Are Meta Keywords Useful, In Blogger Blog Posts?

Some blog owners do not completely understand the concept of meta description, vs meta keywords - and how blog search reputation can be affected.

We see occasional questions, in Blogger Help Forum: Learn More About Blogger.

I know how to enter meta info on each blog post under the Search Description field - but do I have to put all permutations of a subject in the Search Description?

Here, we see the possibility of unintended "keyword stuffing", and degraded search engine reputation.

We must be careful to not misuse the meta search description feature - and avoid keyword stuffing.

Well written meta descriptions can help search reputation.

A well written meta description can be part of a well designed blog and of well written posts. It can help search engines index a blog, or a post, properly - and in a SERP listing, can attract readers.

Contrarily, a collection of meta keywords can look like keyword stuffing. The latter can cause degraded search engine reputation.

Search engines are long past benefiting from meta keywords.

Search engines have long been made more introspective, than for a blog to benefit from meta keywords. Search engines now extract keywords from indexed content, automatically.

While it is possible to design blog or website pages to use keywords, keywords now are extracted from visible content. Google is quite blunt about meta keywords.

Google doesn't use the "keywords" meta tag in our web search ranking.

Write good posts, to get good SERP positions.

If you want good SERP positioning, write good posts, using informative, interesting, and unique content. That's the best advice, for Blogger blogs.

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Some #Blogger blog owners still try to use meta keyword tags, to improve search engine reputation. They don't realise that search engines now develop their own keyword lists, from visible content.

Good search list positions come from good content, to be read by people - not from jumbles of words, randomly strung together.

https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

https://moz.com/community/q/meta-keywords-should-we-use-them-or-not

http://cohlab.com/blog/stop-using-keywords-meta-tag.html

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/79812

Using The Meta Search Description In Your Blog

There is some confusion, about including "search description" meta content, in blog template code, to provide source for data shares to social sharing sites.

In various topics in Blogger Help Forum: Get Help with an Issue, I've seen references to "data:post.metaDescription", "data:post.snippet", and "data:post.pageTitle" used, in providing the blog post source for the FaceBook "og:description" tag. As far as I can tell, none of these exist.

The Layout data tag "data:blog.metaDescription", which provides "og:description", does exist - though it seems to be referenced, ambiguously.

Some FaceBook Open Graph content references different Blogger tags, depending upon page type. The FaceBook "og:title" references "data:blog.pageName" with an "item" (post) page, and "data:blog.title"; with other pages.

"og:description", on the other hand, only references one Blogger tag - "data:blog.metaDescription". The latter appears to change its source, depending upon whether the main page, or a post page, is being viewed.

• In main page mode, the per blog "Description", from Settings - Search preferences, is referenced.
• In post page mode, the per post "Search Description", from the Post Editor "Post settings", is referenced.

Source listing for this blog, in main page view.

"What Blogger won't (or can't) tell you. Blogger features and problems explained, using real life examples."

Source listing for this post, in post page view.

"Blogger provides the meta tag "data:blog.metaDescription", which seems to vary in source. Learn how it varies."



There is no mention of "data:blog.metaDescription", in the reference Blogger Help: Layouts Data Tags - as either a per blog, or per post, data element.

In my earlier post, my reference to "'data:blog.metaDescription' name='description'" was simple. But simplicity can lead to confusion.

<meta expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription' name='description' property='og:description'/>

Some tags are universal, others vary depending upon page type ("item" being post page).

<!-- BEGIN Open Graph tags -->
<meta expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription' name='description'' property='og:description'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.pageTitle' name='keywords'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<meta content='article' property='og:type'/>
<meta content='https://plus.google.com/nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn/about' property='article:author'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.canonicalUrl' property='og:url'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.pageName' property='og:title'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.postImageUrl'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.postImageUrl' property='og:image'/>
<b:else/>
<meta content='http://xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/xxxxxxxxxxxx/xxxxxxxxxxx/xxxxxxxxxxx/xxxxxxxxxxx/S1600-R/yyyyyyyyyyyyy.gif' property='og:image'/>
</b:if>
<b:else/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.title' property='og:title'/>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.canonicalHomepageUrl' property='og:url'/>
<meta content='blog' property='og:type'/>
<meta content='http://xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/xxxxxxxxxxxx/xxxxxxxxxxx/xxxxxxxxxxx/xxxxxxxxxxx/S1600-R/yyyyyyyyyyyyy.gif' property='og:image'/>
</b:if>
<meta expr:content='"en_US"' property='og:locale'/>
<!-- END Open Graph tags -->

'data:blog.metaDescription' name='description' is referenced once, in the template code - and the source is apparently determined, based on the context.

If you find this confusing, I have to agree with you.

