, it doesn't get any easier that this :)
@Sudirdjo: you have applied the hack correctly, indeed. It's now a matter of time before googlebot crawls your blog again and updates the info in your Webmaster Tools. You just have to be patient - I can assure you, the desired effects will show up.
By the way, when did you put the code in?
@Marf: you're definitely right. But that doesn't mean blog owners like yourself can't start adding descriptions from here on. Another thing you can do is pick a few important articles from the ones you've already posted and create custom tags only for those ;)
Again, I appreciate all your feedback and want to thank you for the comments. I hope this technique will bring an improvement for all your sites and I wish you the best of luck.
Cheers,
/andrei_aga
Dear Andrei,
Good news and thank you, as of today March 4, 2009, I finally fixed the problem I had been facing with Google Webmaster about duplicate meta descriptions dan duplicate title tags on my blog (http://juragan-dinar-irak.blogspot.com).
From originally 11 pages with duplicate title tags and meta descriptions, now I had () none of those duplicate issues on my blog. You were right suggesting that I have to wait a little bit longer to wait for Google to crawl back into this blog again. Thanks to you … Andrei.
Although I must admit that this method is troublesome for those who have enormous number of posts in their respective blogs since we have to specify manually the title tags, meta description dan keywords for every posts.
However I tried one other trick on my other blog (http://jual-dinar-irak-iraq.blogspot.com) that I found somewhere on the internet (forgot the source, sorry). I added this following code right after (below): head
b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/
b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'
titledata:blog.pageName/ - data:blog.title//title
b:else/
titledata:blog.pageTitle//title
/b:if
b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'
meta content=’FILL THIS WITH YOUR BLOG’S (HOMEPAGE) DESCRIPTION' name='description'/
meta content=’FILL THIS WITH YOUR BLOG’S (HOMEPAGE) KEYWORDS' name='keywords'/
/b:if
what it actually does is it automatically sets different title tags and meta tag description for every posts (you can check the source after you made the changes). So it does the trick, but somehow this method has not fixed the duplicate issues on title tags and meta description (or maybe Google hasn’t crawled the blog just yet, need to wait somemore, I don’t know).
Andrei, could you please check the code above if it can actually be implemented on blogs, since it will really simplify your method very nicely.
Thanks again Andrei…
Best regards,
Sudirdjo Widjaja
Hi Sudirdjo,
I'm glad to hear the problem is solved.
The code you mentioned does create custom titles for all your post pages, but it only adds meta descriptions and keywords on your homepage. In fact, this is only part of the code that's generated by my application. Here's how you can check:
1. Choose the value 1 at "Step 1".
2. Answer "Yes" at "Step 2" and "Step 3".
3. Click the second radio button at "Step 4" (i.e. enable the option that says "<post title - blog title> (Eg: Custom Meta Description - AgaWebs)").
4. At "Step 5" fill in the two remaining fields with your keywords and description.
5. Click "Get the code >".
You'll notice the result matches the code you posted. The first line from your snippet already exists in Blogger's HTML source, so you don't need to add it again.
I've had a look at your other blog (http://jual-dinar-irak-iraq.blogspot.com/) and I haven't found any meta descriptions or keywords on any of the post pages I checked (the last three).
Thank you for letting me know about the Webmaster Tools problem and do write back if there's anything else you want to discuss.
Cheers,
/andrei_aga
Dear Andrei,
I am sorry, I had given you the wrong URL (http://jual-dinar-irak-iraq.blogspot.com), instead it should be this one: http://jualandinarirak.blogspot.com (this is the one that I tried using the code above). It does do the trick for giving each post different meta tag, title and descsription.
Sorry again for giving you the wrong URL, please check again if you don't mind...
Best Regards,
Sudirdjo Widjaja
Hmm... this one does have meta descriptions and keywords on its post pages. But there must be some extra code which generates them. Let me ask you two questions:
1. Would you agree that the code you've written above is the same as the one generated by my application, if you select the options I mentioned?
2. Since Blogger removes special characters from comments, could you please look for the full code and send it to me by email?
Looking forward to your answer.
Cheers,
/andrei_aga
Dear Andrei,
First of all I want to thank you for your kind attention to this matter.
Answering to your first question, I would say that the code I have on http://jualandinarirak.blogspot.com would have the same result as the one generated by your application, but I do still think it is less troublesome since I don't have to write title, description and keywords for each post. Just for your information, I didn't actually write this code, I copied it from the internet (but I forgot to bookmark the URL that has this tutorial).
Along with this email, attached the file you requested. The code that I posted on AgaWeb, I purposedly deleted "" and "" character, since these characters are not allowed to be written in comments section of Agawebs.
