What Is Meta Schema and Rich Metadata?

• April 26th, 2022
• Community Spotlight Marketing Web
• Swarm Digital

If website terms make your head spin, this post is for you. Web design is two things: one is an art, and the other is a science. The art side is easy for anyone to appreciate; if you like how your site looks, it’s art. The science side can be a little more complicated, though. For one, there’s an ocean of terms that might be confusing. This article’s subject is one of them: what are meta schema and rich metadata? Agh! Don’t stop reading here. It’s worth your time to learn these definitions. Why? Because how Swarm Digital handles meta schema and rich metadata enables us to be more effective at putting you in front of customers. In short, it’s part of how we help you make money. Read on to find out what meta schema and rich metadata are and how they can help you grow your organization on the web.

Inception

Before we begin, let’s open with an illustration. You’ve seen the movie Inception, right? Whether you liked, hated, or missed it, here’s the film’s central idea: anyone can steal money, plans, or information. But what if you could sneak into someone’s head and steal ideas? Even better, what if you could crawl inside their brain and plant an idea?

Mind blowing, right? Maybe?

Is that what rich metadata does? Is it like when you have a conversation with your friend about redecorating your bathroom and later find ads for toilet seats in your Facebook feed? Well, no—not at all, actually; that’s a different thing. Meta schema doesn’t plant ideas in people’s heads. But it does help put them into a search engine’s.

How SEO Works 

When you build a website and throw it on the web, what alchemy causes it to appear on Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc.? How is Google, for instance, so effective when we type in terms like, “best small business attorney near me,” “When do the leaves change color in Central Park,” or “What was that one song from the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack?” 

About a billion books, web pages, and Youtube videos try to pinpoint what search engine optimization is and how to do it best. The short answer: Google and their ilk want to connect search terms to websites—but it’s a lot easier if the guys making the website help them out. While a search engine’s coders write AI-based software that crawls the Internet looking for sites, a good web designer uses all the tools he has to push their product to the top of the pile.

Check out this quote from Google’s documentation:

Google Search works hard to understand the content of a page. You can help us by providing explicit clues about the meaning of a page to Google by including structured data on the page. Structured data is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content; for example, on a recipe page, what are the ingredients, the cooking time and temperature, the calories, and so on.

So, let’s begin here: search engines want your site on top. They provide instructions to make that happen. And Swarm Digital does SEO in ways that Wix can’t. The answer starts with metadata.

How Metadata Works for SEO

So, we’ve talked about Inception: planting ideas in someone’s head. We’ve talked about how web designers can plant ideas in a web crawler’s head so that their site appears at the top of search results. So, how to do that? An effective SEO strategy starts with meta schema and rich metadata.

Remember: web design is an art and a science. The art is what you see—does it look the way it ought to? The science is what’s behind the curtain, in the code, that gets parsed and read by computers. Sometimes, that data is read by computers elsewhere before anyone even sees your site.

Metadata is part of the science of web design. It’s code within a site that explains to search engines what your webpage is. The better-organized metadata is, the more likely Google, Bing, and the like will find your site and parse it correctly. If executed well, they’ll connect your site to people looking for it. That can be done in plain English, with snippets that explain your product or service in Tweet-sized bites of text designed to appear within search results. It can also be granular, with SKU numbers, size and weight, pricing, and location.  

A quick note on rich snippets, those little bits of info that pop up in search engines. If you implement meta schema and rich metadata properly, you have a much greater chance of your rich snippets showing up along with your search results. How does that help? If those little bites of text are printed in search results, you have a much greater chance of engaging a potential customer, getting a click to your site, and lining your wallet.

A good web designer creates with two audiences in mind: website users and search engines. If you want both of those done right for your website, call the experts at Swarm Digital.

How Swarm Digital Makes Meta Data Work for You

At Swarm Digital, we create gorgeous websites, sure. But we go deeper: we know the science of search engine optimization. Your site shouldn’t simply exist; we’re not here to give you an online business card—that won’t grow your platform! Your web presence should drive customers to you.  

Before we begin a project, we think through two primary audiences: website users and search engines. We leverage meta schema and rich metadata, details often overlooked in sites that look great but don’t generate traffic. One example of this is using hyper-local search to put your company at the top of the pack. We give each page on your site a role in helping Google find you.

Have we planted an idea for how we can help you? Book a consultation with Swarm Digital now or call us at +1(855) 244-4407.