Meta: What is it and Why Do You Care?

What is Meta?  

Metadata is what populates in the search results for each listing based the search term typed into the search bar.  Therefore, meta is very important as it influences whether your website comes up in search results.  

Why Do You Care About Meta?

Two types of meta that you need to be concerned about are Title and Description.  

With respect to Title, following these few protocols will help improve your meta:

1) Make sure your keyword is in title of the page.  While your website might have several keywords associated with it, using a singular keyword on a given page is recommended;

2) If your company is location based make sure your location is in the title as well;

3) If you can add your company name to the title page you can also get the added benefit of building your brand as customers will see it time and time again;

4) Limit your title to no more than 65 characters.

With respect to the Description it is important to remember that while Descriptions are no longer a ranking factor for Google, they do help with click throughs, so:
1) Be as specific as possible.  Make sure your description is exactly what the user will see on your website if they click through;

2) Include a call to action which will draw the customer in and entice them to click through to your website.

You can check out your meta on your Page Source.  To access your Page Source:

1. Go to any webpage and right click on the page, this will open a menu;
2. In that menu click ‘View Page Source’. This will open a new page of the code the browser uses to build the page;
3. Search for “<title>” – this is your page title;
4. Search for “<meta name=”description” – this is your page description;

If you need help finding this or want to learn more about improving the meta on your website reach out to us at [email protected].

WATCH our Flip Chart Friday video on this topic.