Beautifully designed website? Check. Thought-provoking blog content? Check. Metadata best practices? Meta what?

If that sounds like you, don’t despair. Instead, read on to learn how you can leverage metadata to enhance blog traffic and boost your online presence—even if you’re new to the concept.

Enhance Blog Traffic with Metadata Best Practices

What is Metadata?

In a nutshell, metadata consists of language built into your website that tell search engines about your content. The stronger the metadata, the more prominently your site shows up on the search results page.

Various types of metadata you’ll encounter on an average website include a meta title, a meta description and meta keywords. Your meta title should be the same as your blog post title. Think of your meta description as an advertisement for your business. It should entice readers to visit your page based on a description of what they are going to learn there. It also should include a call to action.

Meta keywords, on the other hand, are specific words selected from each web page that highlight what is there. They are mostly useful to visitors on your website who are using your search tool to find something within your site.

How to Optimize Metadata

Now that you know what metadata is, here are some tips on how to use it to its greatest potential to drive traffic to your blog.

Do:

• Have unique metadata for every page on your website.
• Stick to character restrictions for metadata, with 60-65 characters for meta titles and 155-160 characters for meta descriptions, including spaces.
• Conduct a tech audit of your website to check its general health and see how well you’re using metadata. Tools like Screaming Frog SEO Spider and  Xenu’s Link Sleuth can help you identify weak spots and areas where there’s room for improvement.
• While you’re at it, you may as well explore other ways to enhance your blog traffic through search engine optimization. Google famously has more than 200 ranking factors it considers in its search algorithm, so there’s plenty to consider beyond metadata when you’re trying to increase visits to your website.

Getting Started

If your tech audit revealed areas where you weren’t using metadata to its full potential, you can easily fix it. If you use WordPress for your website like many small businesses, you can add a plugin that allows you to update metadata, such as Yoast or the All in One SEO Pack. If you outsourced your website, talk with your web designer.

The bottom line is that you don’t want to make your customers and prospects work to find you. With minimal effort, you can put metadata to work as the marketing tool it is—and watch your traffic skyrocket.