A key component to the search engine being able understand and navigate the webpage it the use of metadata. Basically, the metadata is the language that the search engine is able to read and interact with. There are two types of metadata; descriptive and structural metadata. Descriptive metadata is the basic information about a piece of data. People and machines are able to read this data and learn from it. Structural metadata is the information that describes where data fits on a larger scale in a range of broad topics.
Metadata is very important to have with any sort of title tags. These tags are the first thing that the search engine scans when it is trying to read your page and understand it. They are meant to explain exactly what topics your webpage is going to cover within along with the main keywords that are going to be used in your content. These are often added manually by a website creator, but there is software that does it for you. The better your title tags are, the more likely people are going to visit and read your webpage and when more people visit your page, you get a better ranking on the search engine.
Image tags are helpful in the same way that title tags are. They are able to explain what the image is to the search engine, making it easier for the search engine to crawl your page. They also ensure that your image loads correctly and displays in the right format for the page user.
One Response
That crazy that metadata is the language that the search engine is able to interact with. It is very different to think about search as a different language and unable to be consious so it communicates with metadata. great post!