Heard of Metadata in SEO but not sure what it is?

As soon as you start dipping your toes into search engine optimisation, this word starts to pop up quite a lot. And honestly, there’s no reason you should know it prior to when you start with SEO.

It’s very much data and Google-lingo. But once you’re interested in optimising, you need to understand metadata and it’s importance. It’s one of the heavyweights when it comes to improving your website performance within Google.

Metadata; a set of data that describes and gives information about other data.

This phrase really only took off in the 2010’s as well, showing how recent an addition it is to common vocab. So, you’re forgiven for not knowing what it is straight away!

As the definition states, it is used to describe other data. This is why it is so important when it comes to optimising your website.

Google needs to be able to crawl your website and effectively index it… which means it needs to know exactly who you are and what your site is about.

The metadata on each page is a key signal for the Googlebot to review, learning what information is on the page and therefore knowing which search queries you should be showing up for.

So what exactly is metadata on a web page?

Well, you actually read metadata a lot… It’s the information that shows up for a website page in the search results!

The URL, page title, meta description.

All critical parts of your page to optimise. Both prime real estate to tell Google what you’re about, as well as capturing your human readers attention and getting traffic through to your site.

Each aspect of the metadata is reviewed by Google, you can either write the information yourself or Google autogenerates it based on what information it crawls and pulls from the web page.

And trust me, the first is preferable! It can automatically pull absolutely nonsense from your web page and display it in the search results

Not great for your readers… But also, a big indicator that Google isn’t sure what your page purpose is exactly.

As mentioned, metadata describes… we want to be telling Google what your page is about, the purpose it serves. Helping to direct it on which search queries you’re best suited to show up on.

If it the Googlebot cannot clearly understand your website page content, is unable to determine what you offer, then it cannot accurately index you within it’s mind-boggling library of websites… meaning you’re unlikely to rank, or if you do… not very well.

Using metadata strategically and ensuring each page has it’s metadata correctly optimised with keywords is critical for ranking well on your preferred search terms. It’s your first point of call when improving page content!

I like to call for repetition as well across your meta elements, especially if they’re competitive keywords.

Aim to have the same or similar keywords used across your page title, meta description, url if possible and your h1 title on your website.

This is the last meta element I’ll touch on for now…

The h1 title you choose for each page is extremely important from an SEO standpoint. It’s another key element which Google reads to understand your page purpose.

Though h titles are regularly only considered in the aesthetic, design perspective to improve the look of the page… I always try to drive home the importance of keeping your h1 title as a tool for SEO… you can use other h titles to improve aesthetics, but just please keep your h1 as a keyword rich optimised introduction to your page.

As you can see metadata is a rather crucial element of SEO since it works as a strong signal for Google.

But the good news is, it’s very easy to adjust your on page metadata with most website platforms providing easy access to editing it, or allowing for simple apps and add ons which can allow for manual changes.

If you feel your website is lacking, or you feel metadata may have been overlooked, I strongly suggest reviewing and optimising it asap. It’s an easy win for many sites and can quickly bump you up a few spots in the rankings in most cases.

For more optimisations you can make, download my SEO checklist and start ticking your way through it. Even though it’s well short of the over 200 factors Google considers when deciding how to serve your website in the results, it outlines the easy wins you can make for yourself.