If you want to include the Meta description and keyword tags to your blogger based blog template, here is how you can do it.
Note: meta tags aren't that important anymore SEO-wise. However, they may show up when data is pulled from a social media outlet like Facebook, so if you do have something there, make sure it makes sense. BUT: It is not recommended. I did a writeup of why.
If you are still set on adding the meta description tag to your blog, here are the directions. The meta keyword tag will be pretty worthless because it is designed to include a string of words that are found on a specific page. Well, your blog has many pages on it, and if you are making this change at the root level, you only get to put in 1 meta description and 1 set of meta keywords in, which most likely will not include what one of your blog pages is talking about.
Log into your blog.
Click on Layout.
Click on Template and Edit HTML.
Make a copy of your code first. Do this by just Selecting All if it (Edit > Select All) and pasting it into a neutral program like Notepad or Text Edit. Try not to use Word, because that will add yuchy stuff to it without you realizing it.
Once you are looking at the code in your Template, find this line at the top of the code:
b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/
This line is already there. Leave it, don't edit it at all, and place the meta content code beneath it.
The code you will place will be:
meta content='TYPE YOUR DESCRIPTION HERE' name='description'/
meta content='TYPE YOUR KEYWORDS HERE' name='keywords'/
I didn't wrap these lines of code with the <> symbols because if I did, the code would actually kick in, and you wouldn't be able to see it here. So remember to close your code with the <>.
For your keywords, you can just put a string of words and you don't need commas. There is no need to repeat words in there. That won't help ya.
Once you have entered in the code, click to Preview your blog. This is very important. If your blog doesn't show up or looks funnhy, then you added the code incorrectly, and you need to go get the code you copied and pasted from before into Notepad or Text Edit, and start again. Or, just click Cancel and start again.
Good luck!
Showing posts with label Blog How To's. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blog How To's. Show all posts
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Friday, August 05, 2005
You Published A Blog. Now What?
Here’s where we rub our hands together. There are several basic ‘Settings’ in your blog that you want to make sure are fine tuned. We’re going to go under the hood to make sure you can get the most exposure at the most basic (aka easy, least amount of effort) level. I’m assuming you’re using Blogger (blogspot.com), so just follow along. If you’re not, your blogging program most likely has similar options for you.
The Tabs
When you log into your account, and you click on the blog you want to work on, you’re go into the behind the scenes area. You see 4 tabs: Publish, Settings, Template, View Blog (that’s an easy one). This is where you’re create and edit posts, tweak RSS feeds, publish to FTP if you so desire, change your template, and other little quarks.
Posting Tab
This is where you’re create and edit your posts. It’s pretty basic and self-explanatory. If you want to allow people, random people or your friends, to make comments on your post, you can make the decision here. It will be specific to this post. So if you clicked “No” to people commenting on your post on a past post, and you don’t want people commenting on this post, then you’ll have to click it again. Keep in mind, you are the administrator (god or goddess) of this blog. You can delete any comment, or any post for that matter, at any time.
You can change the time and date of your post here. If you don’t want people to know you were up at 4am blogging, then change the time to 2pm.
Settings Tab
Ok, here’s where we really go under the hood. I’ll just define what everything is, and why you want it. If you care about showing up in search engines for certain phrase searches like “seychelles wedges” or “new york fashion designer,” pay attention:
Under Basic:
Title: the title of your blog. It appears in search engines as the main linked copy and at the top of the browser window. Look up at mine. It says “That Girl with the IT Answers”
Description: appears somewhere below your title depending on your template. Fill this with good keywords but in a way that makes sense, as in a complete sentence.
Add your Blog to listings?: when you publish a new post to your blog, Blogger will automatically tell blog listings that you have a new post. This can generate traffic to your site. It will be random traffic, but traffic none the less. Usually, people are hitting that ‘next blog’ button at the top of a blog, and you could be the next blog because you have fresh content. You’ll want to say Yes to this. It doesn’t hurt.
Show Quick Editing on your blog?: this will let you get into your settings from your blog. So if you’re reading it over and catch a mistake, you can click on this little graphic to go to your settings. It looks like this:
Show Email Post links?: this does what it says. It’s another way of people to share your blog with other people. Doesn’t’ really hurt, so click Yes.
Show Compose Mode or all of your blogs?: this lets you use a ‘wysiwig editor’ with your blog, which means that, formatting your text will be much easier. It will be like formatting text in Word. You just click in a word you want bolded instead of wrapping code around it.
Under Publishing:
Woa there, Nelly. Don’t mess with this until you’ve done your homework. The only thing you want to change here is to click Yes to Notify Weblogs.com. Again, this notifies a blog-tracking program that you have fresh content on your site. People from far and wide looking at that list of currently updated blogs may see your blog Title and click on it.
As for the FTP and SFTP settings you see there, those are for if you want your blog to live in a website that you already maintain. Think long and hard before you do this, because reversing it could be painful. There are many little changes associated with changing where your blog is published, and you’ll want to think them all through. For a quick dip into it if you’re curious , you can see me flail for help (and get it) when I changed the settings (ouch for the brain).