One more thing I wanted to ask you, do you think I need to put this folowing code (in bold) right after the code? Would this do any good for SEO purposes of my blog?
head
b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/
b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'
meta expr:content='data:blog.pageTitle' name='Description'/
/b:if
titledata:blog.pageName/ - data:blog.title//title
b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'
meta content='Melayani Jual Beli Dinar Irak Iraq, Dong Vietnam, Keuntungan Investasi, Kurs Harga Mata Uang, TANGAN PERTAMA, JAMIN ASLI Sudirdjo Widjaja 08176963938' name='description'/
meta content='Kurs Dinar, Jual Dinar, Beli Dinar, Dinar Irak, Dinar Iraq, Dong Vietnam, Mata Uang, Irak, Iraq, Harga, Kurs, Uang, Investasi' name='keywords'/
/b:if
meta content='INDEX, FOLLOW' name='ROBOTS'/
Best regards,
Sudirdjo Widjaja
http://jual-dinar-irak-iraq.blogspot.com
http://juragan-dinar-irak.blogspot.com/
http://jualandinarirak.blogspot.com/
Thanks for the answer that was what I was trying to figure out I didn't think that there was anything like that for blogger, but I wasn't sure. Thanks for Your Help
-Taylor from
GotTv.Blogspot.com
@Sudirdjo: the code you wrote in your last comment does look like the correct version. It creates individual meta description tags and uses the titles of the respective pages as their content. In my opinion such descriptions are redundant since the content of the descriptions already appear in the page titles.
I did a Google "site:" search for your blog and here are two of the pages it returned:
Daftar Harga Dinar Irak - Jual Beli Dinar Irak Iraq | Bisnis ...
Jual Beli Dinar Irak Iraq | Bisnis Investasi Dong Vietnam: Daftar Harga Dinar Irak.
jualandinarirak.blogspot.com/2009/02/daftar-harga-dinar-irak_11.html - 67k
Cara Mengetahui Keaslian Dinar Irak (Iraq) - Jual Beli Dinar Irak ...
Jual Beli Dinar Irak Iraq | Bisnis Investasi Dong Vietnam: Cara Mengetahui Keaslian Dinar Irak (Iraq)
jualandinarirak.blogspot.com/2009/02/cara-mengetahui-keaslian-dinar-irak.html - 68k
As you can see the titles of these entries are the same as the snippets below them, except that the blog title is swapped with the post title. That's not very useful to someone who would want more information about your articles (it's just the same piece of information written twice) and nor does is make a big difference from a SEO point of view.
I'm not sure which is the piece of code you wanted to highlight in bold, but if you were referring to the "robots" meta tag, here is what Google's Webmaster Central Blog has to say about it:
"By default, Googlebot will index a page and follow links to it. So there's no need to tag pages with content values of INDEX or FOLLOW."
You can read the full article here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/03/using-robots-meta-tag.html
This was very, very very, helpful. I have been looking for this for a long time and you just helped me out. I wonder how you get those bottons the way you have them up top. index, links,homepage, contact-us.
@Island_Godson: I have the same question, how were you able to affix the top navigation with inde, links, homepage, contact?
BTW- excellent meta tool, I have been looking for something like this for over a year now!!
I also wanted to get everyone's opinion on this video too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ6sY5dX-jc
Do you think making your comments "do-follw" will help the SEO of your blog and make more poeple want to comment on your posts?
Thank you so much for your comments. You've actually given me ideas for two new articles :D But before I find some time to write them, here's a quick answer to your questions...
Here's how you start if you want a navbar like the one above: http://www.agawebs.com/2008/10/sliding-doors-for-my-ahover-craft.html. Once you get a basic idea of how it's done, you can make your own experiments or find more examples on CSSplay. You might have noticed I made several references to this site in my previous posts - most of the design elements on it aren't explained, but they do serve as excellent models. In the end, getting the navbar on your blog is a bit more tricky, but I'd be glad to work with you over email if you need more help.
About the "do-follow trend": I've read most of the articles on pagerush.com and have watched the video. The technique might bring more visitors to your site (especially if you advertise it) and it will generate some link juice if you place comments on "do-follow" sites/blogs. However, I think this is the wrong way to generate traffic and I'd classify it as a black hat SEO technique. People should post comments from pure interest and not for a reward. Moreover, if your comments are helpful and interesting people are more likely to click on a link in your comment to see what else you have to say, even if that's a "nofollow" link. Because of all these and a few other reasons, the "do-follow trend" should be discouraged before people start looking for "do-follow" sites only and before their comments become too spammy.
I'd love to hear more opinions on this and I thank you again for your comments.
Cheers,
/andrei_aga
I guess that is part of the great debate. Changing the comments to "do-follow" does seem a little gray hat, but I don't think black especially if you don't advertise that fact to a bunch of SEOs.
i did everything as you mentioned above.now i can see in the source box as you explained,but still google webmaster shows that indexed page only one. That too my home page.
