Adding meta descriptions to Blogger

Good news folks, now you can finally add meta description to individual posts and pages on Blogger! This new feature is only one of several new features added by Blogger aiming at improving its SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Meta description is a big deal because it describes the content of your blog or post. It will appear as snippet in search result and as description when you share the post on Google+, Facebook and other social networks. A good description increases the post’s chances of getting clicked.

 

1. Enabling and adding meta description to multi-post pages

1. Go to Settings > Search preferences > Meta tags > Description and click the Edit link.
2. Click the Yes radio button to enable search description.
3. Enter the meta description for your blog. This meta description will appear on your homepage and other multi-post pages.
4. Click Save Changes button.

 

2. Adding meta description to individual pages

A meta description for a post or a static page can be added  via Blogger’s post editor.

1. Click Posts and select a post to edit.
2. Click Search Description option under Post settings. (This option appears only after you enabled search description in step 1)
3. Enter the meta description for the post and click Done.

For older posts, you have to go back to edit each post and manually add in the description.

But before you do that, it’s better to confirm if this feature works on your blog template.

 

3. Confirming if the feature works

This step will check if the meta description is actually added to blog/post when it goes live. You only need to do this step once (per blog).

Enter the post’s URL into this online meta tag checker. If the feature works correctly, you should see the description displayed under Description header in the result. 

Check also the homepage, just to make sure.

 

4. What to do if the meta descriptions fail to appear?

If none of the meta descriptions appear, chances are your template does not contain the necessary code to import the meta description from Blogger database. (A third party or heavily tweaked template tends to do that).

You will have to add it to your template manually:

1. Go to Template > Edit HTML and insert this code right on top of <b:skin><![CDATA[

   <b:if cond='data:blog.metaDescription != &quot;&quot;'>
     <meta expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription' name='description'/>
   </b:if> 

2. Repeat step 3 to reconfirm the meta descriptions.

Enjoy!