BlogSpot SEO Advanced SEO : Robots.txt, Meta Tag & More

104Shares

SEO Options on BlogSpot
  • Save

BlogSpot SEO
  • Save
Today seems to be a happy Blogger day for BlogSpot user as BlogSpot added some of the advanced SEO options for Blogger blogs. We will dive into all the new feature in details after a break but let me start with few important relevant talk.

Whenever we pitch about BlogSpot Vs. WordPress, we always give WordPress an edge in the terms of SEO. By adding new SEO features in BlogSpot, Google have fixed the SEO difference by a great extent. Though, this is not going to be “The changes”, which will make me suggest you to stick to BlogSpot for Professional Blogging. But, all the new changes are undoubtedly deserve an applause as after years, BlogSpot bloggers got much-needed SEO love.

So, let’s not waste our time and learn about all new features and how to use it.

How to Enable BlogSpot Advanced SEO settings?

Login to your Blogger dashboard and under settings > search preference you will find all the new SEO options which are added by Blogger team. You have to enable all the settings one by one, and my suggestion is to read this guide seriously else a wrong settings (BlogSpot Robots.txt), may lead to complete de-indexing of your blog.

BlogSpot Advanced SEO settings
  • Save

I don’t mean to scare you, but all I’m saying is it’s time to get serious as Google wants to take SEO very seriously. Period!.

In this iteration, here are new SEO features added by Blogger team:

  • Description meta tag:
  • Custom 404-page message
  • Custom redirects (Redirect 404 pages to any page on your blog).
  • Custom robots.txt
  • Custom Robots header tags
  • No follow tag, open link in new tab

Lets Dive into World of BlogSpot Search preference settings:

Lets, look into all the feature one by one and my suggestion implement it on your blog for better search engine optimization of your Blogger blog.

Description Meta tags:

BlogSpot Meta tags
  • Save

This is where you will be explaining what your blog is about. An informative description within 150 character will help readers to understand about your blog and will help you to get more click from search engine. Also, from SEO perspective, I would suggest you to use your main keyword here in BlogSpot meta tags description. For ex:

ShoutMeLoud is a Blogging hub for Bloggers and Internet marketers to learn about tricks of Blogging, WordPress, Affiliate marketing, SEO and how to make money online.

Make sure you explain about your blog within 150 characters, as search engine ignore characters after 150. Once you enable this feature and added meta tags after search engine bot recrawls your site, search engine will show your meta description like this in search engine:

description meta tags in search engine result
  • Save

Custom 404 message:

A 404 page is usually a mistyped pages or a visitor land on a page, which doesn’t exceed. This custom 404 message will let you create the custom HTML message, which you can display on your Blogger 404 pages. Now, it’s time for you to use your creativity and design something awesome.

BlogSpot 404 Pages
  • Save

Here is one example, HTML message which I have created, and you can change the link and text to spice up your 404 page on BlogSpot.

Seems like The internet is broken,

and you landed here by mistake. But, I got something special for you andI picked the best pages from my site here. Check out my top 5 hand picked post:

 


 

<p>&#160;</p>

 

<ul>
  <li><a href="https://www.shoutmeloud.com" target="_blank">How to be the king of the world

 

  <li><a href="https://www.shoutmeloud.com" target="_blank">How to kill an elephant by smile</a></li>
</ul>

 

<p>If you lost the heart to browse my site, you can still poke me on Facebook <a href="http://Facebook.com/ShoutMeLoud" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>

Custom redirects:

Custom redirects
  • Save

This is very useful when any 3rd party site linked to your site and added a link that doesn’t exist or if you remove a page and want to redirect the traffic. You can use Google Webmaster tool to find all such 404 pages and set the redirection. It might be a little lengthy process, but in some cases it is very useful to tap the missing traffic and convert them into real traffic.

Nofollow/Open in new tab:

BlogSpot nofollow link rel
  • Save

Before, I go into detail of this post, my suggestion is to read my post on Bounce rate, and that will give you enough idea about why opening external links in the new tab is important. Now, whenever you link to a site from the post editor, it will give two new options: Add the nofollow attribute and Open in new tab.

If the word, nofollow sounds like a rocket science to you, read my post on why you need to add nofollow tag to a link. Earlier, we used to add nofollow link attribute using HTML, but this new one click link addition will make the task very easier. My suggestion for you is to use nofollow link attribute only when you have to link to irrelevant domains and pages that you don’t trust.

For example: use it, when you are writing about some anti-hacking trick, and you have to link to hacking sites for giving examples.

Robots.txt for BlogSpot:

Well, this is one part of new BlogSpot SEO setup, which I want you to use it carefully. A wrong, settings may lead to deindexing of a big part of your site. A Robots.txt file is used to stop search engine bots from crawling the “Not so important” part of your blog. For example, Search pages, archive pages and so on.  If you are new to Robots.txt, this video by Google Engineer, Matt Cutts will give you enough basic info about BlogSpot robots.txt file:

In nutshell, I suggest you to use Robots.txt to point to your sitemap URL and control No-indexing by noindex tag in custom robots meta tags. For more information, read official page on BlogSpot robots.txt. I will cover a detailed info on Blogger robots.txt in coming days.