How long it will take to index? Can you tell me?
i will thank only if google indexed my pages untill no thanks for you. I hope you will not take that in min.
My blog:www.sunonlinejobsinfo.blogspot.com
Hey Ramesh,
From what I could see, your blog has custom meta tags on the homepage and a few other post pages (like "Free affiliate program part two-$15 for signup", "Get free traffic" etc.).
Note that some of your meta descriptions are extremely long and that's really not very useful since most search engines only use the first 20 or 30 words to describe your pages. The keywords you assigned for "Free affiliate program part two-$15 for signup" are also much too many and you should discard a few to avoid spamming. Stick to something like what you have for "Get free traffic" or even less.
Apart from these small objections, all looks fine with the code.
If you do a "site:sunonlinejobsinfo.blogspot.com" query on Google, you'll notice that 3 pages have been indexed, while the "site:www.sunonlinejobsinfo.blogspot.com" query only returns one page. I really can't say when the rest of your pages will be indexed, but unless you haven't done so already, you should submit sitemaps to Google, Yahoo, Live etc. and spend a bit more time tweaking the settings in your Google Webmaster Tools.
I hope this helps and wish you the best of luck.
Cheers,
/andrei_aga
This time thanks goes to you millions...i will be keep coming for more tips..have a nice day.
One more time thanks for you because,Yahoo indexed one page that is about forex. I just followd as you mentioned,eventhough i am not fully followed in implementing codes,but your teaching proved to be the best on the planet.
Here is my keyword- "earn money from forex online"
Now yahoo listed in the first page in first place. But meta descriptions are something other posts.but indexed page is linking to the original post anyway.Can you tell me why meta descriptions are changed?
This indexing occurred only after i implemented codes from your teaching...you rock the world dear...
Hello Ramesh,
Yeah... it's strange. Search engines have complex algorithms for indexing pages and displaying their descriptions. I suppose that page had already been indexed and cached by Yahoo and following your most recent changes, it was simply moved upwards on the result pages.
Here's an even stranger example. I changed the name and domain of this blog in November, last year. Yet, when you do a search for "agawebs" on Yahoo, it still displays the old name of my blog. The snippet below it, however, does contain excerpts from my new meta description :|
There's something I mentioned in the video tutorial and I'd like to emphasize it here: "after applying this hack, it's more likely that search engines will use your descriptions and keywords". There's no guarantee that all search engines will take these into consideration all the time and there's no telling when these engines will record the tags. It's true however that most engines will take some of them into account and that's what makes this technique worthwhile and good practice.
I'm really glad for your victory with the blog and hope to hear more good news from you.
Cheers,
/andrei_aga
nice video tutorial, now i just have to wait and see does it working for my blog or not, thank you so much.
One last question before I use your awesome code generator. I have 385 posts on my blog and I am worried that all the additional code on my home page will slow the search engine spiders down or worse, be seen as meta data spam. Do you have any thoughts on this?
Again, thanks so much!
Hi Grant,
Search engine bots act much like text browsers. They make requests to a web server and download content. Since the script used by the "meta description" hack is executed on the server, bots will only download the output of the script (i.e. two meta tags). Thus, you don't need to worry about such crawlers being slowed down.
If, however, the content of your meta description tags has too many words, or there are too many keywords for a specific post, this practice may be considered as spam. Keep in mind that meta descriptions should be short and catchy summaries of your articles and they will be read by actual people and not by bots. As long as you do that (and something similar for the keywords), this hack will produce positive results.
Cheers,
/andrei_aga
One more time thanks for you. my dear brother this is ramesh once again. Please do not that that in mind because of i am keep asking quesion from you. I believe you are very expert and it's really worth it to do so. You see my blog which is something not very attractive and not have good quality of contets as for as my point of view and yesderday i received 998 unique visitors from google. But, i still believe that google indexed only three pages. How this is possible. i just checked out from "adsfreestatus.com" which shows something like this...refferal url says as follows.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/how-to-send-a-message-from-linux-...
Most of them are this:
http://www.google.co.ug/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel...
i have no connection with this.but i showing url refferal is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_send
Do you have any idea about this.Because i very new to this...
Hi Ramesh,
I looked at the source code of the last page you mentioned and it doesn't contain any links to your blog (sunonlinejobsinfo.blogspot.com). I don't know why it's listed among your refferals.
