SEO (Search engine optimization) friendly Blogger page title

Page title is the band of text that appears at the top of your web browser. More importantly is also the clickable link that shows up on the search engine results page (SERP). From an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) perspective, page title is the single most important element in your blog in terms of ranking well in search engines.

A keyword-rich, well-constructed page title can help boost your position in SERP listing and increase click-throughs. (Use a character counter to ensure your target keywords are included in the post’s permalink as well).

In Blogger, the page title of a post page is made up of blog title and post title, like in this:

The example above is the search listing for a post titled “Import multiple blogs into Facebook via NetworkedBlogs”. Notice the important keyword “NetworkBlogs” is missing. That’s because Google only shows up to 70 characters of the page title in search results.  When the page title exceeds the limit, Google simply cuts it off. Unfortunately the victim (of being cut off) is the keyword-rich post title.

So what now, how do you show the post title in full without shortening it? Simple, just reverse the order. Put post title in front, giving it priority over blog title.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Login to Blogger and click on the blog that you want to edit.
2. Next go to Template > Edit HTML.
3. Back up your template. 
4. Look for the following lines in your template code:
   

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

5. Replace it with this:
   

   <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;index&quot;'> 
   <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title> 
   <b:else/> 
   <title><data:blog.pageName/> | <data:blog.title/></title> 
   </b:if>

6. Save.

The code above will put post title in front of blog title on post and static pages.

Here’s the result:

You see now the post title is shown in full. The optimized page title is definitely better, more SEO friendly since none of the keywords are missing.

Tip
To further enhance your page title, you can add to it a keyword representing the subject of your blog. Let’s say your blog is about recipes, then you can simply add the word Recipes before each closing </title> tag, like this:
Recipes</title>.
That way all your page titles will contain the keyword “Recipes” even without you adding it in post titles.

Enjoy!