<img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-3243" src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/META-DATA-300x225.jpg" alt="META-DATA" width="300" height="225" />Metadata is literally "data about data." Meta tags give information about the data on your website to search engines so they know when to show users your website in results.

Metadata gives details about your website as a whole and is a key factor in the way search engines rank your website.

Information on your website is "crawled" by search engine bots or spiders, where it can then be indexed by the search engine and placed in a library of sorts.

Next time someone enters a search query that is related to your metadata, the search engines return the best URLs, ranked from best to least valuable, in the results.
<h3>3 types of metadata</h3>
There are 3 types of metadata that search engines use to determine what websites are about.

<strong>Meta title tag</strong> - Tells the search engine what the website is about, includes the main keyword the site wants to rank for

<strong>Meta description tag</strong> - Gives 160 characters of description or snippet of information from the webpage

<strong>Meta keywords tags</strong> - Words and phrases relevant to the topic or subject matter of the website; the words and phrases people will query to receive your website in the results

The metadata makes it possible for search engines to effectively locate and return the best, most relevant results when a user enters a search query. That's why it's so important that you set up your website with the right metadata and keywords.

<strong>Metadata and website traffic</strong>

The more traffic a website receives, the greater the chances that some of that traffic will convert to sales. It is estimated that 85% of all traffic for any particular keyword goes to the top 10 results in the search engines.

Most people never click past page 1 of search results, so it's important that you rank well if you want to boost traffic and sales.

<strong>Meta Keyword Format</strong>

The keyword should be written into the Meta keyword tag in the following format:

<strong>Meta name="keywords" content="Keywords for the webpage go here, separated by commas"</strong>

Ex.: Meta name="keywords" content="web hosting, website hosting, web design, web hosting provider"