Hey Andrei,
Can this tool and process be used to create meta tags for the "Labels" and individual archive pages like: http://remarkablehomes.blogspot.com/search/label/Nashville%20Mortgage%20Rates and http://remarkablehomes.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html?
wow, great tool. Im going to use this for my blog.
maybe you can help with another question -
The fonts on my blogger posts keep getting messed up in the display.. sometimes I have to copy and paste it back to a notebook and thats the only way I get a consistent look. Any idea ho to help me? Thanks. Hadara hadara_a@hotmail.com
my blog: http://alooks.blogspot.com/
Hi,
@Grant: the tool can be used for archive pages such as those you mentioned. However, those pages contain duplicate content and I'm actually trying to figure out ways to remove them from Google's index. There's no need to created meta descriptions and keywords for archive pages.
@Hadara: I'm not sure why this happens on your blog, but you should try to write your articles in the "Edit Html" mode and then return to the "Compose" mode to format them. Let me know if this helps.
Thanks for your comments and do get back if there's anything else you want to share or ask :)
Cheers,
/andrei_aga
I can see how the achieve pages could be duplicate content, but what about the labels (tag cloud for WP users)? Shouldn't those have their own meta data?
Hi Grant,
Here's how you can check if your pages have duplicate content:
1. Do a "site:remarkablehomes.blogspot.com" query on Google.
2. Go to the last result page.
3. Google has detected duplicate content for your site if that last page contains a paragraph which says:
"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the X already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."
This actually means that some of your pages are in the supplemental index.
4. If you see that paragraph, click on the "repeat the search with the omitted results included" link and then look through the result pages to find results which were initially omitted.
I know it might seem difficult, but I've done this for your blog and a few omitted results stand out. Here are a few examples:
remarkablehomes.blogspot.com/search/label/Nashvill...
Similar pages -
remarkablehomes.blogspot.com/search/label/Hotels
Similar pages -
remarkablehomes.blogspot.com/search/label/Arthur%2...
Similar pages -
remarkablehomes.blogspot.com/search/label/Adriana%...
Similar pages -
All these pages correspond to your labels and they're all in the supplemental index.
The same thing happens for my blog and for most other Blogger blogs and that's why I'm trying to figure out a way to remove them.
Cheers,
/andrei_aga
Wow, I had no idea! I am really looking forward to your new fixes!
Hi Andrei,
Good tutorial video and a praiseworthy attempt to help newbies find the correct method of publishing a blog with blogger.
My blog is about two months old and to begin with within 7 days I was on page 1 as far as google search was concerned on several keywords related to my blog. Then I did some tweaking like swapping the blog name with post title etc. with the help os some tips picked from net and soon after I don't know whether it was a coincidence or just like that the search listing fell down never to recover again till date.
I have submitted my sitemap as the atom/rss feed and all my 38 posts are listed therein the webmasters tools.
The google bot has visited my site only once and no luck thereafter.Many search queries still show old descriptions including blog title first cases.
Can you do me the favor of having a l;ook at my blog and give your expert advice as what should be done to improve my blogs ratings:
http://studentacademichelp.blogspot.com/
Many thanks.
Academic
two thumps up sir!, i do not know how to SEO well and im hoping that your tool can help me... A big big thanks, I hope your blog can posts more SEO topics you're a really big help anyway here's my blog and i'm hoping you can give me some suggestions
http://asiasfinests.blogspot.com
Hi,
This week we've celebrated Easter in my country and because of that I haven't had much time for blogging. So, I apologise for not replying sooner.
I looked at the "Academic Help" blog and it doesn’t contain meta descriptions or keywords (at least not for the pages I looked at). Also, it doesn't use the hack for swapping post titles with blog titles. I could use more details about the tweaking you did, but as far as I can tell, the changes you've done so far didn't affect the blog's page rank in a negative way.
I can't really say how often your blog is visited by GoogleBot, but Google's cache was last updated on April 17th for your site. That's relatively fresh considering how new your blog is.
Note that most search engines place new sites in a so-called "sand box" as a way to combat link farming. This means that entries for your blog will appear very low on SERPs for a while. It happened to me as well and it's nothing to worry about. Eventually, your blog will be taken out of this "sand box". To speed up this process, you could try to get a few high quality inbound links, either from some of your friends who may own high ranking blogs, or by listing your blog in a couple of directories.
@JD-Salinger: there is something wrong with the hack on "asiasfinests". There are around 9 title tags on each page (and there should be only one) and the homepage has two sets of meta tags. One of them has been added by my tool, but the other was probably inserted manually, and you've actually written the content of the tags where the name should have been and vice-versa. To give you an example for a meta tag you should keep, the "Author" tag should be in this form: [meta content= 'JDSalingers' name='Author' /] (the square brackets must be replaced with the "less than" and "greater than" signs).
My advice to you is to modify and keep the "Author" tag, remove the descriptions and keywords you've added manually and use only the title swap hack generated by the tool above.
