Meta data is HTML code that is included in the
section of HTML documents. This code does not affect the web design in any way, it is only there for the search engine spiders to read. This code tells the search engine bots many details about the website. Providing accurateWhy Is Metadata Important?
Metadata can mean the difference between ranking or not ranking for a given keyword. If your competitors have good content, but they don’t fill out all their
How Do I Edit Metadata?
If you are writing your code by hand, then there are many guides available online that provide the exact code snippets that you can include in the section of your HTML documents.
Most website design and ecommerce platforms provide features that allow you to set the metadata for each page, product, and blog post within your website. Ecwid provides extensive options for editing
Types of Metadata
Meta Title & Meta Description
The most famous types of metadata are the site title and description. Filling out these items for each page on your website is one of the simplest ways to improve your SEO rankings. Despite how easy it is to do, there are many sites that are not optimized in this manner.
The content of both of these meta tags is displayed in the SERPS. The page title meta tag is used for the anchor text of the link to your website in your search result listing. The description meta tag populates your site description in the search results. If you don’t have these meta tags filled out, Google will try to auto generate the information from your site content…if it bothers to rank your site at all.
That’s how Ecwid Ecommerce meta title and meta description look in Google SERP
Title tags should be no more than 60 characters long, and should include the keyword for the page. Write a compelling site title that encourages the user to click on your listing. A title
Description tags should be between 140 and 160 characters long. The keyword should be used naturally in the first sentence. If you do not write a high quality description Google will disregard it and try to
Keywords meta tag
There used to be a meta tag that listed the keywords associated with the page. This meta tag has been discontinued as a ranking factor by Google for over a decade. All other major search engines have also published statements disavowing the use of the keywords meta tag. While you will not be penalized for using this tag, it would be a waste of time and effort to do so.
The Robots meta tag
Robots meta tags are different than the robots.txt file. Robots.txt tells the robots which pages they should crawl. Robot meta tags tell the robots which pages to index.
In most instances, you do want the robots to index the page. Therefore, the default value for the robots meta tag is, index, follow. However, the values can be changed to noindex, nofollow on specific pages that we do not want listed in search results.
The robots meta tag looks like this:
Meta tags for outbound links
There are a few markup tags for outbound links, but these are a bit different than the rest of the meta tags. Instead of being included in the section of the HTML page, these tags are added to the link markup.
The rel markup tag for outbound links has three possible values; sponsored, ugc (user generated content), and nofollow. A link can contain multiple rel values. Google has published a guide to these meta tags titled, Qualify Your Outbound Links to Google.
Meta Viewport
The viewport meta tag is very important because it tells the search engines that your site is mobile friendly. Without this meta tag, your website will not show up in mobile search results.
A viewport meta tag looks like this:
Web.dev has published the definitive article on this topic, titled Responsive Web Design Basics. Most web design and ecommerce platforms will automatically set this meta tag for you, and will also have already applied responsive CSS code to their visual designs. If you are coding from scratch or just want to understand the nuts and bolts of the matter, this guide is for you.
Social Media Meta Tags
These meta tags control the way your links are displayed on social media sites. You can control your site title, description, featured image, and more. Open Graph is the predominant form of social media metadata, but schema data is used to provide similar functionality for social platforms not supported by Open Graph.
Open Graph Markup
Open graph meta tags were created by Facebook, but they are also used by Twitter. You will use multiple Open Graph meta tags to define the display properties of your links on Facebook. You can apply OG meta tags to pages and images.
Twitter Card Markup
Twitter also uses Open Graph meta tags to control the way links are displayed on its platform. The values are different from the Facebook OG tags, so you must define the values for both sites. Twitter OG values can only be applied to pages.
Schema for Linkedin, Google+ & Pinterest
While schema is normally served in a JSON file, there is some schema markup that can be added to the
section of an HTML page. These tags can be used to define the way links are displayed on social media platforms that do not use the OG protocol.Other Types of Metadata
There are many other types of obscure metadata that can be used within the
section of your website and occasionally within the HTML body. Google publishes a list of all of the currently recognized forms of meta tags and their possible values. The list is titled Meta and Inline Tags.Schema Markup As Metadata
Schema markup is a more recent development than metadata. It serves the same purpose, however. Both metadata and schema markup serve data to search engine spiders in order to help them more accurately crawl, index, and rank websites.
There are many different types of schema markup, and several methods of delivering schema data. While there are not many meta tags to choose from, the sheer variety of schema markup can often be overwhelming to people who are learning to use it.
While almost all website builder and ecommerce platforms provide ways to edit your meta tags, implementation of schema data editing is patchy at best. Some platforms
Adding schema data to your site can provide you with a huge competitive advantage. Many websites are still
First, you need to review the different types of schema data and decide which ones you want to include in your site. Then you need to collect the data necessary to fill out the values. Once you have done this preparation you can use a schema generator tool to produce your
Once you have generated your schema data you need to test it with a schema validator tool.
SEMRush has produced a detailed guide called What Is Schema? Beginner’s Guide to Structured Data. This guide covers the main types of schema markup, and provides links to multiple tools to both generate and validate your schema markup. Schema data in
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