The 3 Basic Tags Ruining Your Organic Reach Pt.1
Why missing H1s, meta descriptions, and canonicals are holding back your search rankings.
This is going to be a series of articles on some of the most overlooked SEO issues.
I have scanned almost 50 websites looking for SEO related issues and found out what were the most common issues that slipped under the radar of the most site owners.
Note: I will not only list out the SEO related issues, but also provide a step-by-step instructions on how to fix those issues as well. The platform I’ll use across the articles will be WordPress.
- Missing H1 Tag
A page should always contain a H1 Tag, even if that is a media only page, make sure to add one H1 Tag/page.
Step-by-step fix:
· Go to WordPress Admin Dashboard (/wp-admin)
· Navigate to Pages → Edit page
· Click the ‘+’ button to add a new block
· Select ‘Heading’ from the block options
· In the toolbar that appears, make sure the heading level is set to H1
· Type your main page title as the H1 — it should clearly describe what the page is about
· Each page should have exactly one unique H1 heading
· Save changes
2. Missing Meta Description
Similar to Missing H1 tag, I have seen a lot of people ignoring the importance of adding Meta-Description for each of the page.
When we search on Google, two things are shown Title and Meta-Description.
Meta-Description: is the small preview like text that appears below the title, so having one is mandatory.
Step-by-step fix:
If it’s a page URL:
· Go to WordPress Admin Dashboard (/wp-admin)
· Navigate to Plugins a Add new plugin
· Search for Rank Math SEO Plugin, download, install and activate it
· Navigate to Pages, Edit page
· On the right side panel next to Save button, click on the 3 dots
· Look for Rank Math
· There click on Edit Snippet, and look for Meta-Description
· Add a Meta-Description (120–160 chars preferred)
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· Save changes
If it’s a category page URL:
· Go to WordPress Admin Dashboard (/wp-admin)
· Navigate to Products Categories
· Look for the respective category, and click on it
· Look for Rank Math SEO setting in that category page
· Click on Edit Snippet, and look for Meta-Description
· Add a Meta-Description (120–160 chars preferred)
· Press on Update
3. Missing Canonical Tag
Every page by default has a canonical tag in the header file, in case, there is a missing canonical tag, this will cause that page to be not indexed and shown on search engine like Google.
Step-by-step fix:
· Go to WordPress Admin Dashboard (/wp-admin)
· Navigate to Plugins → Add new plugin
· Search for Rank Math SEO Plugin, download, install and activate it if not already installed
Using Rank Math Pro Version:
· Navigate to Pages → Edit page
· Scroll down to the Rank Math SEO section below the page editor
· Click on the ‘Advanced’ tab inside the Rank Math SEO panel
· Find the ‘Canonical URL’ field
· Enter the preferred URL for this page (e.g. https://example.com/your-page)
· Save changes
Alternative using WordPress theme header (if Rank Math Advanced is unavailable):
· Navigate to Appearance → Theme File Editor
· Open the header.php file
· Find the <head> section
· Before making any changes, make sure to take the current copy of the file header.php
· Then add this line: <link rel=”canonical” href=”<?php echo esc_url(get_permalink()); ?>”>
· This automatically sets the canonical URL for every page, so you don’t have to manually set ‘canonical’ tag for every page
· Click Update File
I’ll continue writting article on other common SEO related issues like the ones above. If you found this article helpful, make sure to like and subscribe to receieve more article updates.