I hope these few suggestions will help. I must point out that I'm not and SEO expert, but I'll gladly answer more of your questions if you need my advice.
Cheers,
/andrei_aga
andrei... thank you for your big help... i'm new to SEO and has been doing experiments in my own blog... and with that i pinpointed the error, thank you very much sir... more power to you! also a big thanks to your tool... it was really really great
Hi Andrei - I'm new to blogging and SEO and have been doing a lot of research recently on how to improve search results on my new blogspot pages. This morning I was thinking "gosh, I really wish there was an easy way to put meta keyword tags into my blogger code." I decided to do a search on this, and immediately your page showed up. Thanks, what a great resource! You made my day! :-)
Good day Andrei!,
I've mad a new blog it's address http://gamezarefree.blogspot.com and used your tool?... if you have time can you please check it out.. is there something wrong with it? cause when i typed "gamezarefree" on google there's only one link that is received.. .thanks a lot
Hey JD,
All your post pages contain the same description (free gamez at gamezarefree.blogspot.com) and the keywords are pretty similar as well. You'll probably get a "duplicate meta descriptions" warning on your Google Webmaster Tools at some point. You need to make your descriptions and keywords unique and for that, you should use them to describe each individual game. Otherwise, you can leave some of your posts without these meta tags - rather than having duplicate meta descriptions, it's better to have no descriptions at all.
Google has indexed two of your pages and the snippet for the homepage is the actual meta description: "All games are free... updated regularly. Different genres and platforms all in one place and its all free". Before we can find out why your other pages aren't indexed, let's fix this issue with the duplicate metas and tell me the date when you first started this blog.
I forgot to say this last time, but I'm a big fan of one of your books: "The Catcher in the Rye" :P
@Michelle D: thanks so much for your comment and kind words and good luck with your blogs :)
Cheers,
/andrei_aga
thanks a lot Andrei.. I'm learning a lot of things in SEO now... I'll modify the layout of my blogposts. And fix some of the meta tags in my post pages before it gets too large... I just thought that it would be much better if you'll add similar keywords, good thing you corrected me out there.. It's a new blog and I just started last saturday April 25. Have you read "Ham in the Rye?" it's a reply from the book "The Catcher in the Rye"... anyway thanks again sir
If it's that new you shouldn't expect to have too many pages in the index. I'd concentrate only on the meta tags for now and worry about search engines a bit later.
No I haven't read that book, but now that I know, I'll look for it :) Thanks for the advice.
Cheers,
/andrei_aga
thanks sir!, i have a copy of the book "Ham in the rye" I can email it to you if you want...
Hi Andrei,
Thank you very much for replying to my query and applying your mind to my blog/website. Would you please expand upon your observation/comment, "I looked at the "Academic Help" blog and it doesn’t contain meta descriptions or keywords (at least not for the pages I looked at)" so that I can apply the corrective. As far swapping title with post title is considered I did that a long time ago, I don't know how you missed it! May be the page in google cache belongs to the time when that hack wasn't there.
I feel really encouraged and thank you for letting me know about some kind of 'sand box' procedure that google follows, this keeps my hopes of making it to the first pages alive.
Please also let me know a thing or two about listing my blog in some directories. Can you please name a few of them?
Thanks once again for your time and effort.
@JD-Salinger: that would be great! Please send it by email. I'm looking forward to read it.
@Academic: let's make sure we're talking about the same blog. I looked at the source code of http://studentacademichelp.blogspot.com/ and it still doesn't contain custom meta tags or the title swap hack. Moreover, when I click the "Academic" link above your comment it's telling me that your profile is not available.
Regarding the directories I'd recommend, the best one would be Technorati. You can choose any of the ones listed in my sidebar and you can also do a Google search for "blog directory" to see what else is there.
I'm looking forward to more news from you guys and wish you the best of luck.
Cheers,
/andrei_aga
andrei... thanks for the reply what's your email?
Hi JD,
My address is andrei_aga [at] yahoo.co.uk. Sorry for not mentioning it.
Looking forward to your email.
Cheers,
/andrei_aga
ei andrei sory but i can't find the book anymore it seems that i lost it when i reformat my desktop last year... sorry bout that
oh... that's OK. I suppose I can find it in a library or book store. Thanks for telling me about it, though :)
Salut Andrei !
Is there any way to do this in "weebly", so every single web page or at least some of them can have proper title and meta description tags ?
Thanks a lot, multumesc !
I'm afraid I'm not very familiar with that platform and I don't know the answer to this one... Imi pare rau :(
Greetings andrei, it seems that your tool has become very popular now... anyway about my other blog(http://gamezarefree.blogspot.com).. I violated some of the rules in blogger. anyway I've learned a lot from you... and I have my two blogs still active... thank you very much...
