I have been using Google's excellent free Webmaster Tools to make sure that this blog is in good shape as far as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is concerned. One of the things I needed to improve were the description meta tags on each page but I could not find a plug in that would help me achieve this. So I wrote one myself and it is free for anyone who uses the Nucleus blogging system to use.

Install

1. Download the plug in from here.

2. Unzip and you should end up with a file called NP_SimpleSEO.php

3. Upload this file into your plug in folder using an FTP program. Your plug in folder can be found at : yoursite/nucleus/plugins/

4. Download the head.inc file that your template is using. This can be found at : yoursite/skins/~skin name~/head.inc

5. Open this file up using an editor. If you don't have one don't use Word, rather use Notepad on a PC or TextEdit on a Mac.

Remove this line :

<meta name="description" content=" <%blogsetting(desc)%>" />

Insert this line in it's place :

<%SimpleSEO()%>

6. Upload head.inc back into the same place.

7. Log in to the admin area of your Nucleus blog and click on Plugins which is under the Management section. At the bottom of the page you should now be able to choose SimpleSEO from the drop down menu at the bottom. Do this and click the 'Install Plugin' button.

Done!

Use

When you add or edit an item you will now have three new fields to fill in on the page under the heading Simple SEO. Simply fill these in as you wish. If you are using a robots.txt file then simply leave this field blank and no meta tags for robots will appear. If you do not supply a description then the default one for the blog, which is found on the left hand menu under Settings will be used.