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#Blogger provides the Layout data tag "data:blog.metaDescription", which is used for the FaceBook meta ag "og:description" - for both blog main page, and post pages, when shared. This is in contrast to the FaceBook meta tag "og:title" and others, which use different Blogger data tags for the main page and post pages.

This variation has caused some confusion - and attempted use of different non existent Blogger data tags.

Verifying Ownership Of Your Site To Bing Webmaster

As a web master (aka blog master), besides adding posts and enhancing the template, you have a third activity - connecting your web site (blog) to other web sites and blogs. In many cases, you'll simply send the owners of the other web site (blog) a request to link to your blog.

For links to large and very active web sites, you'll use an online wizard. To prove ownership of your web site, instead of sending email, you'll add a file of specific name, or maybe specific content, into the web site. You can't add a file to your blog, though. With a Blogger blog, you have no control over files and folders - all that you do is publish posts.

One of the most important web sites that you can add your blog to, similar to Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer, is the Microsoft search engine, Bing.

Similar to Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer, Microsoft provides Bing Webmaster, which provides you the web site (blog) owner the ability to monitor and tune the relationship between your web site (blog) and Bing, the Microsoft Search Engine. When you add a non Blogger web site to Bing Webmaster, you add a file of specific name and content, to the root. When you add your blog, you add a record of specific content - a meta record - to the template.

This meta record, which provides your verification of ownership to Bing, may be one of the most important single lines of code in the template. Add this with care.

1. First, and always, backup the template for the blog.
2. Sign in to your HotMail / Live / Microsoft account (Yes, here, too, you have to sign in! And you will need a Microsoft accepted account!)
3. You start from Bing Webmaster Center - Home.
4. Under "Sites", you'll see the "Add Site" button. Hit the button.
5. Paste or type the URL of the blog into the "Site:" box.
6. Hit "Submit".
7. Now you'll have "Verify Ownership".
8. Click on "Option 2: Copy and paste a tag in your default webpage".
9. Copy the meta record, as presented to you.
10. You'll take the record as provided, and reformat it slightly. Here's an example of what they provide.
    

    <meta name="msvalidate.01" content="XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX">
    

    
    Here's what I used.
    

    <meta content='XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX' name='msvalidate.01'/>
    

11. In another tab or window, open the template editor window, for the blog.
12. Copy the record into the template for your blog, just below the records added for Google Webmaster Tools and / or Yahoo Site Explorer verification.
13. Save the template.
14. Back in the Bing Webmaster "Verify Ownership" window, click on the "Verify" button.
15. You'll now see your site, added to the Sites list, and the "Dashboard" for your newly added site will be displayed.
16. And again, backup the template for the blog. Save both backups.

Having verified ownership of your site, you now have access to various features of Bing Webmaster.

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Blogger Magic - Detecting The Blog Feed

Ever see a magician take a pack of playing cards, shuffle the deck, wave his wand over the deck, and make the Ace of Spades rise into the air? Pretty mysterious.

How about I wave my wand over my blog, and make the blog feed URL rise into your browser? You've seen a BlogList wizard - you add a blog to your bloglist. Just type in the blog URL, and it pops up the feed. How did it do that?

The answer isn't hard to see, just look in the template header, for the live blog.

You can find the feed URL, by viewing the template header.

Use View - "Page Source" with the blog displayed in your browser, or use an HTTP text proxy, to examine the blog code. There, you will find the auto discovery feed URL.

Here's the header for this blog.

<head>

...

<link href='http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/' rel='canonical'/>
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml"
title="The Real Blogger Status - Atom"
href="http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/feeds/posts/default" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
title="The Real Blogger Status - RSS"
href="http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss" />
<link rel="service.post" type="application/atom+xml" title="The Real Blogger Status - Atom" href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/24069595/posts/default" />

...

</style>

There it is

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/feeds/posts/default

You won't see anything from the template source, in "Page Elements" - "Edit HTML". You have to look at the live, rendered HTML.

Here's what you may see, in "Edit HTML".

<head>
<meta content='IE=EmulateIE7' http-equiv='X-UA-Compatible'/>
<meta content='width=1100' name='viewport'/>
<b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>
<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>

Not all third party templates will include the crucial code snippet:

<b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>

If your template is missing that line of code, no magic for you.

Enable the blog feeds from the dashboard Settings page.

To enable the newsfeeds, use the dashboard Settings - Other - "Site feed" wizard. The choice of setting for "Allow Blog Feed" affects the use of dynamic templates, and successful search engine indexing of the blog.

Now, consider possible additional details which some blogs have. Both a custom domain redirect, and a custom feed (ala FeedBurner) redirect, may provide more challenge.

You can't change the native feed URL, without a feed redirector.

Also note that the URL shown in the header displays the native URL of the feed - and reflects the value of the internal feed URL variable. If you change this header record, that won't change the internal variable. To change the URL, you need to setup a redirected feed (such as a FeedBurner feed) - then use the Post Feed Redirect setting, to point to the redirected feed.

