| got-za.blogspot.com

SMO - Facebook Meta Tags For Blogger Blogs

Posted: 25 Sep 2016 11:20 PM PDT

Meta Tags are really important for blogs and websites, not just for Search Engine Optimization but for Social Media Optimization as well. If you are not sure on the status of your meta tags for SEO (Google), then do have a look at this post first: Check Your Meta Tags and How To Add Them To Blogger Blogs. Also, make sure that you do not have duplicate meta tags in your Blogger blogs.

In this tutorial you are going to add meta tags for Facebook - a must if you are planning to link your blog to your Facebook page for Social Media Optimization or Marketing.

First let's see, how a post shared on Facebook ideally looks like:

To check such a preview, you can try to share any of your blog posts on your Facebook page. And while in the preview itself, you can see whether all the five important parts of the link are correct or not:
1. Post title
2. Post featured image
3. Post summary/description
4. Blog's name
5. Blog author's name

You can also check the preview using a tool provided by Facebook: Batch Invalidator

Just put in the URL of few of your blog posts and you can see the preview of each of these blog posts separately. And in case, you find something's wrong with the preview then make sure that the Facebook meta tags are correctly added to your blog's template.

The basic meta tags that must be present in your template are these:

<meta property="og:url" content="URL_OF_BLOG_POST" />
<meta property="og:type" content="ARTICLE" />
<meta property="og:title" content="TITLE_OF_THE_BLOG_POST" />
<meta property="og:description" content="A_BRIEF_DESCRIPTION_OF_BLOG_POST" />
<meta property="og:image" content="LINK_TO_THE_FEATURED_IMAGE_USED_IN_THE_BLOG_POST" />

In Blogger, we need meta tags which are dynamic and create unique content for each and every blog post automatically. So, use this code which will add the required meta tags to your blog home page and blog posts without duplicating any content:

<meta content='Your Name' name='Author'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "static_page"'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.url'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.url' property='og:url'/>
</b:if>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.title' property='og:site_name'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageName'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.pageName' property='og:title'/>
</b:if></b:if></b:if></b:if>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.pageTitle' property='og:title'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<meta content='article' property='og:type'/>
<b:else/>
<meta content='website' property='og:type'/>
</b:if>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.canonicalUrl' property='og:url'/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.postImageUrl'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.postImageUrl' property='og:image'/>
<b:else/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.postImageThumbnailUrl'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.postThumbnailUrl' property='og:image'/>
<b:else/>
<meta expr:content='DIRECT_LINK_TO_YOUR_BLOG_LOGO' property='og:image'/>
</b:if></b:if>
<b:if cond='data:blog.metaDescription'>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.metaDescription' property='og:description'/>
<b:else/>
<meta content='data:blog.pageTitle' property='og:description'/>
</b:if>
<meta expr:content='data:blog.title' property='og:site_name'/>
<meta content='XXXXXXXX' property='fb:app_id'/>
<meta content='en_US' property='og:locale'/>
<meta content='en_GB' property='og:locale:alternate'/>
<meta content='id_ID' property='og:locale:alternate'/>

Change the code highlighted in RED, before saving the template. In the first meta tag "Author", your name/alias should come as "content". In the second highlighted code, paste the direct link to your blog logo which will be used if no other featured image is present in the article. You can skip the third meta tag "App_ID" if you do not have an FB app or if you are not interested in creating it.
NOTE: Post description is automatically taken from "Search Description" of the post, which you will have to explicitly mention while writing your blog posts. This is important for SEO as well.