In a nutshell: What is metadata?
Metadata is important for communicating information and instructions to search engines. They are implemented directly in the source code of a website and ensure, for example, that the search engine results preview texts are displayed in the search engine results.
What is metadata?
A look at the metadata (also known as meta tags) shows that there are many different ways to provide search engines with information and references.
When using metadata, webmasters should endeavor to communicate the correct metadata, such as the title tag. This is because the adaptation and design of metadata is an important part of search engine optimization.
To enter metadata on individual pages, it is simply added in the HTML code. In CMS (CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS), there are often predefined fields for this, in which only the content needs to be entered and the data saved.
Examples of metadata:
- Title tag: Specifies the title of a website
- Meta description (description): This briefly describes the content of a website and arouses the visitor's curiosity.
- Author tag: If an editorial article is inserted on a website, the corresponding author can be mentioned here.
- Keywords: Important and descriptive keywords can also be placed here. They are separated from each other by commas.
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Why is metadata so important?
With the help of metadata, search engines recognize exactly that the data specified here is important and relevant information. For this reason, they are specially marked and listed in a structured manner.
This is the only way to ensure that the desired information ends up where it is supposed to. Metadata is also important for giving instructions to search engines.
Example: A webmaster wants certain subpages of his website not to be indexed by search engines such as Google. Accordingly, he inserts metadata on the affected pages to indicate that they should not be indexed. In this case, the "noindex" is used.
What does metadata look like?
As already mentioned, there are different types of metadata. Accordingly, they can be inserted under different names. However, all metadata has a certain basic structure. The only difference is the content.
Example:
<head>
<meta name=“title“ content=“Inhalt des Titels>
<meta name=“description“ content=“Inhalt der Meta Description>
<meta name=“author“ content=“Tom Reichardt“>
<meta name=“keywords“ content=“Metadaten, Meta Tags, Wiki, Glossar“>
<meta name=“date“ content=“2020-10-19T16:32:15+01:00″>
<meta name=“robots“ content=“noindex“> </head>
In this example, the metadata for title, description, author, keywords and date have been inserted. What is also noticeable is that the metadata is located within the head area. In addition, the crawler is informed in the last line that the page should not be indexed.
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Conclusion: What is metadata?
Metadata is very important for providing search engine crawlers with information and instructions. For example, the title and description are inserted here. But information such as the "noindex" also belongs in the metadata. This makes it indispensable for proper search engine optimization.
