PSA: Keywords, Meta, TL;DR = Expedited Publishing

Hey hackers! 

If you’ve ever wondered why some of your submissions take a while before they get published, it’s probably because you’re submitting incomplete articles. 

While most contributors focus on the content and the headline, we often receive submissions that are missing their meta, TL;dr, and keyword sections. Worse yet, sometimes contributors will add some keywords but not maximize the space for some of that SEO goodness. 

As we start the new year, the editorial team thinks it’s a good time to remind all contributors of some of the best practices that can greatly improve the time to publish your stories. 

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Keywords

HackerNoon offers authors the ability to add eight unique keywords in the “Story Tags” section of your article. You can either choose pre-populated keywords or add some of your own. The word limit per keyword is 30 characters, which means you can experiment with long-tail keywords.

Keywords can also be added right below the Title in the Chowa editor (Just look for the cat emoji).

** **As we’ve said so previously, crafting innovative keywords can elevate your story from hundreds to thousands of views, and there really is no reason for you to NOT maximize that space. 

Better yet, if you submit stories with all relevant keyword tags added, editors are likely to be appreciative of that effort and expedite publishing for you 🙂

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Meta & TL;DR

The meta is a great way to give both readers AND Google’s search algorithm an idea what your article is about. Meta is that long paragraph that appears right under a search URL when you Google something.

HackerNoon’s Meta gives you 160 characters to show the world what your article is about, so try to be creative. Even a short snippet of your article goes a long way.

** **TL;DR is a unique HackerNoon feature that lets you summarize your article for some of our more *busy* readers. 

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Featured Image

If you have your own featured image, great! If not, HackerNoon offers a range of stock photo providers when you click to upload your image. Choose a keyword that fits the theme of your article and you’re good to go!

** **Follow these steps, and your article is sure to be published a LOT sooner. 

Oh, and btw, if you’re interested in becoming a better writer and really get the editorial team’s attention, HackerNoon is offering the Blogging Course.

The HackerNoon Blogging Course with its self-paced structure, on-demand video lessons, practical tools and templates (yours to keep), exercises, and a community to learn with, allows you to digest all the resources you need to grow your reach and authority as a writer. 

==If you want to stand out from the crowd, sign up for the HackerNoon Blogging Course today!==