Types of SEO Metadata You Should Know, Even if You Don’t Work in SEO
Chris Brown
?? Driving potential customers to your website - ?? Experience in manufacturing - ? Making your website work for you - ?? SEO (Search Engine Optimisation/Optimization), Google Ranking Expert.
Websites lacking in metadata and tags are missing out on ample opportunities to rank in search results. We see time and time again how, when we trigger crawls of sites using Screaming Frog, how many missed opportunities there are for a site ranking on Google.
The truth is that sites could be underperforming or not showing up on search engine results pages (SERPs) at all because of incomplete or missing metadata.?
What is Metadata?
Used correctly, your website metadata will massively improve your site’s visibility in search results and can, by extension, bring swathes of organic traffic. In simple terms, website metadata is data that describes other data.?
Think of metadata as fields on an application form or a social media profile. You’re entering information in relevant fields, i.e. your name, date of birth, interests, hobbies and so on. Then your form is submitted to the provider (i.e. Google), where you can then become visible to other people, only in this case, it’s potential customers who are searching for your products or services. It’s much the same principle; only for metadata to work correctly, you need to know the keywords and related search terms for your business and industry, what each tag represents and which ones are important for your website.
Once you understand this, it will make a big difference. Luckily, totalsurf are here to give you a brief overview of some of the critical metadata.?
How Do Search Engines Use Metadata?
As far as search engines are concerned, they need to know which page will best satisfy the user’s search. Of all the billions of web pages competing for prime search results positions, metadata are an essential piece of the continually evolving puzzle. They tell the search engine what a page is about, and they are usually the first impression and point of contact for all search engines. Without them, you’re fighting a losing battle.
Every CMS has different solutions for adding metadata. WordPress systems have multiple plugins to choose from, making it easier for you to add some tags on specific pages. But that really is only the tip of the iceberg.
The reality is that metadata does make a difference to your SEO. It is not the be-all and end-all, though.?
In reality, your primary focus should be on high-quality content, user satisfaction, positive experiences, mobile-friendliness and having the right content strategy in place. This all needs to be kickstarted by in-depth keyword research to discover what your audience is searching for. Then it’s a matter of structuring your website and content accordingly around those terms. That’s the most important thing, but metadata will be a vital part of that process and your success.
Metadata can affect the way that users see your site in search results. If you don’t have the right metadata in place, users may get the wrong impression from your site in the SERPs and might not actually click through to your site.
While you can check any metadata for any page by checking your page’s source code (Ctrl+U), you may end up staring into an endless abyss of HTML code without knowing what to look for. Here at totalsurf, we use tools like SEMRush and Screaming Frog to inform us of every tag in place on any site quickly and simply.?
While it would take us forever to explain all the various types of SEO metadata, we’re going to share some thoughts on some of the most important and well-known ones below.
Essential Types of Metadata?in 2021
META TITLE
The <title> tag is a required HTML element that will be displayed as the page title in your browser’s tab. However, this is not to be confused with the meta title, which is a different element entirely, although these terms are often used interchangeably. The meta title is metadata about the page, and you should think carefully about what you want to provide in your meta title for web crawlers and search engines, as this is an element they will look at.
Usually, if, for example, using a WordPress back-end, you can change the meta title of a page by using a plugin like Yoast or SEOPress. To make matters slightly more confusing, the meta title is often called the page title.
Generally speaking, it’s good practice to keep your page titles between 60 and 70 characters and keep every one unique to each page, but you should bear in mind pixel width for mobile-first indexing. Use long-tail keywords where possible, start with a targeted keyword if you can, use numbers where necessary and avoid keyword stuffing. It all makes a difference with how Google reads your site. If your page gets picked up in a SERP, 99% of the time, users will click the title tag, so it’s vital to get it right.
META DESCRIPTION
The meta description sums up the content on that particular page and is shown in search results below the title tag. The meta description is NOT a ranking signal, but it does play a vital part in your page’s click-through rate (CTR) because it’s what users see and tells them a little more about that page.?
If there is no description for a page, Google will pull content from the body copy and paste that as a meta description.?
