Because we often mention that we check Metadata as part of our tests we sometimes have people saying that they don't need Sitemorse as they already have an SEO tool or an agency handling SEO.  I wont start down a sales training course here about objection handling, false objections etc.  But if there is genuine confusion about what our Metadata tests do then it's worth just visiting the subject briefly.

What we do provide is:-

This is what we do currently.

Like all of our tests we are looking from a browser's perspective therefore we are looking at what content is there and if it meets the related standard(s).  So with Metadata we are looking at what types of Metadata are present on the page i.e. is there a Title, a description and keywords present on the page.  We then present this as a percentage of pages in the test that did NOT have the data present.

We also take account of the Government's eGMS standard for all the .gov.uk sites and present information on how well the site is doing in achieving compliance with the mandatory and recommended items and if they are present are they correct.

We'll also check the spelling and report any issues.

To get a detailed list of what Metadata is present on which pages we have a chargeable report that will provide this information.  Please discuss this with your Account Manager if you would like one of these reports.

 For further info on this take a look at http://www.sitemorse.com/d/guides/Meta_Data_Guide.pdf

What we do NOT do:-

We do not look at any type of page ranking that the pages achieve in the various Search Engines.

We do not look at the links to see how these might be improving the ranking

We don't look at who's bidding the highest for your keywords

These are all things that the SEO community do for you using an array of techniques and is, to some extent, a whole different industry sector from what Sitemorse focuses on.

As I said earlier this covers the current situation.  We are always looking at what we can do to improve Sitemorse (indeed our Annual Client Survey is a useful source of ideas from our Clients on what we can do to improve our service) and we have some ideas we are working on that will enhance our reporting on Metadata.  As soon as we have something more concrete I'll post something on the blog.