Under Formatting:
The usual suspects are in here: time zone, how dates are displayed, how your archives are displayed. Keep all other settings at Yes except for the Show Link Field. No one really knows what it does or what it’s for.
Under Comments:
Comments: to show or hide. Showing comments is up to you.
Who Can Comment?: Again, up to you. Anyone gives ability for more people to comment. If it’s only members of your blog, those are more settings.
Default for Posts: do you want comments available every time you create a new post? If so, click “new posts have comments”
Show comments in a popup window?: this let’s your comments pop up separately, leaving your blog still open in the browser window. It allows for quicker loading of comments if you click Yes.
Show profile images on comments?: some people have pictures attached to their profiles, like me (see strange looking mouse above). This picture will be included with the commenter’s comments.
Under Archiving:
Choose your archive frequency (personally, I think monthly is good enough and easier for the user to go through).
Enable Post Pages?: if you click yes, all of your posts will be their own web page. This increases your chance of getting into a web search result for those keyword phrases. This of course not only increases chances for traffic, but gets you traffic who want to be on your blog.
Under Site Feed:
Another good way to get traffic. People can subscribe to services that alert them when new content is posted to their favorite blogs or websites. bloglines.com is one such service. If you click Yes here, then your site feed URL will be enabled.
Site Feed URL: it’s your blog URL plus the atom.xml exension. Unless the user has a special ‘reader’ that can turn this code into a pretty page, it will be a bunch of code. But it’s great to have.
Under Email:
I’ve never used this, so feel free to experiment.
Under Members:
This is where you’ll add members who can publish or do certain things on your blog. If you decided that members only can comment on your blog, than this is where they will live.
I think that’s all for now, don’t you? Check back for adding statistics (and which are the best free statistics) to your blog so that you can see who the heck is coming to your blog.
The Tabs
When you log into your account, and you click on the blog you want to work on, you’re go into the behind the scenes area. You see 4 tabs: Publish, Settings, Template, View Blog (that’s an easy one). This is where you’re create and edit posts, tweak RSS feeds, publish to FTP if you so desire, change your template, and other little quarks.
Posting Tab
This is where you’re create and edit your posts. It’s pretty basic and self-explanatory. If you want to allow people, random people or your friends, to make comments on your post, you can make the decision here. It will be specific to this post. So if you clicked “No” to people commenting on your post on a past post, and you don’t want people commenting on this post, then you’ll have to click it again. Keep in mind, you are the administrator (god or goddess) of this blog. You can delete any comment, or any post for that matter, at any time.
You can change the time and date of your post here. If you don’t want people to know you were up at 4am blogging, then change the time to 2pm.
Settings Tab
Ok, here’s where we really go under the hood. I’ll just define what everything is, and why you want it. If you care about showing up in search engines for certain phrase searches like “seychelles wedges” or “new york fashion designer,” pay attention:
Under Basic:
Title: the title of your blog. It appears in search engines as the main linked copy and at the top of the browser window. Look up at mine. It says “That Girl with the IT Answers”
Description: appears somewhere below your title depending on your template. Fill this with good keywords but in a way that makes sense, as in a complete sentence.
Add your Blog to listings?: when you publish a new post to your blog, Blogger will automatically tell blog listings that you have a new post. This can generate traffic to your site. It will be random traffic, but traffic none the less. Usually, people are hitting that ‘next blog’ button at the top of a blog, and you could be the next blog because you have fresh content. You’ll want to say Yes to this. It doesn’t hurt.
Show Quick Editing on your blog?: this will let you get into your settings from your blog. So if you’re reading it over and catch a mistake, you can click on this little graphic to go to your settings. It looks like this:
Show Email Post links?: this does what it says. It’s another way of people to share your blog with other people. Doesn’t’ really hurt, so click Yes.
Show Compose Mode or all of your blogs?: this lets you use a ‘wysiwig editor’ with your blog, which means that, formatting your text will be much easier. It will be like formatting text in Word. You just click in a word you want bolded instead of wrapping code around it.
Under Publishing:
Woa there, Nelly. Don’t mess with this until you’ve done your homework. The only thing you want to change here is to click Yes to Notify Weblogs.com. Again, this notifies a blog-tracking program that you have fresh content on your site. People from far and wide looking at that list of currently updated blogs may see your blog Title and click on it.
As for the FTP and SFTP settings you see there, those are for if you want your blog to live in a website that you already maintain. Think long and hard before you do this, because reversing it could be painful. There are many little changes associated with changing where your blog is published, and you’ll want to think them all through. For a quick dip into it if you’re curious , you can see me flail for help (and get it) when I changed the settings (ouch for the brain).
Under Formatting:
The usual suspects are in here: time zone, how dates are displayed, how your archives are displayed. Keep all other settings at Yes except for the Show Link Field. No one really knows what it does or what it’s for.
Under Comments:
Comments: to show or hide. Showing comments is up to you.
