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.

How to Use Meta-data to Assist SEO
In my last post, The Starting Point for Solid SEO, I wrote about how to find and use relevant key words and phrases. These keywords and phrases should appear in your site’s meta-descriptions, in addition to other keywords about the particular item you are describing.

Most website creation tools, content management systems and blogging platforms have a special section where you can write a meta-description for a particular page or item, be it a picture caption, alt-text for a link, page title, menu title, et al. Make sure you use the keywords wisely in these places, as stuffing irrelevant information will only hurt your SEO efforts.

Oh My, Your Meta is Showing in My Google!
Of the places where meta meets the eye, the most visible to someone performing a search is a page’s meta description. Search engines like Google scan your pages’ content and meta descriptions, subsequently displaying the page title, link, and a short snippet of text – many times it’s the actual meta-description you wrote.

Thankfully, Google is quite helpful in sharing information with webmasters. I recommend checking out their excellent overview of how meta-data in page titles and descriptions helps your site appear in search results.

One last exercise before I leave you to meta-tate (sorry, I couldn’t resist). Perform a search for your website using the site’s name, URL and a keyword or two. See what shows up in the search engine results. Do you like what you see? Do you think it would help a stranger understand your site? Is it compelling? If you answered no to any of the previous questions, take the time to rewrite your site’s meta-data. You’ll be uber happy that you did.