Research Project: Fourth Artefact - Metadata

I will now look at the impact a webpage's metadata has on it's ranking in the Google search engine.

You may be wondering 'what is metadata?' - according to this source metadata is:

'Simply put, metadata is data about data. It is descriptive information about a particular data set, object, or resource, including how it is formatted, and when and by whom it was collected. Although metadata most commonly refers to web resources, it can be about either physical or electronic resources. It may be created automatically using software or entered by hand.'

I have come across a very useful article online which points out the most effective meta tags for SEO. See here for more information

Based on the reading I had done on this subject I decided to update the metadata on the home page of my test website as follows:

home page before:

<!--meta-->

<meta charset="utf-8">

<meta name="description" content="Try our freshly made burritos, fajitas, tacos, burrito bowls, nachos, salads and much more.">

home page after:

<!--standard meta-->

<meta charset="utf-8">

<meta name="description" content="Try our freshly made burritos, fajitas, tacos, burrito bowls, nachos, salads and much more.">

  

<!-- Google + -->

<meta itemprop="name" content="Mexican Burrito bar in Sheffield - Buckin&#39; Burrito">

<meta itemprop="description" content="Try our freshly made burritos, fajitas, tacos, burrito bowls, nachos, salads and much more.">

<meta itemprop="image" content="http://buckinburrito.co.uk/images/logo.png">

  

<!--Facebook-->

<meta property=”og:title” content=”Mexican Burrito bar in Sheffield - Buckin#39; Burrito”/>

<meta property="og:type" content="website"/>

<meta property="og:image" content="http://buckinburrito.co.uk/images/logo.png"/>

<meta property="og:url" content="www.buckinburrito.co.uk"/> 

<meta property="og:description" content="Try our freshly made burritos, fajitas, tacos, burrito bowls, nachos, salads and much more."/>

   

<!--Twitter-->

<meta name=”twitter:card” content=”summary”>

<meta name=”twitter:url” content=”http://buckinburrito.co.uk”>

<meta name=”twitter:title” content=”Mexican Burrito bar in Sheffield - Buckin&#39; Burrito”>

<meta name=”twitter:description” content=”Try our freshly made burritos, fajitas, tacos, burrito bowls, nachos, salads and much more.”>

<meta name=”twitter:image” content=”http://buckinburrito.co.uk/images/logo.png”>

  

<!--Publisher-->

<link rel=”publisher” href=”https://plus.google.com/106871109621071697363“/>

As you can see many of the new meta tags provide information for social networks which improves search visibility through those platforms. This builds on my previous artefact which initially linked the site to social media by now providing more detailed data specifically for social networks. I have also added a 'publisher' tag which links the site's ownership to a registered business on Google +.

As in previous tests I wished to find out how the new update would affect the ranking on Google for my chosen set of keywords. Here are my results:

before (on 21/01/2014):

mexican food in sheffield - no listing
burrito bar sheffield - page 2, position 5
burrito sheffield - page 4, position 8
buckin' burrito - page 2, position 3 

after (on 29/01/2014):

mexican food in sheffield - no listing
burrito bar sheffield - page 2, position 1
burrito sheffield - page 3, position 2
buckin' burrito - page 1, position 6 

As you can see from the data above there has been a significant increase in ranking for three of my keywords. From this result I can conclude that correct use of meta data has a positive impact on Google ranking. I believe this is due to the fact that the website is now linked to a Google registered business and has increased visibility on social platforms.

In my next and final artefact I will be looking at the impact of back links on search engine ranking.