Metadata
Metadata is data about data. It is used to label your content, and describe it so that other machines, such as search engines, can understand what the content is about.
Metadata can be applied to:
- blogs
- blog posts
- directories
- directory records
- A to Z services
- meetings
- galleries
- events
- news
- documents
Applying metdata
Many metadata fields will be pre-populated with sensible defaults based on the configuration of your system. In most cases you need only provide a description for your content.
- When editing a piece of content, click the Assign metadata button. The metadata panel will open.
- Add keywords, description and other values to describe your page.
- Click the Assign button. The metadata panel will close.
- Click the Save button to save your changes.
note
Metadata is not saved when the metadata panel is closed. You must click the Save button to save your changes.
Metadata fields
| Field | Notes | Area | Required? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Additional keywords | Words or short phrases that describe the topic of the page. Values should be a comma separated list. | Standard | |
| Description | A general description of what your content is about. Data should be lowercase, and with no punctuation. | Standard | ✅ |
| Nofollow | When you add a "nofollow" metatag to a webpage, it disallows search engines from crawling the links on the page. | Robots | |
| Noindex | When you add a "noindex" metatag to a webpage, it tells a search engine that even though it can crawl the page, it cannot add the page into its search index. | Robots | |
| Creator | Name of the creator of the content. Prefilled with the name of the admin that created the page. | Advanced | ✅ |
| Contributor | If any of the content you are creating was contributed to by other parties, for example your content consists of photographs, illustrations or diagrams that were not created by you, these contributor details can be entered into the Contributor field. | Advanced | |
| Publisher | The Publisher field is used to add the name of the organization whose website you are adding content to. This field will be automatically populated with the name of your organization, but can be changed if required. | Advanced | ✅ |
| Rights | The Rights field is used to add the name of the organization that has the rights to the content you are adding. Normally this will be your organization and is therefore what will appear in this field as standard, but can be changed if required. | Advanced | ✅ |
| Source | If the content you are adding comes from another source, e.g. you are copying a document from a government site, within the Source field you should enter these original source details. | Advanced | |
| Status | The Status field is used to add the development status of your content, e.g. if the content you are adding is complete then it would generally be classed as V1.0 Public Consumption. As this is the general case for most of the content that you will create, this is what is automatically populated into this field. | Advanced | ✅ |
| Coverage | If the content you are entering concerns a wider area than just your local area you should enter these details into Coverage field. Typically this field will automatically be populated with the local area relating to your organization, but these details can be changed if required. | Advanced | ✅ |
| Created date | The Created date field is used to document the date your content was created on, the current date will be automatically populated in this field. | Advanced | ✅ |
| Modification date | If you are revisiting an item of content for the purpose of editing, you should enter the date these alterations were undertaken into the Modification date field. | Advanced | |
| Format.Medium | The Format.Medium dropdown menu is used to describe the type of media that you are creating. Defaults to text/html. | Advanced | ✅ |
| Language | The Language dropdown menu is used to describe the language that your content is written in. Defaults to English. | Advanced | ✅ |
tip
When selecting keywords for your metadata, bear in mind:
- Common Misspellings: indicate to search engines that this page is relevant to a misspelled search query, without including the misspelling in your page content.
- Long-Tail Keywords: such as keyword variations and plurals.
- Real Searches: search terms that have brought visitors to this page in the past.