Blogspot SEO: Optimizing Blogger Title Tags (SEO Friendly Titles)

Title tags or the HTML element <title></title> (technically), defines the title of a document and gives an idea to your users on what your page is all about. Behind your overall content, the title tag is the most important on-page SEO element in terms of promoting relevancy for your desired keywords. A carefully crafted title is not only vital in helping a page rank on search results pages but is of equal importance when you want to drive traffic to your website using social media marketing efforts.

It is important to note that the title tag appears in three key places: (1) at the top of both browsers and in applicable tabs, (2) search results pages or SERPS, and (3) external websites linking to you specifically social media and social bookmarking sites. Hence, as a blogger, one must pay attention in making not only blog post titles that follow search engine optimization best practices but at the same time title tags that contributes to a good user experience. Below are some tips on how you can make SEO friendly title for Blogger/Blogspot.

Title Tags SEO Best Practices

The recommendations below are based from SEO experts across the blogosphere and are considered basics.

70 characters is the maximum number of characters that gets displayed in most search engines results page. If your title tag exceeds this, your title gets cut off indicated by the use of ellipses (…). Therefore, it is ideal to compose blog post titles that are at most 70 characters long as much as possible including your blog's name. UPDATE: Title visibility in Google search results pages is not based on character but in width. Also, there is no rule that a long title tag is bad for your SEO. Keeping your titles between 65 to 70 characters is a best practice so that they will not be truncated and more readable to human users. If you want to create a title tag that is more than 70 characters long, that is perfectly fine.

Place important keywords on a prominent location (close to the front) of your title tags.

For inner pages or individual blog pages, place your brand/blog name at the end. By default, Blogger CMS’ uses this format – “Your Selected Blog Name: Blog Post or Static Page Title”. I will be sharing to you a very simple hack on changing the Blogger title tag on your template later.

Create compelling and readable blog post title tags that will drive users to click your post and even share it to their friends giving you more traffic as well as links.

Changing the Blogger Title Tag (Template Hack)

Here are the steps on how you change Blogspot’s default title tag formatting and help amplify relevant keywords to the most prominent location and help you improve your individual posts rank well on search engines especially on Google. The instructions are very easy but you might want to consider creating a backup first of your template before making any changes. Imagine a cat unexpectedly jumping at your keyboard and deletes everything. The horror.

(1) Login to your Blogger account. On your dashboard, choose “Template” then click on the “Edit HTML’ button.

(2) Find the code that says:

<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>

(3) Replace the above code with the following:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "index"'>
<title><data:blog.title/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> - <data:blog.title/></title>
</b:if>

This code will place your blog title at the end part of every post title. If you want to remove your blog title for all blog post title tags, change <title><data:blog.pageName/> - <data:blog.title/></title> to <title><data:blog.pageName/> only.

(4) Don’t forget to save the changes and you are done.

BONUS TIP: Optimizing Your Home Page

By replacing the default with the above code, all individual blog posts will now follow the blog post title first hyphen (-) blog name. As for your homepage, the title tag will only display your blog name. Ideally, your homepage should rank for your blog’s name while blog posts should rank for keywords relevant to its content. If you want your home page to rank for certain keywords, I suggest inserting them directly on your template rather than replacing your blog’s general settings and don’t forget to follow the best practices outlined above.

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "index";'>
<title><data:blog.title/> - Insert your desired keywords here </title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> - <data:blog.title/></title>
</b:if>

Important note: When I say insert your desired keywords, I do not mean that you stuff your blog title with keywords to the point that it will look spammy. What I am trying to say is use that space to add more details as to what your blog is all about while taking into consideration what keywords you want your home page to rank for.

Of course optimizing the title tag is not the only thing you have to do in order to rank for those keywords. The Blogger/Blogspot optimisation tips discussed here are merely for title tags. Optimizing the title alone will not let you rank well in search. I will do my best to share other SEO tips and tricks for this particular content management system so stay tuned. If you have questions or any other reactions, feel free to comment below.

This blog post was originally posted under www.geekgonegirly.com last April 1, 2014.