That’s So Meta: Helping Your Site Get Found

When someone says that an item is “uber cool,” they mean it’s super cool. In the technology and Internet realm, “meta” is “uber”. When we hear the phrase “meta-data,” it means super data, or in simpler terms, data about data. Knowing the basics about meta-data can enhance your website’s SEO, not to mention you’ll sound uber cool when you drop the phrase “That’s so meta!”

All websites can be broken down into essentially two layers: the front-end, the user interface part that we see on our screen and interact with when we visit a site; and the back-end, the programming code, support systems and hosting services that we don’t see. Meta-data really belongs to the back-end family, but can be manipulated by front-end techniques, thus straddling the line between front and back-end. Think about meta-data as a book report for your website; it lets search engines know what’s going on at your site without going into the actual content.