I just got off the phone with my dad. I often times use the 10-minute commute to the office to call home and check in with my mom and dad. We usually chat about the news or things that we have planned for the day, which is exactly how the conversation went today.

Dad: “What do you have planned for today?”

Bjork: “I’m writing a post about SEO for food blogs.”

Dad: “SEO?”

Bjork: “Yeah, it stands for search engine optimization…”

…commence Bjork oversharing with dad about what SEO is and how it works, why it’s beneficial to bloggers, and how we go about doing it for our two sites, Pinch of Yum and Food Blogger Pro.

That little SEO soap box moment made me realize how excited I get when I talk about SEO.

The meta description is an often overlooked SEO element.

In this post we’ll discuss what the meta description is, why it’s important, how to find the meta description, how to change your meta description, and some basic advice for optimizing the meta description for your food blog.

Side note: Isn’t all of this internet marketing/web optimization/SEO/online business stuff so cool? I’m so incredibly grateful to be able to learn, write, and share this with you guys. Thanks for checking out this post and for being a part of Food Blogger Pro (in whatever way that might be).

Schema. It’s a tough word to say, isn’t it?

It’s kind of like Bjork. You think you know how to pronounce it, but the first time you speak it out loud you find yourself doing the ole’ name + mumble combo in an effort to conceal the fact that you’re not 100% sure how to say it.

For a long time I felt the same way with my general understanding of schema. I felt like I kind of understood it, but I wasn’t 100% sure. After realizing that I wasn’t 100% sure how schema markup worked I decided to go on a schema research frenzy (like I do…).

This post is a condensed review of that research, written from a food blogging perspective.

That being said, if you’re not a food blogger you should still keep reading. Schema markup is a concept that all bloggers and website owners should understand (and implement)!

I know that a lot of you read the words “schema” and “markup” and you think “really complicated.” Thankfully that’s not the case. The good news with running a food blog is that there usually isn’t any manual coding you have to do to use schema markup on your blog.

You just need to:

1. Understand how schema markup works and why it’s important.
2. Use the right plugins so schema markup is added to your blog.

Let’s start with that first part, understanding how schema works and why it’s important.

I think it’s easiest to understand the concept by pretending that you and I are sitting across from each other at a coffee shop (if you really want to paint the picture I’d be drinking an Earl Grey Tea Latte).

Instead of just talking at you (i.e. the equivalent of writing really long paragraphs about schema markup), I’ll do my best to talk with you. I’ll do this by providing short, simple answers to questions that you might be asking yourself about recipe schema markup and how it impacts your food blog.

Let’s jump in!

Have you ever Googled one of your recipes and been disappointed with how the result is displayed in Google (if it even displays at all)? This happens for one of two reasons:

1. Google has decided to show your post that way.
2. You haven’t set things up correctly on your blog.

You can’t do much about #1. Even if your blog is perfectly formatted Google might still decide that they’re going to leave out certain information from a search result. Google does as Google pleases. There’s not much you can do about it except make sure that you're not falling victim to #2.

There is something that you can do about #2, as there are multiple components that factor into the ideal search result for food bloggers. None of them are complicated, but they do require some time to set them up properly.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important concept to understand as you grow your food blog. Many people understand the basic concept of SEO and are applying those basic ideas to their blog, so the challenge for bloggers is finding tips and tricks that are specific to their niche that other people aren't already doing. These niche specific SEO tips are what help give one blog an edge over another blog when it comes to ranking high in search engines.

Today I'd like to share one of those niche specific, high impact SEO tips with you. The content that I'm writing about today will be specific to food blogs, but the general process could be used by other types of blogs.

The screenshot below shows the point where we started using this SEO tip with Pinch of Yum (August 15th, 2013) and the growth of organic search traffic that has happened since that date.

The direct effect from one SEO change is hard to track, but I’m confident that the tip I’ll share today will positively impact the overall SEO of your food blog.

Before I share the tip I want to talk about a general business concept. In order to do so we’ll need to reflect back to the music scene in the year 2000.