If you ever wanted to have custom meta description and keywords set for various labels and tags on your blogger website and wonder if it is possible, here is how to do it such that your label pages may have better CTR in Google, Bing and Yandex SERP.
Though some bloggers argue that labels and tags pages are low valued pages in blogs and websites hence should not be indexed but, some other bloggers are actually pulling hundreds if not thousands of organic traffic to their blog through the same labels pages.
And someone somewhere still wonders if the labels pages should be included in search engines index or not? In this article, we are going to dive a lot deeper into labels pages, discussing if and how you can harness it.
Meanwhile, before I proceed to discuss how to create custom meta descriptions for individual label pages on your blogger website, let us first discuss what meta tags are and how much impacts, in terms of SEO, meta descriptions and meta keywords can have on your blogger website.
What is Meta Tag?
Meta tags are HTML elements that are used to provide additional information about a webpage such as descriptions and keywords, but don't appear as visible content on the webpage except for in some instances such as when the webpage HTML source is viewed. Meta tags are primarily used to communicate with search engines including Google, Yandex, Bing and other similar search engines but it can also be read and interpreted by some web applications too.
So, What information Are Communicated Using Meta Tags?
Depending on the use cases and which web applications or search engines you intend to communicate, they can be used to communicate limitless information.
Using meta tags, for example, you can tell Google about a page content and how it should be handled. On this page; Google lists supported HTML tags and attributes and those not supported by their system.
Generally speaking, you can use them to communicate;
- Page Description: a short information that describes what a webpage discusses and this can be featured in SERP snippets.
- Page Keywords: list of the main focussed subjects a webpage discusses.
- Viewport: meta tag that tells web browsers how a webpage should be viewed or handled on mobile devices.
- Refresh: this tells web browsers how long a page is viewed before it is redirected to another page.
- Ratings: this communicates the webpage ratings to the search engines.
And the list goes on and on.
And that brings us to the main points of discussion in this article, the meta description and meta Keyword.
What is Meta Description?
Meta description is the short descriptive summary of what a webpage talks about. It is not usually visible within the content body but can be read and interpreted by various bots and web applications including search engines bots such as googlebots.
Many search engines, including Google, uses meta description as the search snippets; a short description that appears underneth the webpage title wherever and whenever the page is featured or appears in search engines results pages.
However, it should also be known that, over the years; googlebots have been trained to auto-generate search snippets based on user intents thus, displaying the short description from within the webpage that the bot believes is most suitable for the users query. - and the same applies to other search engines, too.
With that in mind, meta description does not appear in search snippets a hundred percent of the time, but a good and accurate meta description counts, even at its least, in the SEO ranking factor.
Importance of Meta Description
- It provides and serves as the most basic description for the webpage, not just for googlebots but other web applications too.
- Improves the click-through-rate of the webpage in search engines results pages.
- It complements the page title to improve the page overall SEO value.
- It complements the on-page SEO of any webpage where it is present.
What is Meta Keyword?
Meta Keyword is the HTML tag that can contain all the focussed subjects that a page talks about. Similar to meta description, they are not plainly visible within the content body but can be read and interpreted by bots and several other web applications.
NOTE: due to the abuse of privileges that come with meta keywords, Google no longer recognise them therefore, they have no influence on a page SEO ranking as far as Google is concerned. However, a few other search engines still give a tiny bits of weight to them so, accurate use of meta keywords does not hurt a webpage either.
And finally, we can discuss the Blogger labels pages.
What Are Lables Pages in Blogger Website?
A lenghty article about Blogger label pages and its SEO is here but, a brief explanation would still be given in this article too.
For Blogger websites, Labels Page Url is equivallent to WordPress websites category url.
Labels Page Url is usually in this form;
https://www.example.com/search/label/label-name
Plainly speaking, let say you published a post titled "My First Journey to Alaska" and you lablled that blog post as Travels. Then, the url to pull every posts lablled "Travels" within the example.com website would be;
https://www.example.com/search/label/Travels
Now, let us assume you get a little more crafty and used a more niched-down keyword such as Alaska beach resorts or Alaska beach hotels in that post label. Imagine the exposure that can possibly give your blog if harnessed.
And that brings us to the next issue that should be discussed and that is;
Should Labels Pages Be No-Indexed?
If no mechanism that instructs search engines to not index label pages are deployed, search engines automatically include label pages in their index.
But, to answer the question presented, let me list out a few reasons why some bloggers prefer to NO-index Blogger label pages.
Why Some Bloggers Prefer to NO-index Label Pages
- By default, HTML title tag which is essential to increase CTR in the SERP, for most Blogger themes, are not SEO optimized.
- Meta description that accurately describes the content of the Page is hard to come-by but it is not impossible.
- Blogger does not support custom meta description for label Pages out of the box.
For the three reasons listed from above, most bloggers consider label pages to be of low value hence, they prefer to NO-index them so that the Google crawl budget for the website may be maximized.
But that is a gross mistake to say the least.
Because Google crawl budget does not affect small websites. However, what you should avoid having on your blogger website are unnecessary resource consuming widgets and plugins. An unnecessarily heavy blogger theme may also affect the Google crawl budget of your Blogger website too.