Thanks anyway, I also have a blogger blog so I'll use the tool and give you a feedback ! :)
hello andrei, I would like to feature your tool in my blog post, is it okei with you? i will just write an article about your tool and provide a link to your site...
Sure JD... please go ahead. Thanks for asking for permission.
thanks my friend... I'll just send you a message after I made the post...
looking forward to it :)
Howdy andrei! how's it going now... here is my post regarding to this tool, I hope you like it, thanks again my friend... http://whatsacoder.blogspot.com/2009/05/meta-tag-tools-in-blogspot-platform.html
Hey Andrei,
I know that this is off topic, but do you know of a widget or gadget that can be loaded into the side bar of the blog to allow users to easily sign up to receive updates everything a new blog is posted?
There has got to be a better way than using the blogger atom feed. What I am really looking for is a way for users to easily identify that this is the place where I enter in my email address if I want to be emailed all of the new posts from this blog. I want to field to appear in the top of the sidebar at all times.
Thanks in advance,
Grant
I have also noticed that when you try to post a comment on your blog, my blog or any blogger blog that you have to go through the confirmation process twice in order for the comment to actual post. What is that and can it be fixed?
good software for custom meta for blogger
Thank you very much for giving us such great tutorial but I could not use your tutorial for a little problem.I copied the generated code from agawebs.com as you mentioned and pasted on my site according to your video tutorial.When I saved it then it show this error message bellow:
"We were unable to save your template,
Please correct the error below and submit your template again.
Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure that all XML elements are closed properly.
XML error message: Element type "meta" must be followed by either attribute specifications, ">" or "/>"."
Now what should I do? Please help me.I need your help.Thank you again for such great job.
ei seugurum i think i know what your problem is look for the " ' " and remove it in the textboxes....
The reference to entity "max-results" must end with the ';' delimiter.
I get this, when i try to paste my generated code from your program.
Do I do anything wrong?
Thank you :-)
My problem is with this website: http://netauktioner.blogspot.com
I'm in trouble.please help me after replacing meta tag in my blog blogger is warning me (This blog has been identified as a potential spam blog. Your readers will see a warning page until the blog is reviewed.
This blog will be deleted within 20 days unless you request a review.) so what I do now........................?
what is your blog?... adding meta tags has nothing to do with this. perhaps you're posting 20 posts per day or you're doing link spamming
@com'on: Hello, since Andrei will be unavailable for some time, I would like to address your problem as follows:
1. If after replacing meta tags in your blog, you are receiving Blogger warnings that your site is reported as potential spam, then one way to solve the issue is to remove the tags you added and then see if you are still having this problem.
2. Also:
- the purpose of the "meta content" is to have a short (1 or 2 phrases) and comprehensive description of what your blog is about; simply using unrelated words as "meta content" only increases your chances to be taken as spam.
For example, after taking a look at the "meta content" you used on your blog, "JOBS ONLINE AT HOME", perhaps you could consider using a more appropriate description, such as "If you want to find out more about how to make money on-line by using Internet adds, you need to visit JOBS ONLINE AT HOME", or something in the lines of this.
- the reason for using keywords is to increase the chances that your blog will come up in searches people do on the Internet. These should not be numerous and have to be carefully chosen, otherwise, again, the risk of your blog being reported as spam by crawlers will increase significantly.
In your case, I do not believe the words you used will do the trick. Please consider using words that will reffer to the essence of your activity, such as (and this is just a suggestion): 'job, money, add, online, mail'.
I hope this will help you solve the problem.
I had a blog PR 3 and alexa around 300k but I did not get much traffic so I nearly gave up until I found your trick. Now I get much more traffic from Google. Thanks for this a lot.
www.pcterritory.net
i am getting the same error message as the june 2, SEOGURUM post. sorry, i don't get what jd salinger is saying to do to fix it. any help out there? thank you!
thank you very much :)
You are a star! keep up the good work making life easy for people like me.
Salut
Sper ca esti roman (dupa nume si categorii eu asa am presupus)
De vreo 40-50 de minute tot citesc pe blogul tau chestii care ma ajuta cu adevarat.
In legatura cu aceste meta-description si meta-key... vroiam sa discut mai in amanunte cu tine despre o chestie de care am dat pe net. Un fel de auto description si keywords pentru platforma blogspot. Ceea ce face acest cod este ca iti transforma titlul postul si cel al blogului in meta descriere si keywords. Am considerat ca aceasta idee e buna , folosindu-se de urmatoarii parametrii data:blog.title si data:blog.pageName, preluand astfel titlul postului si blogului in ordinea in care o doresti. Totusi as vrea sa discutam prin alta metoda si sa punem cateva idei cap la cap poate reusim sa dam cumva de cap acestei probleme. Iti las adresa mea de e-mai si ID de messenger pstefan07 iar e-mailul este pe yahoo.com. Astept sa ma contactezi.
thanks for the excellent post. I will be trying this in next week and will get back to you for more "Thank You's". HEHEHE
Heyy Man you have done a great job.....
