The Blogspot Blogger

New Blogger, Google and Dynamic Meta Tags

New Blogger, Google and Meta Tags

It's a Damn Shame

Looks like bloggers are S.O.L when it comes to meta tag in their head block. Not that you can't add meta tags, but that is it. To date there is no way to create dynamic meta tags for each page or article, what a shame. We all know that the meta tags are not used very much and pull little weight when it comes to search results, however, Google does use them and in an important way.

Here's the Deal
Here's the deal with meta tags and new blogger. First, let me explain something, while Google is scouring the web it sends the information to the index center. This is a complex bank of computers that basically forms an index of your site, just like the hard drive on your PC. Information is then sent to another set of computer as "blubs" (This is related to Blubs and SEO.). It is these blubs that you see as a description when you see a search.

Ok, 'so what you ask?' Well this is important for a few reasons.

One, and this is the most important, Google uses it... After all, if Google is using this for search result you better be using it too, 'Right?'

Two and three, and this relate to the first one -- is how much is Google indexing of your site? Well, the truth is they probably have your whole site indexed, but when you do a search for your site you see at the bottom, Some result were duplicated. Why is this? Well, you have a static description, that is, it is the same on every page. That being the case the googlebot will send the same blurb out for all your pages, and omits most of your content as duplicate material. An easy check is to Google for your site and look at the results. Check the last page of the your result, {which might just happen be the only page for your site), will read something like:

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the ones already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

Hoover your mouse over that link and you will see something interesting, the last little part of the link that says, 'filter=0'. You get it now? The first results were filtered. Let's face it, all results are filtered, the point is, lets improve our chances and have fewer omitted results.

What can be done?

Well, this part is a catch 22 situation, but the best thing to do if you have static meta tags is to get rid of it. This will force Google to parse a blurb from your content. What Google parses is cause for concern, as you are not in control of what is used. One the other hand, your hands are not tied to one description, and you can at least try and write your articles in a way as to increase your odds to what content your would like displayed. This will usually be the first sentence in your article.

The second thing you can do is hack your header with a dynamic header widget. I have one hack for using the title tag in a post, that also uses your page title. Currently I am working on a widget that will include (meta description) and (meta keyword)

There is one last thing you can do and that is to revert to the old blogger. There are widgets and hacks that will do all the above available for those templates. I will post the header widgets I have in another post.