How to optimize your Blogger post page titles for search engines

How to optimize your Blogger post page titles for search engines

Having your blog title, a semicolon, and the post title. In this order.
Considering the Google love for page title to look exactly like a search query (or at least start like this), this is not the optimal layout. And if you are not a self loving git like me, your blog title might not be a one-word nickname of your own, but something like 'A blog about my little kittens'. This will turn your post page titles into something like this:

A blog about my little kittens: How to optimize your Blogger post page titles for search engines

with page titles like this, you might try your luck fighting wikipedia and kittenwar for kitten-related searches, but your 'Blog title optimization' posts can end up somewhere at the end of 17th page of search results.

To optimize your blog titles, moving the blog name to the end of the title and giving search engines an easy time to index your hottest link-bait post titles:

1. Go to Blogger dashboard
2. Choose Layout->Edit HTML
3. Search for the following code:<title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title>
4. Replace it with the following:<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "index"'>
<title><data:blog.title/></title>
<b:else/>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "archive"'>
<title><data:blog.title/> archive: <data:blog.pageName/></title>
<b:else/>
<title><data:blog.pageName/> - <data:blog.title/></title>
</b:if>
</b:if>
5. This code does the following (in the following order):
   1. Leaves your main/search/label page titles the same
   2. Changes your archive pages to the following format: <Blog title> archive: <Date>
   3. Changes your post page titles to the following format:<Post Title> - <Blog Title>
6. Save the template.

This is it. You can experiment with page titles modifying the data between <title> and </title> tags in the previously mentioned code.

Blogger data:blog.pageType variable possible values:

• "index" — The 'index' pages. This includes your main page, search pages, post by label pages
• "archive" — 'Archive' pages. This is what you get if you click on some month/year link in 'Archives' widget.
• "item" — Blog post pages. Your post opened in a distinct page dedicated to it.