Thanks for this!
Sameer - Pakistan
www.joytonight.blogspot.com
Hi Andrei -
First off - great tool. I stumbled across the site and am so pleased as I used the tool for my new blog site that I have joeberkowitz.com
I did encounter a similar issue to others when Blogger generated the XML error:
"We were unable to save your template,
Please correct the error below and submit your template again.
Your template could not be parsed as it is not well-formed. Please make sure that all XML elements are closed properly.
XML error message: Element type "meta" must be followed by either attribute specifications, ">" or "/>"."
After doing some troubleshooting I found out that apostrophes (Ex John's Book) are not good and it should be "Johns Book" for Blogger to accept it. So good to know for others having the same issues.
I do some SEO consulting to media companies and have been impressed with the toolsets offered by a company called Hubspot (www.hubspot.com.) You may want to check them out. Their service does cost $$$/mo. yet they do have a free tool that does an analysis of your site to see how well you are SEO compliant. The tool is located at http://www.websitegrader.com/ It is pretty good.
Lastly, I would like your permission to be a feature in a posting, if that is OK.
Thanks again and keep up the great work - Joe
Great post man, I had to changed ' to a " around the meta content for the template to save the changes. For anyone out there having trouble try changing that and it should save
You are the BOMB! This is what I have been trying to do ALL DAY, and I finally got it right because of you! Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!
You are soooo good!
Not only is this exactly what I needed for my pages to get indexed correctly, but also, through the quotation errors comments, I was able to get a meta tag in so I could finally verify my blog through Webmaster Tools!
Google says that this is done automatically but that wasn't working for me.
Thank you again! :)
SEO plays such a crucial role in the success of a website. I am always searching new for ideas and suggestions, and this article was very helpful.
This is nice, but don't have a classic template, so this code won't work in blogger. Do you have an XML version that will work with the new beta version?
Thanks so much
http://brewreviewer.blogspot.com/
Hi Andrei
Great post - thank you for taking the time to do this.
I'm having a slight problem. I have loaded the code generated onto my blogger HTML.
Dspite doing this over 2 weeks ago, Google is still seeing just the homepage meta tag. It is assigning the homepage title and description for every single post, despite having meta-tags for each post on there.
Have I got a setting wrong? Is this something you know about?
I would really appreciate any help you can give me.
Thank you
Dave
Thank you very much for the wonderful tool... I hope it would work for me and atleast show my pag in search engine searches.
Regards,
Loybuckz
http://honcentral.blogspot.com/
Great work brother!!!!
keep it up
i m gonna bookmark your site
great!!!!!!
Hi Andrei,
Your instructions are great and very clear, but I cannot get them to work on my blogger blog. Each time I copy and paste the code from your generator into my blog as instructed, I get the following error:
"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 "/>"."
Yet when I look at the code, I don't see any missing closing tags. Any ideas? My blog is fiddlersfolly.blogspot.com
Thanks so much for any insight you are able to provide! I would love to be able to use your code.
~Melissa
Hi Andrei,
I figured out what I was doing wrong with my blog and now your instructions and generator are working fine. I actually found the answer on another site that reminded people to replace any apostrophes in their descriptions with ' That solved my issue.
So anyone reading this: If you are having trouble getting this to work, check for any errant apostrophes and replace them with the above key combo.
REMEMBER: '
It works wonders!
~Melissa :-)
PS - I loved your YouTube video. Your instructional technique is very good, clear and concise. I suggest that you continue in this venue for demonstrating coding techniques. You are a natural teacher!
Hi Andrei,
i just wondering of this custom design would work on wordpress as well? i would love to use it.
i am using cpanel/fantastico de luxe.
if it able to implement your design on wordpress, where do i paste the code and how to get there?
thank you very much. hopefully i can hear from you sooner.
loved your creation,man!
regards,
alfons-tokyo
www.chikochoki.com/blog
YOU MADE ME HAPPY YOU MADE ME HAPPY YOU MADE ME HAPPY YOU MADE ME HAPPY YOU MADE ME HAPPY YOU MADE ME HAPPY YOU MADE ME HAPPY YOU MADE ME HAPPY YOU MADE ME HAPPY YOU MADE ME HAPPY YOU MADE ME HAPPY YOU MADE ME HAPPY YOU MADE ME HAPPY
I do not know how to thank you.. After so much time looking.. Look at the result! Gabriele Gualco in Viaggio
Thanks Again
thanks man u rock!
think you for your tool, i was look for long time... I have a little questions about my blog. i searched my link at google and yahoo but doesn't show up. My link is timtraveldeal.blogspot.com plz help!!!
hi nice and useful tool thank you so much but i have facing one problem. this tool created the meta tags for my 5 posts perfectly but after when i copy and paste code i can see this error
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 element type "head" must be terminated by the matching end-tag "".
i tried many time and i am doing in same was as you told in your video what's the problem tell me
regards,
thanks you very much for this tools very useful for me!!!
