Successful digital magazine publishing requires getting found, and optimizing your metadata may help in the process
Digital publishers using landing pages to call attention to their digital magazine content need to optimize for their keyword phrases. Although this isn’t a new concept, with a lot of focus being given to the creation of digital magazine content and its distribution, optimization isn’t always top of mind.
For those neglecting optimization, it’s important to consider the value of metadata. It isn’t just your on-page content that needs to be optimized, but the meta tags that describe a web page’s content.
Below are three metadata components that are essential to proper optimization.
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#1: Length of title elements. You want your title to sufficiently describe your page and include keyword phrases. However, it can’t be so long that it gets truncated. Titles that are too short may not be informative enough for your audience’s benefit. For proper optimization, title elements should be greater than 20 characters and less than 66 characters.
#2: Using keywords in title tag. You should always insert keyword phrases in your title tags. However, do not use them more than twice or search engines may consider it keyword stuffing. If you really want to add to your optimization, you can try inserting two different primary keyword phrases into your titles.
#3: Include meta descriptions. If you don’t have meta descriptions on your articles, users probably won’t click on your listing in search engine results pages because they won’t know what the content is about. Creating a great user experience is your job so adding a meta description will be beneficial to you and your audience.
Metadata is one part of search engine optimization that needs to be considered and is often over looked because of on-page SEO requirements. Incorporating metadata optimization to your current SEO practices may help to propel some of your ranking pages even higher.
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Editor’s Note: Originally published on 3/19/2012
