Use Standard Metadata

Using standard metadata is a best practice for managing your company’s website. If all companies use standard metadata, it will help the public locate and use company information and services more effectively and efficiently.

At a minimum, use these six metadata elements on the homepage and all major entry points:

• title
• description
• creator (the content owner; this should be the name of the organization)
• date.created (original creation date)
• date.reviewed
• language

These six suggested metadata elements are based on internationally recognized Dublin Core standards.

Why It’s Important

Metadata is important for many reasons:

• Provides a standardized system to classify and label web content
• Supports website maintenance and administration
• Improves search relevancy
• Provides an audit trail (information about who created the information and when it was created)
• Helps identify redundant, duplicative, and possibly obsolete content
• Identifies similar content so you can establish logical links and other relationships
• Allows information to be tracked and assembled company-wide.

But isn’t it true that no one uses metadata? It is true that commercial searches like Google and Yahoo no longer use metadata since many web developers were trying to fool search engines with meta tags unrelated to their content and services. However, this could change in the future as search engines explore different ways of categorizing and cataloging search results.


Provided to you by Roberto Espinoza and Patricia Espinoza at: CPC Computer Consultants, Inc.

www.cpccci.com
www.cpcwebsolutions.com
www.cpcwebdevelopment.com