Who Can Comment?: Again, up to you. Anyone gives ability for more people to comment. If it’s only members of your blog, those are more settings.
Default for Posts: do you want comments available every time you create a new post? If so, click “new posts have comments”
Show comments in a popup window?: this let’s your comments pop up separately, leaving your blog still open in the browser window. It allows for quicker loading of comments if you click Yes.
Show profile images on comments?: some people have pictures attached to their profiles, like me (see strange looking mouse above). This picture will be included with the commenter’s comments.
Under Archiving:
Choose your archive frequency (personally, I think monthly is good enough and easier for the user to go through).
Enable Post Pages?: if you click yes, all of your posts will be their own web page. This increases your chance of getting into a web search result for those keyword phrases. This of course not only increases chances for traffic, but gets you traffic who want to be on your blog.
Under Site Feed:
Another good way to get traffic. People can subscribe to services that alert them when new content is posted to their favorite blogs or websites. bloglines.com is one such service. If you click Yes here, then your site feed URL will be enabled.
Site Feed URL: it’s your blog URL plus the atom.xml exension. Unless the user has a special ‘reader’ that can turn this code into a pretty page, it will be a bunch of code. But it’s great to have.
Under Email:
I’ve never used this, so feel free to experiment.
Under Members:
This is where you’ll add members who can publish or do certain things on your blog. If you decided that members only can comment on your blog, than this is where they will live.
I think that’s all for now, don’t you? Check back for adding statistics (and which are the best free statistics) to your blog so that you can see who the heck is coming to your blog.
So You Wanna Publish A Blog
Excellent! It’s not that scary, really. Time-consuming? Sometimes. Possibly addictive leading to obsession? Yes. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s learn how to publish that blog.
1. Find a blog program to ‘host’ your blog
Hosting means that someone is keeping the power on. To go with a blogging program means that someone is giving you tools to create and manage your blog. This should be free. I use blogspot.com. It started out as Blogger, and Google bought it. I have a friend who works there, and he’s a great and efficient guy. He loves the environment, and so do I. So, go to blogspot.com and sign up for an account (although, you're kind of already here, since I'm at blogspot.com...just look up in my URL in the address bar).
2. Create your account
Your Username appears when you comment, no matter how many blogs you have under that account. For example: my username is BloggerMouse. My blogs are “FashionMista” and the one you’re on now. When I comment anywhere in the blogging world (well, blogs that are under blogspot), my name will appear as BloggerMouse. This is changeable anytime.
3. Pick your template
Blogger will present you with a list of templates to choose from. This is the design, or visual layout, of your blog. You can design your own template, but that’s advanced. For more information on it, though, go to the bloggerforum to see what other people say about designing their own templates. Otherwise, the ones Blogger provides are just fine. You can change this at any time as well once you get started, and will actually be presented with more choices. Note: if you’ve done anything customizable to your template, those changes will be lost when you change templates.
4. Go ahead, post something
Christen your blog with your first post. Go to Create Post and write anything you want. If you’re using Windows or on a Mac using Firefox or maybe Mozilla (just not Safari), you have access to a ‘wysiwig’ editor. This stands for ‘what you see is what you get’ and it makes formatting the copy in your blog much easier. You’ll see buttons for Bold, Italic and to make a link. Use them. They work just like if you were formatting text in Word. Just highlight your text and press the formatting button of choice.
Enjoy!
1. Find a blog program to ‘host’ your blog
Hosting means that someone is keeping the power on. To go with a blogging program means that someone is giving you tools to create and manage your blog. This should be free. I use blogspot.com. It started out as Blogger, and Google bought it. I have a friend who works there, and he’s a great and efficient guy. He loves the environment, and so do I. So, go to blogspot.com and sign up for an account (although, you're kind of already here, since I'm at blogspot.com...just look up in my URL in the address bar).
2. Create your account
Your Username appears when you comment, no matter how many blogs you have under that account. For example: my username is BloggerMouse. My blogs are “FashionMista” and the one you’re on now. When I comment anywhere in the blogging world (well, blogs that are under blogspot), my name will appear as BloggerMouse. This is changeable anytime.
3. Pick your template
Blogger will present you with a list of templates to choose from. This is the design, or visual layout, of your blog. You can design your own template, but that’s advanced. For more information on it, though, go to the bloggerforum to see what other people say about designing their own templates. Otherwise, the ones Blogger provides are just fine. You can change this at any time as well once you get started, and will actually be presented with more choices. Note: if you’ve done anything customizable to your template, those changes will be lost when you change templates.
4. Go ahead, post something
Christen your blog with your first post. Go to Create Post and write anything you want. If you’re using Windows or on a Mac using Firefox or maybe Mozilla (just not Safari), you have access to a ‘wysiwig’ editor. This stands for ‘what you see is what you get’ and it makes formatting the copy in your blog much easier. You’ll see buttons for Bold, Italic and to make a link. Use them. They work just like if you were formatting text in Word. Just highlight your text and press the formatting button of choice.
Enjoy!
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