Blogging Tips Weekly - Meta Tags - Are They Important for SEO?

Do you want more visitors at your blog?

C'mon! What kind of blogger doesn't want people to stop by? In fact, the more, the merrier. To gain more visitors, however, bloggers not only need to market themselves, but also become searchable.

By "searchable," I meant search engine friendly, which requires a little SEO magic. This involves playing with html meta tags and crafting relevant keywords.

So, Girlie Blog is definitely not search engine friendly right now.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, an organic or algorithmic process for improving a website's visibility on search engines. 

While search engines' algorithms, like the complicated yet efficient logic Google uses, are not released to public, a few well-known variables do impact how well websites rank on search results -- and all of them want to be number one.

One of these variables is keywords.


Serious bloggers and websites often purchase the best SEO companies to optimize their content, and use expensive SEO tools -- nothing I can afford for the Girlie Blog. But I can add my own keywords to increase Girlie Blog's chances for being discovered, and I'll need meta tags for that.

What are Meta Tags?

In computer science, metadata stands for data (or information) about the data within your website. A meta tag, then, is used within your blog's code behind to describe the metadata about your blog.

An easy way to look at this is to view your blog as a book, and your meta tag as the summary or synopsis. The information within meta tags, the summary, gives readers (in this case search engines) a brief overview of what they are about to read through.

Meta tags contain information that read like a book's summary.

Why Use Meta Tags?

There are many kinds of meta tags, including description, author, keywords, and content type. For search engine optimization, description and keywords are most important.

Description gives search engines an understanding of your blog. Keywords get your blog to the top of search results.

How to Add Meta Tags (on blogger)?

So, this is the fun part. If you use blogger or blogspot platform, follow the steps below. Otherwise, try navigating to your source code (usually html, xhtml, or xml document), and reach the head section.

Step 1

Log into your blogger account > Go to "Design" tab.

Step 2

Click on "Edit HTML" link (below all the tabs) > Should arrive on html template > download full template to back it up.

Step 3

Ctrl-Find and type in the following code:

<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>

Step 4

Place the following code above the line you just searched for:

<meta content='Your blog description' name='description'/>
<meta content='keyword, keyword, keyword ...' name='keywords'/>
<meta content='noodp' name='robots'/>
<meta content='index, follow' name='robots'/>
<meta content='3 days' name='revisit-after'/>

Step 5:

Of course, replace "Your blog's description" with a proper description of your blog.

Replace "keyword, keyword, keyword..." with relevant keywords that describe your blog.

**NOTE: Search engines prefer 20 keywords or less per site.

Step 6

Save template and view blog.

Are Meta Tags Important?

This is debatable. It all depends on how ambitious you are with your blog. 

If you blog for enjoyment, don't want many visitors, and could care less about being picked up by search engines, then meta tags and seo are certainly not important. 

However, if you want to be discovered by optimizing search engine results, then perhaps meta tags, along with other elements, can help you achieve that?

Thanks for reading.

Do you use meta tags for keywords?

Do you use any SEO tools or SEO services?

How do you make your blog search engine friendly?