The days of websites as flashy online billboards are rapidly fading into memory. Modern software packages such as WordPress have put the power of dynamic publication into everyone’s hands. Publishing platforms with an emphasis on search engine optimisation include data management tools that make websites more discoverable.
Seize the Opportunities
WordPress and other systems all use semantic associations to link post content meant for humans with meta data meant for search engines. Software routines parsing a site with properly structured meta data not only match keywords against the post content, they also parse that content for instructions on how to present the information. This allows search engines to identify media types or content formats and use that data to return more accurate search results.
Understand the Limitations
The software does not write correct meta data without proper instruction. Meta data involves more than associating keyword lists with media files or post content. Properly constructed meta data identifies essential elements of the content such as the file format, file size, and media-specific details. While the package creates semantic associations between the content and the meta data, it does not evaluate the accuracy of those relationships. All of that information must be provided correctly by the programmer.
Maximise the Capability
When a website properly combines media content with correctly associated meta data, the result is both consumable by humans and discoverable by search engines. The semantic nature of the associations works to ensure that good meta data connects to equally useful content. Search engines also use semantic parsing to eliminate low-quality results such as large amounts of meta data connected to a single piece of content. High-quality results are prioritised based on the extent of the associations between the content and the meta data.
Satisfy the Consumer
The consumer is the ultimate judge of content quality. The consumer sees content based on the results of a search engine routine that has matched their search phrase with meta data keywords. If those results do not meet expectations, the consumer will not return. Even if the content is good, poor meta data associations will return irrelevant or undesired results.
Content-based marketing emphasises the role of content in retaining the consumer, but search engines are the gate keepers of that content. Before the market consumes it, search engine routines evaluate the meta data and decide if it is suitable for consumption. High-quality content that never reaches the market provides no return at all.
