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It is a common belief that doing SEO on blogger is a tough job as compared to other CMS and web-hosting platforms. I partially agree with it because although in some cases we find it hard to have an SEO friendly environment on blogger but it doesn't occur in all situations. Sometimes blogger wonders us by providing such features which are not easier to manage in other platforms like the option of defining custom robots header tags. HTTP robots header tags are special meta tags which instructs search engine how an individual page of the website is indexed and displayed in search results. These tags can be placed manually in each page inside the head section as shown in below example.
<head> <meta name="robots" content="noindex" /> (…) </head>Manually adding these tags individually in each page can make this process demanding but Blogger makes it easier for us by giving a pre-installed setup of custom robots HTTP header tags in search preference settings. Values of each class of pages can be set individually which will serve as default for that class. For example setting a "noindex" value for Archive pages will restrict all archive pages from being indexed in search engines or by setting a "nofollow" value on post pages links on that post will be treated as nofollow links. There is also an advantage that we can also define robots meta values individually on post pages even having default settings which may differ from what we have set by default for them.
In this article we will be covering how to enable custom robots header tags in blogger and the explanation of each value individually so we can have better search engine optimization for our blog.
Explanation Of Robots Meta Tags Values:
We have 10 values for robots meta tags which are mentioned explained in the table below.| Value | Description |
|---|---|
| all | No restrictions in indexing the page. This is a default value and has no effect on the page if isn’t checked specifically. It allows all search engines to index and show the page in search results. |
| noindex | This stops search engine from indexing your page and showing cached links of your page in search results. |
| nofollow | It stops search engines from following the links present on your page. In simple words those links are made nofollow. |
| none | It has properties of both “noindex” and “nofollow” thus it makes your page nofollow and noindex. |
| noarchive | It stops search engines from showing cached link of webpage in search results. |
| nosnippet | It doesn’t show snippet in the search results for the page. |
| noodp | If your site is indexed on DMOZ (Open directory project) then there might be chances search engines extract meta data of your site from there to index your page. This value instructs search engines not to use that data. |
| notranslate | It stops offering of translation for the page in search results. |
| noimageindex | It stops images from being indexed in search engines for that page. |
| Unavailable_after | Stops displaying page in search results after a specified date/time. The date and time must be written in RFC 850 format. eg. 08-Feb-94 14:15:29 GMT |
Enable Custom Robots Header Tags In Blogger:
By default the robots tag in blogger is set to "all" value which allows indexing of whole blog in a regular manner but that's not what we always need. Sometimes we have to stop indexing of a specific class of page or sometimes we don't want to show a post in search results so to handling these cases we must enable custom robots header tags in our blog.To enable this feature, follow the below steps.
1. Go to blogger dashboard > Settings > Search Preferences > Crawlers And Indexing.
2. Under the Crawlers and Indexing heading, you will see "Custom Robots Header Tags" option which would be disabled by default.
3. Click on Edit and set the values according to following screenshot then click on save changes.
This combination of values is recommended for all type of blogs so nothing to worry about it.
Explanation of Robots Header Tags Settings:
In this combination of settings, we have applied robots tag values to 3 type of page. First is homepage where we have selected "all" and "noodp". It allows complete indexing of our webpage without any restriction. On the other hand, it uses meta data (title and description) from our own blog not from Dmoz open directory project. Same settings is applied for the post and pages because they also worth indexing. The only category which we have stopped from indexing is search and archive pages. Their indexing can cause trouble of duplicate content so we have disallowed from getting indexed using noindex value.Configure Robots Tags For Individual Pages/Posts:
These values will serve as default settings for each category of pages. Values on post pages an also be applied individually after enabling this feature. Now you will also see a "Custom Robots Tags" option in post editor set to default settings which you can change according to your own choice.
To make a change, click on Custom Robots Tags option and then remove check sign from default field. After this click on those tags which you want to enable for that specific post and click on "Done".
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