You're Tips are great, I tried it already and just waiting for results
THIS IS A GREAT PAGE I GOT A FITNESS BLOG CHECK IT OUT THANKS
http://workoutfit.blogspot.com/
It is a very detailed and understandable post. keep up the good work.
very nice post
join friends links forum http://friendslinks.co.cc
great great tool anyone know how to get the ftp id?
Plz help me i am getting a error while saving
on freshware.blogspot.com
error is 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: XML document structures must start and end within the same entity.
reply me on hasan_shahryar2008@live.com
Please Check. This page is not working properly
Fixed! Thank you for notifying me. Please let me know if it happens again.
Hi Andrei,
It's not working for me either, could you please fix the page?
Thank you.
Mark
I think it's OK now. I've had to put the script within the post because I can no longer host external JS files on Google's Page Creator.
I apologize for the inconvenience.
/andrei_aga
Andrei,
I think your code might be a good start to addressing the problem with sharing posts on Facebook.
In order to show a specific thumbnail in the share to facebook, the following meta tags must be present:
meta name="title" content="Article headline here"
meta name="description" content="Article summary here"
link rel="image_src" href="http://www.example.com"
as noted here: http://bit.ly/9f9PLS
If you were to change your wizard/code to include these fields, it would be a huge solution to so many people.
As I'm now a wordpress junkie, I'm rather ignorant when it comes to blogger. But I'm trying to help a friend and need to ask you- if there's another way to do this, please let me know.
Thanks!
Amazing, works perfectly with posts labels as well.
Fantastic job !
Dear Mr. Howard,
From what I could tell, this is about the "Add This" button. I'm using it on my blog as well.
If I use it to share a post which contains pictures, the corresponding Facebook post will have a thumbnail and the thumbnail will be one of the images in the original post. If the post I try to share has no images, the Facebook thumbnail will be one of my profile pictures from Facebook.
In conclusion, the easiest way to add a custom thumbnail would be to simply embed a photo in the original post. About the meta title tag, I think it's unnecessary as each post already has a title tag and Facebook just retrieves the title from there.
Please let me know if this answers your question. I could indeed modify the wizard in order to create a custom thumbnail which doesn't appear in the post, but I haven't had time to work on my blog lately and I have to make sure it is worth the effort.
@jean: Thank you for the comment :)
Cheers,
/andrei_aga
Hi Andrei,
Thanks for your reply. Your wizard was a big help in showing me how to create the blogger javascript I needed to customize the Facebook Share. Indeed, all 3 meta tags are needed- title, description, and image_src.
I think it would be worth your time, as I have spent an entire day reading search results from hundreds of Bloggers unable to choose a custom thumbnail. Blogger always defaults to the user profile image as the thumbnail, the title of the blog, and the description of the user instead of what is in the post.
I really believe your code is unique, as I have not seen a similar solution anywhere. It has worked on all of my 38 posts, except for a few where some kind of Facebook glitch does not load the thumbnail, but that is another story I haven't figured out yet.
Thanks.
Hello again Andrei,
Rereading your reply, I'm wondering if it's not my Blogger template that is causing problems with the AddThis button.
I do notice that Facebook share and AddThis seem to pull in the thumbnail from your blog post, but this doesn't work for the blog I'm working on, unless I use the link rel/image_src in the header. It always defaults to the user profile picture.
http://bewakeful.blogspot.com
In any case, I still think it would be helpful to include this field in your wizard, as users may still want a particular thumbnail to be shown instead of other images in the post.
If you don't have time, maybe you could give me some pointers to create a similar wizard on my site? May I build off your code?
Thank you,
JG Howard
Dear Mr. Howard,
I decided you are right and that I should start working on a new version of the wizard. I'm asking around, doing some research and as soon as I have enough information I'll get cracking.
Regarding the problem you encountered, I noticed two possible causes:
1. Blogger embeds images within a link (<a> tag) when you upload them using their wizard. Try placing an image using the <img> tag directly and let me know if it works.
2. I haven't added a picture to my Blogger profile and that's why the share might work for me and not for your blog. If you feel like experimenting, you could try to remove the profile picture and see what happens.
Please tell me if any of these suggestions yield any results.
Regards,
/andrei_aga
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