The average meta description length is around 160 characters. For mobiles, this figure is usually around the 140 characters mark, depending on the device.
It’s best practice to keep each meta description unique for each page, add a clear CTA, and use a targeted keyword where possible.
DID YOU KNOW? Google may ignore your well-written META DESCRIPTION if it thinks it knows better? This can also happen with the <title> tag. If this happens, you may have a battle on your hands trying to get Google to recognise the one you created.
HEADING TAGS
Heading tags are used for headings on a particular page. The heading elements range from H1 all the way to H6.?
The H1 is the largest and most important of the heading tags, and the H6 is the smallest and least important.
We will caveat this by saying that every single page does not require at least one of every different header tag. At the very least, there should be a clear, descriptive H1 that consists of a relevant keyword.
It’s generally good practice to include a mixture of H2s, H3s and perhaps H4s. That’s not to say that H5s and H6s are not worth having, but it depends on the content on that page and what you are trying to promote.?
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Heading tags serve an important purpose for users as well. When they are on a page, they act as subtitles or section titles for page content. They break up the body text and make the copy easier to digest, and they’re easier for users to navigate while scrolling your page.?
ROBOTS META TAG
Simply put, the robots meta tag tells search engines whether to index your site or not. This tag has four main values, which give search engine crawlers some instructions.
These are:
It’s worth checking whether the robots metadata has been placed within your site page’s source code as it could be an indication of whether that page is being indexed or not.?
CANONICAL TAG
A canonical tag is an HTML link tag written with the attribute “rel=canonical”.
It’s used to indicate that there are multiple versions of a particular webpage. By implementing a canonical tag for a URL, your website tells search engines that this is the main page, and they shouldn’t index other variations of this URL.
For example, the main URL?https://totalsurf.net/?has the canonical tag in the code.?
This means that search engines should view variations as secondary to the master URL above, these include:?
You should always implement the canonical tag syntax for the master webpage. By having one canonical tag, you’ll receive more accurate data from Google Search Console and Google Analytics than you would if Google was trying to index multiple URLs.
ALT TEXT
Search engines cannot read images, but images are vital for a website in terms of visibility, user experience and content. We get around that by implementing alt tags, commonly known as alternative text or alt text.
You can add alt text to images, which tells search engines how to interpret them. This ultimately means you can include images on your site that won’t be detrimental to your SEO performance.
Alt text should not contain too many keywords, be clear, concise and contain a ‘proper’ description of no more than 55 characters. Each image should have an informative, clear filename as well. The file size shouldn’t be massive as this could impact page load speed, so consider using small to medium-sized images, but not ones which are heavily pixelated when on the site.
SOCIAL MEDIA META TAG
Social media meta tags are designed to promote integration between your social media accounts and the website URLs you shared on these platforms.
Open Graph tags make social media syncing much easier between Facebook, LinkedIn, Google and your website.?
Twitter cards work in a very similar way to Open Graph tags but are specific for Twitter. Twitter uses these tags to enhance your page’s display whenever it’s shared on the social media platform.
RESPONSIVE DESIGN (VIEWPORT ELEMENT) TAG
Responsive design tags, otherwise known as viewport meta elements, allow web developers to configure how a page is displayed on any device.
Without the viewport metadata, images could be scaled incorrectly, and content could be challenging to read. With the viewport element in place, your page text and images will fit the dimensions of the screen you’re using.
There’s no point using the viewport title tag if your pages are unresponsive, as it plays a significant part in the user experience.
Book an SEO Technical Audit
Having the right metadata is an excellent way to improve your on-page SEO. It’s only going to help your site become easier to find if you spend the time ensuring your metadata is correct. Worst case scenario, you find out that the tags aren’t there, you add them in, and boom! You’re already improving your chances!
Having said that, if the idea of trawling through lines and lines of source code fills you with dread, why not book a call with the totalsurf team? The reality is that metadata alone won’t push you onto page 1 if you’re not ranking for anything. But we can help get you started on the right foot.?
We’re happy to do an audit of your site and talk through options to help put any issues right. We want to help you rank on Google and make your website work, so book in a call, and let’s find out how we can do that!