How to Change your Blogger Title Tags
Those of us using Google’s Blogger platform have previously been unable to change our title tags to optimize them for better rankings in search engine results. Until recently, our blog name appeared in the title before the actual name of our posts, like this:
Luckily, the Blogger team have created a new template tag which generates title tags differently, allowing you to feature only the post name as your page title, like this:
This option is much better for those hoping to optimize their Blogger templates for better rankings in search engines. Google and other search engines will use the title tags of your post page to find the most suitable results for searches, so using this technique ensures keywords in your post titles are discovered more easily.
For those creating new blogs with Blogger, or those who change their template to one of Blogger’s default designs, these tags will already be included in the template’s HTML code.
However, for those already using Blogger (or who decide to use a customized template) you will need to make a small (and very easy) alteration to your template code for these new title tags to work.
Here is what you should do:
- Go to Layout>Edit HTML in your Blogger dashboard.
- Find this line of code:
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>And replace this entire line with the following section of code instead:
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "index"'>
<title><data:blog.title/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageName/></title>
</b:if> - Finally, save your template.
That’s all you need to do!
Now when you view your post pages, you won’t see your blog’s title appear before your post titles in the browser bar. Also, search engine spiders will discover keywords in your post titles more easily, which over time may result in an improvement in your rankings of search engine results (providing of course that you try to add keywords in your post titles which are relevant to the content of your articles!).
A quick note about this method:
Blogger announced this new title tag in their recent bug fixes post. The method described above will ensure your blog’s title appears on the home page, while the <data:blog.pageName/> tag will appear as the title on post pages.
Although the bug fixes post seems to suggest that the original <data:blog.pageTitle/> could be replaced with the new <data:blog.pageName/> tag, this simple replacement doesn’t (yet) generate the title of the home page.
So the method I have described here is a workaround which can be used to ensure the blog title does appear in the browser bar on the home page. Without this tag, searches for your blog name would not render the correct results!
I hope this post has been useful for you. Please let us know what you think about this technique (and any tips you may have too) by leaving your comments below.
Rim Blackberry Bold 9000 | May 12th, 2008 at 11:18 am #
Thanks for your tips, I will try it on my blogspot blog.
Increase Breast Milk Supply | May 12th, 2008 at 3:26 pm #
This is a great tip. Thank you, I will be implementing this on my site real soon.
Pradeep | May 13th, 2008 at 5:00 am #
Thanx for the tip mate added the code in my blog template
Kashif | May 13th, 2008 at 7:08 am #
Thanks for sharing this Amanda !
.I have applied it to my blogger blog and it works well .
I have been looking for a tweak like this for a long long time
Syed Kazim | May 13th, 2008 at 8:52 am #
Great tip! Thanks a lot! Will definitely change the code in my template.
Rob Woods | May 14th, 2008 at 1:27 pm #
Great tip! Worked like a charm!
Dan Conderman | May 15th, 2008 at 6:04 am #
Wow, that was easy and worked like a charm!
The Google Helps all that ask of it.
–dan
Get It From Boy! | May 17th, 2008 at 8:44 am #
i don’t see anywhere in my blogger template, i am using a new custom template, but yeah, it always has my blog name before blog post in google search results, so i really need this, but i don’t see the above line..
Get It From Boy! | May 17th, 2008 at 8:51 am #
nevermind, i found the line, it’s at the very top, in the head section, meta. thanks so much for this..very very helpful..great tip for Blogger users too..i thought you only help wordpress users, which i have wp blogs too…thanks
meghnak | May 24th, 2008 at 7:13 pm #
Thank you for sharing this. I’ve changed the title tags of my both blogs in a breeze using this method.
RingtonesZ | May 27th, 2008 at 7:14 pm #
Wonderful ! It’s working! Thanks. Just for addition, you can add keywords for your main page as follows :
———–
[Keyword]
————-
Kher Cheng Guan | June 5th, 2008 at 1:47 am #
Why is it that on my browser bar it shows: the post title followed with # links#links
Please assist.