SEO title tag for Blogger

Versione italiana: Titoli SEO su Blogger (blogspot.com)
The HTML title tag is very important both for Search Engine Ranking and for clickthroughs (CTR) in a Search Engine Result Page (SERP), and you can improve both of them with this little trick.

By default, Blogger puts the Blog name before the post title, in the title tag; switching them, or removing the Blog’s name, you can easily optimize your blogger title for search engine.

Open Blogger Template

1. Open Blogger’s Dashboard.
2. Go to the Layout tab.
3. Go to Edit HTML.
   1. Download the full template, for backup purpose.
   2. Check Expand Widget Templates.

Edit Tag Title code

Find <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title> and replace it with one of the two above (I prefer the second).

Post title followed by Blog name

If your blog name includes relevant keywords to all your posts, you should use this code:

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

Shortening Blog name (only in posts title)

If your blog name is too long, you can manually redefine it, substituting - <data:blog.title/> with a text that includes only the keywords you need.

Post title alone

If you want to strengthen your single post title’s keyword density, use the following code, instead:

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

I’ve already told you that I prefer this solution: W3C says that the title tag should describe the content of the whole document; and, usually, a post doesn’t talk about your blog.

This tweak is a lot different from the old Widget-based hack:

• it doesn’t introduce XHTML errors in your blog code (a DIV code block inside the HEAD tag);
• you can change your blog sidebar without getting any error!

Now save the template. That’s all!

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