Set the "Post Feed Redirect URL", to point to the redirected feed.



You do know, I hope, that if your blog is private, it will not publish a feed. And finally, be aware that not all online services accept a redirected feed.

Any blog with a standard header will provide the feed URL, as auto discovery.

But once you understand the details, you can Follow any blog which has the auto discovery feed URLs, defined in the blog header. Just use the "Add" wizard in "Reading list", in your dashboard - and provide the URL of the blog.

Identifying Yourself, As The Owner Of Your Blog

Occasionally, somebody in Blogger Help Forum: How Do I? wonders

Why don't I have a Layouts (or Template) link in my dashboard?

or

How do I setup additional team members, without the right link in Permissions?

and the first question is

Are you logged in as the blog administrator / owner?

It's not difficult to verify the owner of your blog, if you have a public profile, and a standard template.

In your browser, select View, then "Page Source" or "Source". Or, use an HTTP text proxy. Look at the code for this blog, heavily trimmed and broken, for 'link rel="me"'.

<head>

...

<link rel="service.post" type="application/atom+xml"
title="The Real Blogger Status - Atom"
href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/24069595/posts/default" />
<link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml"
title="RSD" href="http://www.blogger.com/rsd.g?blogID=24069595" />
<link rel="me" href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/08069634565746003311" />

There it is!

https://www.blogger.com/profile/08069634565746003311

or maybe you'd see

https://plus.google.com/114025756997654559499

That's my profile. Click on either link.

Find the Profile URL, and follow the link - and look at the Profile.

So, look at the header code for your blog, locate the "me" link, extract the attached URL, and follow the link- either for a Blogger Profile, or for a Google+ Profile.

If there's no "me" link - which is normal, for blogs under team ownership - look carefully in the sidebar - if the blog has a Profile / "About Us" gadget, you may be able to find a "www.blogger.com/profile/ ..." or "plus.google.com/ ..." link there.

With some team blogs, you may find a list of each individual profile, for the whole team. Each individual profile should have a different Profile ID in the attached URL - again, "www.blogger.com/profile/ ..." or "plus.google.com/ ...".

Then, find the Profile URL from your dashboard - and compare the two.

Take each available "www.blogger.com/profile/ ..." or "plus.google.com/ ..." link, paste it into your browser, and take a look - or click on the link, if possible. Then, go to your dashboard, and find the Profile URL, from the dashboard. Compare the two profiles - are they the same?

If not, you probably inadvertently created a second (or third) Blogger account, possibly as you incorrectly transferred a blog from one Blogger account to another.

Learn to login to Blogger properly - and avoid multi account confusion.

When you login to Blogger, first clear cache, cookies, and active login sessions - then make sure that you login using the proper Blogger account. If necessary, recover the account information, and start over.

Remember that when you login, Blogger will not select the account for you. If you have FeedBurner, GMail, Picasa, or any of the other many Google services under another account, you'll need to use two different browsers - or a different computer.

Note the limitations of the procedure, when the owner wants privacy.

Note that this procedure works only for blogs and profiles that are properly made public. If a blogger has chosen to not make the profile public, or if the blog in question is published as private (with designated readers), you won't get the details needed here. And if the blog has multiple administrators, it probably won't have the "me" meta tag in the header.

In extreme cases, you'll need assistance from Blogger, using the Having trouble signing in? wizard. Now, you have to hope that your account isn't intentionally based on a bogus email address.

Verifying Ownership Of Your Site To Google Webmaster Tools

As a web master (blog master), besides adding posts and enhancing the template, you have a third activity which is almost as time consuming.

You will be constantly connecting your web site (blog) to other web sites and blogs. In many cases, you'll simply send the owners of the other web site (blog) a request to link to your blog.

For links to some web sites, you'll not use email, you'll use an online wizard. To prove ownership of your web site, instead of sending email, you'll add a file of specific name, or maybe specific content, into the web site. You can't add a file to your blog, though - with blogs, you have no control over files and folders - all that you do is publish posts.

One of the most important web sites that you can add your blog to is Google Webmaster Tools.

"Webmaster Tools" - now known as "Search Console" - provides you the web site (blog) owner the ability to monitor and tune the relationship between your web site (blog) and the Google Search Engine.

Note that some time ago, Blogger added a quick, universal verification of your blogs. At the bottom of your dashboard, under "Tools and Resources", you'll find a link "Webmaster Tools". This appears to generate a file known as the "WMX Verification File".

Right now, there are some odd circumstances which may be a result of using that link. For right now, I would only verify my blogs, one at a time, adding a meta record - as shown below.

