culture.gov.au
Connecting you with Australian culture online
Top 10 Stories
Australian weather and the seasons The Australian Gold Rush European discovery and the colonisation of Australia Convicts and the British colonies in Australia Great Barrier Reef Australian Indigenous cultural heritage Sydney Opera House Modern Australian fashion Australian food and drink Sydney Harbour BridgeGuide 9. I'm online. Now what?
How can I use metadata? (screen 4 of 8)
Metadata
If your organisation provides live theatre and you have a website, the words 'theatre' or 'acting' may never appear on your Web screens.
It may be obvious to the viewer of your screen that you are a live theatre group and a leader in its class - but this may be conveyed through images, video or sound rather than relying on text.
Even your program of performances and the forms users can fill out to buy or book tickets online may not describe what you do in words.
But that's where metadata can be an important tool in ensuring your website's success.
Metadata is data about data
Metadata, which is data about data, allows you to describe your website - largely for the benefit of search engines, as some of them index websites according to your metadata.
If your website is for a theatre company, your metadata might include terms such as 'theatre', 'theater' (for Americans), 'actor', 'stage', 'performance', 'Australian', 'cultural organisation', 'drama' or any other terms that best describe a theatre.
To optimise your position on search engines' results screens you also need to ensure your title tag is descriptive and that you use your keywords in the body of your document as well as in your metadata.
Metadata does not appear on screen, only in the source code
Metadata has a specific meaning when it refers to the HTML language of a website. It refers to the keywords which are used to describe that website, and which are defined within a particular part of the HTML code for the site called the 'metadata tag'.
You can view the source code for a site by selecting the appropriate menu item (such as View, Source) using your Web browser.
There are internationally recognised standards for metadata tags, such as the 
Dublin Core(1) and W3C(2) standard.
If you are an Australian government department or agency you also need to be aware of and implement the Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) Metadata Standard(3).
The keyword part of the metadata tag is used by some types of search engines to index a site and to rank it against search queries used by users of the search engines.
Metadata is used to index your website
Metadata for a site is sought out and stored in a database by a particular type of Internet robot called a metacrawler. Once stored in a database, metadata can be searched for with a search engine. Careful selection of the keywords which constitute your metadata makes it easier for someone to find your site using a search engine.
For example, the National Gallery of Australia uses this metatag set:
META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Aboriginal Art, Australian Art, Asian Art, Official site of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, National Collection of Australian and Indigenous Art">META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="australia, art, Australian, Art, gallery, australian, national, art gallery, museum, aust, collection, aboriginal, indigenous, Oz art, oceania, antique, modern art, painting, sculpture, drawing, textiles, prints, nude, art education, schools, tours">
The Australia Council website(4) uses this set of metatags on its front screen:
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"><META NAME="description" CONTENT="Australia Council, the Australian Government's arts funding and advisory body.">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="arts, art, artists, arts support, grants, grant programs, assistance, funds, culture, cultural, Australia, government, advice, audience, advocacy, multicultural arts, artsworker, Aboriginal arts, Torres Strait Islander Arts, Community Cultural Development, dance, dancers, literature, writers, writing, publishing, music, musician, performing arts, theatre, actor, new media, visual arts, painter, craft, craftsperson, design, designer">
Creating metadata? Think like a user
It is important that you put a lot of thought into the metadata for your website. While theoretically you can use as many words as you like, realistically you should aim for a core of words - perhaps 10 to 15 - which effectively describe the content of your website and your organisation. Put the most important words first in the metadata tag. These words will then be indexed by the search engine robots which operate this way - note that not all of them do.
One of the best ways to decide on your metadata terms is to put yourself in the position of a user. If you were looking for your website, what terms would you type into a search engine? Ask colleagues and friends what they would search for.
You could also look at related sites as we have above and discover what metadata they used by viewing their HTML code.
|
4 of 8 |
References
- Dublin Core http://purl.oclc.org/metadata/dublin_core/
- W3C Metadata site http://www.w3.org/Metadata/
- Australian Government Locator Service Metadata Standard http://www.naa.gov.au/records-management/publications/AGLS-manual.aspx
- Australia Council http://www.ozco.gov.au/
If you can see this message, you are probably not seeing this site in the way it was designed. This site uses cascading style sheets (CSS2) to control the way in which elements are displayed on the page.
You will still be able to access everything in this site, but we do recommend you upgrade your browser to a more recent, standards compliant, browser.