But Were Afraid To Ask
You don’t need to be an SEO Specialist to know what metadata is. In fact, if you’ve got a Web site, you should make it your business to know the basics of metadata. Even if you hire someone to handle SEO for you, nobody knows your business like you and educating yourself about basic SEO principles will help you to make informed decisions.
The importance of this was driven home to me recently when I was consulting with a client who had launched a new Web site and needed some online marketing help. I started by looking at her metadata (you can do this by going into your menu, clicking on View and then selecting Page Source. The metadata will be at the top of the page). The title of her home page was “Home.” Seemed logical, however it didn’t tell the viewer or Google that her site was about her services as a Keynote coach or that her book on Keynote speaking was available on her site.
Metadata provides some important information about your site to search engine robots, people who use search engines and to browsers. Spend some time getting to know your metadata and carefully select your words.
These are three categories of metadata, the function they serve and the number of characters they should be:
1. Title
So very, very important, and did I mention how important this piece is? This tells what your site or a particular Web page is about. The title is what you see at the very top of every Web page (above the field that contains the URL). This page is called Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Metadata. Think of it as a giant sign on the internet highway that tells Google and other search engines what your site is about. If it just says “Home,” Google has no idea what your site is about. Start to notice titles of well-trafficked sites and you will most likely see that they clearly say what the site is about.Your title should be no more than 60 characters long.
2. Description
Your page description is another key piece that you should put some time and thought into. This is often what appears in the text area when a search engine brings up the search results page. Google may or may not use your description, however other search engines will. This is important because it gives the viewer a short description of what they will find on your site and could be the determining factor on whether they click through to your site. Be sure to work one or two of your keywords into this description and write a unique description for each page.Your description should be no more than 150 characters long.
3. Keywords
It is true, Google no longer looks at your keywords in your metadata. So why don’t we just skip this piece altogether? Because identifying the most important keywords for each page is a building block to writing solid SEO-friendly copy on the front of your site. And that is something that Google does indeed look at. Try to limit the number of keywords that you go after on each page, the fewer the better. One to 3 words per page is a good number to target, with 10 being the maximum. The fewer words you go after, the easier it will be to attain good keyword density.
Your keywords should be no more than 250 characters long.
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