If your blog’s traffic is sluggish, poor rankings on SERPs are likely to blame. One effective way to increase traffic is with smart meta elements strategies.
You pour your heart and soul into your blog. You spend long hours in front of the computer when you could be watching Netflix or enjoying time with your loved ones. Clearly, you want your blog to make an impact. Whether this is a financial impact through monetization or a powerful impact through the written word, you need traffic to accomplish your goals. And lots of it.
Unfortunately, having great writing skills is not enough to be a great blogger. You also have to know your way around Google’s search engine algorithms. When you take full advantage of how these algorithms work, you can more easily generate the high level of organic traffic that you want.
Google reviews a few hundred unique factors before it delivers ranked search results. Some of these factors are directly linked to meta elements. Thankfully, adjusting your site’s meta tags to work in your favor is relatively easy to do.
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What Are Meta Elements?
Before you can dig deeper into meta strategies, you need to know what these elements are. These are small snippets of text that are not visible on your website. Instead, they are used in the HTML to tell Google and other search engines what your website is about. Essentially, they can draw attention from search engine crawling bots so that your website is more visible and more accurately indexed and ranked.
The Primary Meta Elements
There are eight main types of meta elements, and you may already be familiar with a few of these. They are:
1. Meta Description
2. Title Tag
3. Alt Text Tag
4. Canonical Tag
5. Header Tags
6. Responsive Design Tags
7. Robot Tags
8. Open Graph Meta Tags
The process of updating your blog’s meta elements will depend on the type of blogging platform you are using. You can search your specific platform’s user instructions or work with your developer to identify the processes that are specific to you. This article delves into what these elements actually are and how to use them.
Meta Description
The meta description is not actually a factor in determining search engine rankings at this time, but it plays a major role in driving targeted, click-through traffic. This is because it is visible immediately below your page title on search engine results. It tells the user what your website is about and creates motivation to visit your site. You have 158 characters to tell the user what they will find on your website and why they should visit it.
Title Tag
The title tag is visible at the very top of the browsing screen. This is the only tag that should be written with both your target audience and search engines in mind. Ideally, the title tag will contain a long-tail keyword and will be no longer than 60 characters. While it should be descriptive for search engines, it should have some draw for readers. For example, it may indicate that the piece is a listicle, that it provides how-to instructions or that it offers other valuable advice or information. Use these power words to optimize the power of your titles.
Alt Text Tag
The only way that search engines can determine what your website’s images are about is through alt text tags, which are also called alt descriptions and alt HTML. Keep in mind that your website’s images can be ranked independently in search engine result. For example, if you search for “healthy blood pressure,” several blood pressure charts will pop up. These graphics link back to their original website.
The image’s file name and alt data should be both informative and optimized. Work in a primary or secondary keyword in the file name, alt tag and alt description, if possible, but use different keywords for each one. This tag should not be longer than 55 characters or 16 words.
Canonical Tag
A canonical tag, also known as a canonical URL, tells search engines which URL to look at and rank. These tags point from one page toward another page. Setting a canonical tag can usually be done through your blog’s platform. You can also use Rank Math, Yoast and other similar plugins to set canonical data with ease.
Header Tags
You may be familiar with header tags in relation to formatting. Headers (such as h1s, h2s, h3s and so forth) help your readers skim your content and improves the user experience. These tags also serve the essential function of enhancing crawlability. The headers stand out to search engine bots, enabling them to most easily and accurately determine what the post is about.
Responsive Design Tags
Mobile-friendliness plays a strong role in Google’s rankings. Responsive design tags provide bots with information related to how your website is scaled and if it is sized to fit the screens on different devices. Many blogging platforms have built-in code to address mobile-friendliness. Use this Google tool to determine your website’s mobile-friendliness.
Robot Tags
Robot tags tell Google how to index your pages and how to respond to your links. The Index and No-Index tags let you control which pages Google crawls and indexes. The Follow and No-Follow tags indicate if Google should follow your links or not. Why wouldn’t you want Google to follow links? One reason is if you buy a backlink. Google penalizes websites that purchase links to climb on SERPs. However, if you publish a guest post on another website with a no-follow link, you can take advantage of traffic without getting penalized by Google.
Open Graph Meta Tags
Social media platforms are powerful tools to draw users to your website. Open graph meta tags enhance how well Facebook and LinkedIn work with your website. Twitter cards function in the same way. Depending on how you intend to promote your website, you may need Twitter cards and open graph meta.
While some of these meta elements are integrated into select website platforms, others require your attention. Various plugins, such as Yoast and Rank Math, can be used to enhance your meta strategy.