Optimizing Title Tagging for SEO, Blogger Style

Sunday, April 2nd, 2006 at 7:17 am

I noticed a neat little article over at ProBlogger, about optimizing tags in your <title>for search engines, which also helps for tabs in Firefox due to lack of room to display long titles. In this article, Aaron Brazell says to use:

<MainPage>
  <title><$BlogDescription$></title>
</MainPage>
<ItemPage>
  <title><$BlogPageTitle$> &raquo; <$BlogDescription$></title>
</ItemPage>

But, he complains that it still puts the blog name first. Instead, I suggest:

<MainPage>
  <title><$BlogTitle$> - <$BlogDescription$></title>
</MainPage>
<ArchivePage>
  <title><$BlogPageTitle$> - <$BlogDescription$></title>
</ArchivePage>
<ItemPage>
  <Blogger><BlogItemTitle>
  <title><$BlogItemTitle$> &raquo; <$BlogTitle$> - <$BlogDescription$></title>
  </BlogItemTitle></Blogger>
</ItemPage>

My example adds two things, 1) The blog entry’s name first on item pages, 2) archive page titles, which his version lacked. I’m now using my version on my blog, and it seems to be working fine.

Update: I’m now using Wordpress, so I’m obviously no longer using this technique.

  • Permanent Link

7 Responses to “Optimizing Title Tagging for SEO, Blogger Style”

  1. 1 Matthijs van der Vleuten, on April 2nd, 2006 at 8:59 am, said:

    I would use « instead of ». With », it looks like ‘Ad Astra Per Aspera’ is part of ‘Optimizing Title Tagging [...]‘, instead of the other way around.

  2. 2 Patrick McFarland, on April 2nd, 2006 at 10:14 am, said:

    ยป seems to be the widely used symbol for seperating page name from website name.

  3. 3 Matthijs van der Vleuten, on April 2nd, 2006 at 12:20 pm, said:

    I would have thought - would be the widely used symbol for that purpose. » indicates a hierarchy since it’s directional.

  4. 4 Patrick McFarland, on April 2nd, 2006 at 1:30 pm, said:

    It is sort of a hierarchy, just not in any sensical way. Titles work in the exact opposite direction people think. Or something.

    I dunno, it works, I’ve gotten use to how quirky it is, and everyone does it. Thats good enough for me, I think.

  5. 5 MySpace Sucks, on April 7th, 2006 at 12:35 am, said:

    Try adding a meta description tag, too:

    I’d provide an example, but this comment box is amazingly hostile towards my efforts.
    T_T :(
    D: x_X

  6. 6 Patrick McFarland, on April 8th, 2006 at 1:25 am, said:

    Actually, thats not a half bad idea. And the comment box isn’t that hostile, its just that it you have to use &gt; and &lt; to frame your html instead of > and <

  7. 7 l3utterfish, on June 10th, 2008 at 3:19 am, said:

    i dont know what im doing wrong… but I still with the second code
    puts the blog name first

Leave a Reply

About this entry

This entry was written on April 2nd, 2006 at 7:17 am. and was tagged Blogger, Blogging, ProBlogger, SEO, Template.

You can track this entry via RSS feed, or you may Trackback to your own site.

You may also comment.

Possibly related