Now, if you can ensure that;
- You are able to craft captivating description that uniquely describes individual label pages on your Blogger website.
- You use more relevant niched-down keywords as labels.
- And can avoid using junk keywords or phrases as labels.
Your labels pages have the potential to attract hundreds of traffic to your Blogger website.
How to Do-Index or NO-Index Blogger Label Page
You can specifically instruct Google to index your labels pages however you wish using meta robots tags.
For the specific guides on how to do that and SEO best practices around it, see this article here: Google SEO-friendly Meta Robots Tags for Blogger
How to Create Custom Meta Description for Label Pages in Blogger
To create custom meta descriptions for your label pages;
- Copy the entire content in the box below.
- From Blogger dashboard, go to theme > Customize > Edit HTML and you should be presented with a lump of codes - that is your Blogger website source codes.
- Click anywhere inside the lump of codes from above and then press
ctrl + f. A small search box should appear and inside the search box, input<metaand click the enter button. This will search for any lines of code that contains<meta. - Depending on your Blogger theme, there should be many occurences of the
<metacode. Just below any of them, paste the entire codes you copied from the step one above. - Click SAVE to apply the modifications on your Blogger website.
<!-- Blogger Label Pages Meta Keywords and Descriptions -->
<b:if cond='data:view.isLabelSearch and !data:view.isSearch'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.pageName' name='keywords'/>
<meta expr:content='"On this page, we discuss everything you need to learn about " + data:blog.pageName + " revealing the distances, hotels and accomodation types and prices for various items.' name='description'/>
</b:if>
Few things to Note:
- I recommend that you backup your Blogger theme before you alter the source codes.
- You should modify the description meta content to your own taste.
- Only one description will apply to all labels.
- I recommend that you formulate a description that will be suitable for whichever labels you may use for the website.
- Read the analysis below to have a glimpse of how to formulate your own.
The Analysis - Meta Description Formulation for Blogger Labels Page
For the purpose of this analysis, I would be using travel blog as an example.
Now, let us continue from my previous example;
- Let us assume you create a blog post titled: My First Journey to Alaska.
- And you lebelled the blog post as thus; Alaska, Alaska Beach Resorts, Alaska Beach Hotels, Alaska Tours.
- Now, let us assume again that you used my exact meta description for your labels page.
- Meta description for individual label for the supposed blog post would now be;
- On this page, we discuss everything you need to learn about Alaska revealing the distances, hotels and accomodation types and prices for various items.
- On this page, we discuss everything you need to learn about Alaska Beach Resorts revealing the distances, hotels and accomodation types and prices for various items.
- On this page, we discuss everything you need to learn about Alaska Beach Hotels revealing the distances, hotels and accomodation types and prices for various items.
- On this page, we discuss everything you need to learn about Alaska Tours revealing the distances, hotels and accomodation types and prices for various items.
- From the meta description above, you should notice that only
" + data:blog.pageName + "is replaced by each of the labels from the blog post to formulate the unique meta description that is suitable for all the labels. - Also, the lebel name would serve as the meta keyword for the label page.
Conclusion
As difficult as it may seem, if you carefully craft and plan the labels that are used in your blog post, you will soon realize that it is actually very easy to formulate a single meta description that is suitable and uniquely apply to all the labels page in your Blogger website.
Moreso, if you are concerned about duplicate meta descriptions, DO NOT. First, Blogger already took care of canonicalization of the URLs and again, because the meta descriptions are similar does not mean they are the same. Similar things were never a duplicate.
In all, if you are able to tactically apply this technique, you should soon see your Blogger website ranking and fairing better for search terms relating to some or most of your blog post labels and as a result, you can very well attract hundreds of new traffic to your blog.
FAQs - Frequently Asked Questions
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What is Robots Meta Tag?
Robots Meta Tag or Meta Robots Tag is a line of code which the search engines interprete as a directive that tells the search engines how to crawl, index and serve a Page in the SERP. Robots Meta Tag must be contained in the HTML code of every Page which a webmaster wishes to control its index in the SERP according to the commands issued in the tags.
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What is Meta Description?
Meta description is the short descriptive summary of what a webpage talks about. It is not usually visible within the content body but can be read and interpreted by various bots and web applications including search engines bots such as googlebots.
Many search engines, including Google, uses meta description as the search snippets; a short description that appears underneth the webpage title wherever and whenever the page is featured or appears in search engines results pages.
-
What is Meta Keyword?
Meta Keyword is the HTML tag that can contain all the focussed keywords or phrases that a page talks about. Similar to meta description, they are not plainly visible within the content body but can be read and interpreted by search engines bots and several other web applications.
-
What is A Meta Tag?
Meta tags are HTML elements that are used to provide additional information about a webpage such as descriptions and keywords, but don't appear as visible content on the webpage except for in some instances such as when the webpage HTML source is viewed. Meta tags are primarily used to communicate with search engines including Google, Yandex, Bing and other similar search engines but it can also be read and interpreted by some web applications too.
