How to Set Search Preferences SEO by Blogger Latest 2012

Customize Search Preferences option of Blogger

Lets start with the introduction and i hope you have scrolled into this new panel inside your blog settings and  viewing various new settings combined in search preferences tab.

Lets start with the topmost stream i.e, . .

META TAGS

This involves in customizing description meta tag for your Blogger blog, Click on Edit and Enable it and write a short description of your blog in it and save it.

If you are unaware of Meta Tags in blogger, Then please have a look over its introduction and importance in my older post

• SEO Tips For Bloggers | A Beginner's Guide::

Lets move with the second customization, i.e, . .

ERRORS AND REDIRECTIONS

This involve two sub options, one is Custom Page Not Found and another is Custom Redirects.

• Custom Page Not Found::

You may have seen 404 Page Not Found message when you search for an invalid link in web, This option by blogger helps you to have a custom message of your own apart from default 404 Page Not Found Message when a visitor enters an invalid/unavailable/dead link of your Blogger Blog.

Click on edit and add a custom word of your own and save it. Post an invalid/unavailable link on your blog and view it by yourself, you will notice your custom words displayed apart from 404 error.

• Custom Redirects:-

As you all know, redirection is nothing but redirecting your old blog to new blog address and i have already explained it in brief in my older post

• Redirect Old Blog To New Blog Address In Blogger:-

So the conclusion here is You can easily create new redirections using this feature. .

Now The Final customization category is. .

CRAWLERS AND INDEXING

This is usually recommended for webmasters and not kindly recommended for starter bloggers because the wrong customization in this category can lead search engines to not crawl or index your blog at all. This Category includes two sub categories. .

• Custom Robots.Txt:-

The concept of this category is, it includes manual creation of robots.txt file for instructing search engines to crawl / not crawl particular categories of your blog. If you are aware of Robots.txt file, then i hope you have understood that you can create manual robots.txt file using this feature.

• Custom Robots Header Tags:- 

This can be used to instruct whether your HOMEPAGE, ARCHIVE AND SEARCH PAGES, DEFAULT FOR POSTS AND PAGES are to be indexed or not by search engines??

It is recommended that, you should select Noindex for your Archive and search pages category to avoid duplicate content penalty by Google.