People are searching the internet for good and quality content. Everyone with the need to get to certain information and data is deeply into searching for quality websites. This is the reason why web pages need to be relevant and provide quality information. But, that is not all. Content is not enough for getting to the right consumer. Any webpage must deal with and manage its SEO either by itself or with the help of the Link Department. Part of this effort is managing your metadata. Your webpage metadata increases your Google rankings and makes your webpage easier to find. This fact makes metadata very important and a factor that has to be managed to yield results.
Understanding metadata
Metadata is made up of pieces of code that are implemented in your web page’s code. This data is not visible to the website user on the webpage. However, it is clearly visible to Google and its crawlers and on the search result page. Its purpose is to achieve two main goals.
Metadata to your webpage is what a trailer is to the movie you plan to watch. It gives the user a sense of what a webpage is about and it’s the content of the webpage into a context that is easily understandable. As such metadata has to stimulate the user to take action, follow the link, and read the webpage and its content.
On the other hand, being clear and understandable to visitors is not the only goal. Metadata also provides similar data to Google’s web crawlers. By analyzing this data google can also get a sense of the content and its relevance. It then assesses if the data is relevant and valuable. Based on this it will tend to rank a webpage higher or lower in the search engine results.
Value of metadata
These snippets of text that are implemented on our webpage have a very important purpose and are very valuable to ane website. Good metadata that is prepared and written well can boost your visibility and traffic. First of all, it helps Google crawlers assess the site and determine its rank. Good quality metadata can place a webpage quite high in the search engine results and it increases your Google rankings. This, in turn, leads to better visibility and potentially to increased traffic to a webpage, sales, and finally profits. In addition, well-prepared metadata will help users understand what the content is about and stimulate them to generate traffic to your website. In both cases, good metadata can lead to higher rankings, visitations, and profits.
How to use it
It is clear that understanding and using metadata can add value to a webpage and should be used as part of any SEO effort. Using it properly meant that you should understand and manage its basic elements:
- Mata tags
- Meta description and
- Content text heading and subheadings
Proper management of these elements will lead to better ranking with different search engines.
Mata tags
Are short descriptions of the webpage. They contain relevant keywords for the page. It is also like a book cover for the page promoting its content. These tags are designed to grab the attention of the reader and spark their interest. It is important to mate these tags with relevant keywords well in order to make the page visible and stand out in search engine results.
Meta description
A meta description is made to capture the essence of the page content. It is usually a paragraph of text that is located on top of a page. More importantly, it is placed directly below the link to the page and the search results page. Its location and purpose are to introduce a reader to the content of the page providing relevant information about it using the relevant keywords. The better the description the more likely it will draw a reader to visit the page and generate traffic.
These two elements are not part of the SEO ranking algorithm and do not directly influence the ranking. However, they are useful and populate the layout of social media websites. This is also where they generate interest and influence traffic to the website. So they ultimately do affect the ranking of the page.
Content text heading and subheadings
Once the reader visits the page the aim is to keep him on it. Of course that the content is important but it is also important to grab the reader’s attention. This is important due to the phenomenon of scanning the webpage. The average reader scans the page in search of the information. If it’s not present chances are that the reader will leave the page and not read the content.
This is where readability factors come into play. Using them will make the reader more interested. To that end, it is important to use the right headings and subheadings as well as their proper distribution. These should provide the right information and keywords to make the reader interested in reading the content below. At the same time crawlers also scan these headings and subheadings for keywords and assign weight to the page based on their presence. So, this metadata element also increases your Google rankings.
SEO and webpage users
Basically, there are two different aspects to take care of when creating a website. First, you have to make a page rank well and make it visible to the web crawlers and search engines. At the same time, you have to make them appealing and interesting and aim them towards the user, from the content standpoint. However, these are not two separate aspects of a webpage. They are intertwined. The higher the rank of a webpage the more visible to the users it becomes. This in turn generates more traffic, backlinks, and influences the future ranking. So, taking care of metadata can have many benefits to a webpage.
As seen, it is clear that proper use of metadata increases your Google rankings and positions your webpage well. Therefore, managing these meta elements becomes important for your SEO results and effort. Investing time and expertise in this can get you good results so do not neglect them when managing your SEO activities.