Custom robots header tags:

Custom robots header tags
  • Save

One much needed feature for SEO of your BlogSpot blog, though it looks like little confusing but this guide from Google will again try to explain everything in simple words.

Here is an image, which explains all the directives under Blogger custom Robots header tag:

Custom robots header tags meaning
  • Save

Robots meta tag and description is also available on single post, which makes it more search engine friendly. Specially, I liked the idea of Unavailable_after directive, which will help you to automatically deindex news post which usually expires after some time.

Well, my suggestion for every BlogSpot blogger is to get a custom domain and enjoy the power of new BlogSpot SEO and drive more traffic to your blog post. If you have any query regarding above Blogger new search preference option, ask via comment.  If you find this post useful, don’t forget to share and +1 this post.

Was this helpful?

Thanks for your feedback!
  • Save
104Shares
Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

49 thoughts on “BlogSpot SEO Advanced SEO : Robots.txt, Meta Tag & More”

  1. raj

    Really good info about Blogspot but here is a question when I enable Meta description on blogger. It is necessary to use custom meta description every each post and what it I do not add meta description in my post, google will take it automatically?

  2. Rakesh

    Superb harsh, I also made the same changes in my blog now lets see what will be happen next.
    great content;)

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Thanks Rakesh for your comment and do let me know how these changes affected your blog traffic.

  3. meeseva

    Thank you very much for the great information. Actually i have done all things what you have said in this article except customs robots . My blog having more than 6 months age and i may not copied any image or content from any blog or any where even that i am not getting approved by adsence can u say what to do ? Thanks in advance

  4. Rafay Ansar

    Harsh Agarwal why there is not settings in home page and default for post and pages?

  5. Shariful Islam Razu

    Hello Harsh Agrawal, First thanks for your important article about blogspot seo. I am newbie in blogger. I just found what i looking for many days. I have one question that is it wise to remove all the label which is already index on google.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Shariful
      Labels doesn’t help or solve a purpose for search engines. They are useful for site navigation and structure, but not for search engines. I would recommend to noindex them, and remove them from search engines.

  6. Shubhajit

    Not just because of SEO but there are various plugins in wordpress that make it more professional and user friendly. However, I find blogger more user friendly for non-technical guy like me. blogger or wordpress, the thing is Google has also started clean the garbage in web, it will take time but there will be a time when content and user friendly thing only rule. Even if you write an obscure topic but write with full research and dedication, the page will come on the top. even my assumption is even interlinking between sites also promote because of well written content one page.

  7. Bisnis Fashion

    Thanks for the great article, i am a newbie blogspot user… Anybody here can help me with SEO boosted ready robots.txt really appreciate if you can share me.

  8. Bryan

    hello Harsh.. good article … it is good news for the Blogspot users.. Custom redirects and meta tags were some of the demerits of Blogspot when compared to WordPress. this shows how much importance Google is placing on SEO..
    thanks for the post Harsh

  9. shenoyjoseph

    hello Harsh Agarwal i want to know more about other features in the blogpost. when i writing a new article on my blog i have seen different options on right side like location, label and i noticed one special option called Search Descritpion. What is Search Description in the blogger?

    1. Amit

      Hey Shenoy, Search description is a short paragraph (about 120 characters) which is helpful for search engines and search users to understand the content on that page. See the source of this page for an example.

  10. Sinoj

    Great news!. Should I remove current description of my blog which already added in template code?

    1. Siddharth Choudhary

      It Doesn’t matter, you can keep as it is because search engines only see your Meta Description

  11. Kathir

    much needed for blogspot bloggers..

  12. Chiranjeev

    No Doubt blogger is getting more better . First the threaded commenting and now customizing search preferences it’s very good for blogger user.

  13. Satyakam

    Wow Great Share Harsh,
    This is the only thing blogspot was lacking in terms of SEO but WordPress is far ahead in my view.

  14. Mikey

    I have my website as mentioned in Website above and i have created good amount of backlinks for that. My question is that if i buy a custom domain than will it affect the SEO, and the keyword the site is rating on ? Pls i have been thinking from a long time now of buying custom domain but if SEO would go then no use of it. Suggest me

  15. Rakesh Narang

    This is a very good news for guys who feel comfortable in using Blogger. Blogger is getting closer to WP.

  16. Manendra

    Nice to see these options in blogger.
    What do you say is it now necessary to migrate from blogger to wordpress ? As the major reason of migrating from blogger to word press is these options and now blogger is providing by default..

  17. jayaar

    Thanks for the article, Harsh.
    As it is, there are many bloggers who are very comfortable with Blogspot blogs irrespective of the short comings compared to WordPress. Those bloggers (including myself) would be excited to use the features which would be very helpful in promotion of the blogs.
    Regards…..

  18. Jai

    seems that finally Google have concentrated on Blogspot platform, can we consider that we get a standalone version of blogspot version soon..?

  19. Sachin

    This is gonna help a lot on blogspot! Custom redirects and meta tags are useful stuff and as you said its time to think SERIOUSLY about SEO, because Google started cleaning spam and getting strict in SEO from there home BLOGSPOT. If they are doing in blogspot then Google will expect the same from others too!

  20. Dr. Paresh

    This is a great news for all blogspot user like me.
    And this I why your blog is successful you provide insight and write articles to solve problem of every damn blogger.This shows your hard work.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top
104 Shares