Metadata –the bits of your website that you can’t see, but search engines love
Different search engines use different parts of your website when they choose where to rank you. Traditionally they use the metadata in your site – one piece or another or a combination. Some like keywords, others like descriptions, some like titles but most like some combination of these.
Metadata sits inside the <head> </head> area of your web page and comes in a number of different forms. We will discuss a few of the favourites here, but there are others out there!
Example:
<head>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”keyword phrases, my keywords, keywords” />
<meta name=”description” content=”description of the page” />
</head>
Keywords
While not as important as they used to be, keywords still play a vital role in optimising your site for search engines because they are used in conjunction with your content. The aim is to have a different set of keywords or keyword phrases that are relevant to your content, on every page of your site. If you have the term ‘Nirvana’ in your keywords, but your content has no relation to either the Buddhist state of enlightenment or the 1990s grunge band fronted by the late, great Kurt Cobain, search engines will judge your keywords to be irrelevant and mark you down.
Example: <meta name=”keywords” content=”keyword phrases, my keywords, keywords” />
A good place to start is to imagine you’re reading the content for the first time and want to memorise it – which words would you highlight? This is also a good way to check whether your content has all the terms in it that it should. For more about content check out Simple SEO – Part 4 – Content.
Keywords must be relevant to the content on the page – to help you choose them, imagine the search terms someone might enter to try and find your site. Anything that you consider to be a relevant keyword should also appear in the page content – this reinforces your use of relevant keywords. For example, if you pick out the following phrases as keywords: ‘doughnuts’, ‘baking’, ‘recipes’ – you need to make sure that those phrases appear in the content on the page as well. This won’t be possible in every case, but you need to be as thorough as you can.
Don’t use too many – search engines will actually penalise you for using too many keywords, so try to keep the list short (around 20-30), but have a mixture of short phrases and single words. You should produce a comma separated list of terms and each separation counts as one ‘keyword’.
Research your keywords – there is no point in having a lot of keywords that no-one ever searches for, and equally it will be difficult to get to the top of the search engines if you only use highly-competitive words. Run your list through the google keyword tool – this will show you how many people searched for those terms in the last month and give you suggestions to add to your list.
Descriptions
The description metatag is actually used more than keywords by a lot of search engines. It is often used as the text that appears under your link in search engines.
Example: <meta name=”description” content=”description of the page” />
If your page has no description, the listing will have a default piece of text from your site, but it is undoubtedly better to control what is displayed by using the description metatag. The description should be a synopsis of what the page contains, and as the content changes, it should be updated. Again, it is important to ensure that you have accurate, relevant and different descriptions on every page of your site – don’t describe your page as containing the secret to eternal youth if it’s actually your small business website.
Top tip: If you already have a list of keywords, try and use as many of them as possible in a short, descriptive sentence – but keep it down to 160 characters as most search engines use that as a limit.
Titles
While the title tag isn’t strictly speaking a piece of metadata, it is used by search engines and resides in the header with the metatags.
Example: <title> My page title </title>
The text you use in the title tag is one of the most important factors in how a search engine chooses to rank your site, and is more often than not used as the link text on search engine listings.
It also, very helpfully, appears in the top bar or tab of the user’s browser when they are on your site, and if they add a page as a ‘favourite’ is used as the link text.
Again, search engines like to see a different title on every single page of a website.
Alt text
Again, this is not strictly metadata as it appears throughout a site, but it warrants a mention. Some search engines pick up on the alt text that you use for images on your site.
Example: <img src=”dog.jpg” alt=”picture of a dog”/>
As both an SEO exercise and good practise for accessibility, you should always include some alternative text with your images. If the page doesn’t load properly for some reason, this is the text the user will see in place of the image.
Title text
OK, this isn’t metadata either, but it’s really helpful…! Use title text in your links – it’s like a tool-tip that displays when you hover over a link, and again, search engines pick up on it. It’s a great way to describe exactly where a link goes.
Example: <a href =”www.skillsontoast.co.uk” title=”Skills on Toast – Web design and online marketing, Bristol”>Skills on Toast</a> displays like this: Skills on Toast – hover over it to check we’re not lying!
Summary
Which of these things each search engine uses to index and rank websites changes all the time. We think the best strategy is to cover yourself from all angles. The number one rule for all these things is to make what you include relevant to your site. Using false, high-traffic search terms for keywords, descriptions and alt text, that appear nowhere else on your site will only encourage search engines to class your site as spam. So, be honest, be thorough and invest some time in doing it properly.
We are always happy to assist faithful followers of Butter Side Up, so if you need advice on using these methods or want to improve your website ranking, don’t hesitate to contact us.