When you verify ownership of your web site to GWT, you add a file of specific name and content, to the root. When you add your blog, you can't do that, so you add a record of specific content - a meta record - to the template. Note that the automated process which reads the blog header, and verifies your ownership, appears to be sensitive to private blog settings.

This meta record, which provides your verification of ownership to Google Webmaster Tools, may be the most important single line of code in the template. Add this with care.

1. Sign in to your Google account.
2. You start from Google Webmaster Tools - Dashboard.
3. In the Click here to add a site box, enter the URL to your blog, and then hit Add Site. Make this entry identical to the URL to which the blog is published. Use the following examples, substituting appropriately your value for "myblog", "mydomain", "xxxxx", and "zzz".
   • If the blog is published to "myblog.blogspot.com", enter it as "myblog.blogspot.com".
   • The blog will never be published to "www.myblog.blogspot.com", so do not enter it as "www.myblog.blogspot.com".
   • If the blog is published to "mydomain.zzz", enter it as "mydomain.zzz".
   • If the blog is published to "www.mydomain.zzz", enter it as "www.mydomain.zzz".
   • If the blog is published to "xxxxx.mydomain.zzz", enter it as "xxxxx.mydomain.zzz".
   If you rename the blog, either changing the BlogSpot URL or republishing to a Custom Domain, remember to repeat this exercise with the updated URL.
4. This will take you to Overview.
   

   Next Step
   Verify your site. By verifying your site you can access comprehensive statistics and crawl errors about the pages in your site

5. Click the link for "Verify your site".
6. This will take you to Verify a Site.
7. In the Choose verification method... pull down list, select Add a meta tag.
8. This will generate your site verification meta tag. Highlight and Copy the text from the box.
9. In a separate window, edit the template for your blog. Add into the template, in the heading section, your site verification meta tag, that's provided by the GWT wizard. After you add the meta tag, you should have something like:
   

   <head>
       <b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/>
       <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
       <meta name="description" content="......."></meta>
       <meta name="keywords" content="......."></meta>
       <meta name="verify-v1" content="......."></meta>
   
       <b:skin><![CDATA[/*
   

   
   Note that some detail was removed from the above example, and that the above example shows template code for designer and layout templates.
   
   You might want to observe the different ways to format a meta tag, including differences between classic and layouts formats. The XML, in a layouts template, will require a properly closed tag.
   
   • The tag will probably be presented, by the GWT wizard, as

     <meta name="verify-v1" content=".......">

   • One way to code the tag, in a layouts template, would be

     <meta name="verify-v1" content="......."></meta>

   • A second way to code the tag, in a layouts template, would be

     <meta name="verify-v1" content="......." />

10. Save Template Changes.
11. Go back to Verify a Site, and hit Verify.
12. This will take you to Overview. Part of the display will include:
    

    You've successfully verified (your site)

    and may include
    

    No pages from your site are currently included in Google's index.

    and

    You have not submitted any Sitemaps. Submit a Sitemap to help Google discover pages our crawlers might not otherwise find.

    Select the Sitemaps menu entry.

Having verified ownership of your site, you now can add a Google Sitemap, or use the other features of Google Webmaster Tools.

Google Webmaster Tools

As a Google customer, we have access to a very useful set of tools, which help us develop and maintain a healthy relationship between our blogs and the Google search engine spiders.

Google Webmaster Tools (now Search Console) provides us with tools to measure our visibility, and it provides us with helpful hints on how to improve our visibility.

You can use Google Webmaster Tools for any active URL that you administer.

If your blog is published to BlogSpot, you use the "xxxxxxx.blogspot.com" URL; if the blog is published to a custom domain, you use the primary URL for the domain.

Using Google Webmaster Tools for any web site requires that you are the administrator of the web site.

Google doesn't want anybody who's not the administrator, of any web site, accessing search engine diagnostics for that web site.

The meta tag provided in the verification process is a token, and it must match the URL that you are verifying. If you change the active URL for the blog (rename it within "blogspot.com", or publish it to a custom domain), you will need a new Google Webmaster Tools entry, with a new verification tag.

The meta tag is as important a data element as the clickable link that you get in your email, when you're offered membership in a blog - or when you verify an email address, for an account. You click on the link, which opens the token, and applies it to your account.

With a Blogger blog in Google Webmaster Tools, you install the token into the blog template, to verify ownership of the domain (blog). Only a blog administrator has the authority to update the template. If you don't install the token into the template, you can't prove that you own the blog, and you can't use Google Webmaster Tools for your blog.

Elsewhere in Google Webmaster Tools, you'll find the Web crawl logs. Some information in the web crawl logs can be very useful to you, while other is informational only. It's to your advantage to separate the two categories. The "Preferred domain" setting in "Site Configuration" is a very small setting, that can have a big impact. And most of us setup our blogs on GWT so we can add a sitemap to the blog.

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