Metadata in 2015 in the spotlight. Why Google loves fresh content.
At this stage everyone knows that Google uses the content on the page to determine how the page should be ranked on SERP (Search Engine Result Pages). It doesn’t use keywords, keyword phrases or meta keywords anymore as it did before but, are Metatags still important for SEO in 2015?
Broadly speaking yes. They are but they are not as paramount to SEO in 2015 as they used to be in the previous years. Ranking in Google nowadays has more to do with RELEVANCE, USER SATISFACTION, REPUTATION and POPULARITY.
So, you can easily infer that inbound links and social media play a main role in SEO, as Google’s algorithm has gradually changed to give more importance to both aspects.
How can links help improve the SEO of a website?
Links pointing to your page have great importance but why would people want to link to your website?
Because your website content gives valuable information, because that information is clearly structured and because whatever you talk about is clearly explained and easily readable. Users like that and they will link to your page as a result.
If you need some help on writing relevant and successful content for the website, you can have a look at my previous post on the topic. Knowing how to make your sentences more powerful is a great asset for writing attractive website content. You can learn something about that on this post by Susan Weiner.
The more links there are pointing at your page, the more valuable your page is for Google. Inbound links, keyword density, social media shares and the text we use to describe internal links are what Google uses to determine the context of our website content.
Does that mean that Metadata is no longer relevant for SEO?
No, it doesn’t mean that. Even though Metadata is not as paramount for SEO as it used to be, it doesn’t mean that you are now allowed to disregard what you put on metadata or how you write your meta descriptions.
Google no longer relies on meta descriptions for guidance but it is still important to write these carefully as it is one of the first pieces of information users will see when your website is listed on search engines.
You should still think about what keyword phrases your content should target and how those should appear on the title and meta descriptions. Hence, optimisation still needs to be looked after for a website to rank well on search engines.
How should my website meta descriptions be?
Between 130-155 characters.
They HAVE to include call-to-action.
They should match the content keyword phrase.
There shouldn't be duplicate meta descriptions throughout your webpages. If you need to create a duplicate one, leave it empty –or come up with something different, you surely can!
Therefore, what guidelines can we rely upon to write metadata (until Google changes its algorithm again, at least!)?
Keep writing meta descriptions.
Add keywords to meta descriptions.
Write unique descriptions and don’t duplicate them amongst pages.
Don’t use quotes in your metadata.
Keep including keywords in your metadata (and throughout the content but do not keyword-stuff it!).
"Write fresh, original content. This does not mean that you need to write things that no one has written before, but do it in your own words and talk about what you know well about."
There are lots of interesting reads about SEO and the relevancy of keywords in 2015 but I really enjoyed reading this article on Search Engine Watch and I hope you do too. I also found this post on the subject quite enlightening.
Since the world of SEO changes more often than Alice’s world in Wonderland, if you spotted something that is no longer correct, I’d love to know about it! Likewise, I’d love to learn from you about what’s to come in 2016 for metadata and content writing. Feel free to get in touch.
I hope you found the tips above useful and if you did, please share this article or let me know through Twitter or the comments box below.
