SEO for Tumblr Blogs

Tumblr themes are beautiful. But they suck when it comes to SEO. Most of the themes, I have used does not even generate the unique title tag, and does not follow the order of highest level heading tag rules. So, for Tumblr SEO, you have to change/add a few lines of code to the theme. If you’re familiar with HTML/CSS, you can do it yourself, if not just ask your developer, and he/she will optimize it for you. Go to the Tumblr settings and edit your HTML/CSS theme from there.

Title Tag

If you’re optimizing your Tumblr blog for text posts instead of photos/links/quotes etc., make sure that the <title> tag contains the PostTitle;

<title>{block:PostTitle}{PostTitle} | {/block:PostTitle}{Title}</title>

Meta Description

Add meta description block, if it’s not already there, we will create meta description dynamically from the post later.

{block:Description}<meta name="description" content="{MetaDescription}" />{/block:Description}

HTML Body

On the blog homepage, the blog of your name is the most important factor there, and all the blog posts title becomes secondary. And in the blog post page, the title/heading of your blog post is the most important SEO factor. So, on the homepage (index page), we are going to use <h1> tag for your blog title whereas, for the blog post listing, we are going to use <h2> tag.

<div class="blog-title"> {block:IndexPage}<h1 class="blogtitle"><a class="default" href="/">{Title}</a></h1>{/block:IndexPage} {block:PermalinkPage}<h2 class="blogtitle"><a class="default" href="/">{Title}</a></h2>{/block:PermalinkPage} {block:IfShowDescription} <p class="blog-description">{Description}</p> {/block:IfShowDescription} </div>

Similarly, on the blog post page, we will be using <h1> tag for the blog post title and <h2> tag for the blog title (index page title).

{block:Title} {block:IndexPage}<h2 class="posttitle"><a href="{Permalink}">{Title}</a></h2>{/block:IndexPage} {block:PermalinkPage}<h1 class="posttitle">{Title}</h1>{/block:PermalinkPage} {/block:Title}

This above method is suitable for text posts on Tumblr. After replacing your existing block with the above code; you’re ready to rock the Tumblr SEO. One little thing, you might have to write a CSS for <h1> and <h2> tag.

If you have a photo blog, you can generate title from the PostSummary;

<title>{block:PostSummary}{PostSummary} | {/block:PostSummary}{Title}</title>

Lastly, do not forget to submit your site to Google Webmaster tools. Tumblr creates sitemaps automatically, check your sitemap at yourname.tumblr.com/sitemap.xml (replace yourname) Submit it to Google Webmaster Tools.

Originally published at aakar.me.