What Is Dublin Core Metadata?
Have you ever heard of “Dublin Core Metadata“? If you’re not immersed in SEO, I’m guessing you haven’t. However, it’s something you may want to consider using if you’re creating standard HTML pages or even if you’re using a WordPress platform.
Image via Wikipedia
So, what is it?
Dublin Core Metadata (DCM) is an open source project that attempts to preclude the semantic Web — semantics, as in latent semantic indexing. Web spiders are getting smarter and smarter all the time. Eventually, everything you write will be analyzed and the semantics in your document will tell the spider what your page is about. You won’t have to worry about adding your keywords to a density that they “get,” they’ll just get what your subject is all about.
The Dublin Metadata Initiative began in Dublin, Ohio and it specifies new meta tags for your content to help spiders, who are relying on your content, not your keywords, to figure out what your pages are all about.
If you wonder if it works, just Google the term Dublin Core Metadata, and you’ll see that the project takes up most of the spots on page one. I’m not saying you should definitely do this, but well… test it. See if it helps you in search.
When using DCM, here’s what you add to the <head> section of your HTML document:
This is in addition to the usual meta data that we know and love so well, and the DCM should go after the traditional meta data.
However, there are other forms for XML and XHTML that you should check out at Criticism.com.
For WordPress, there is a plugin called Dublin Core for WordPress, and just by installing it, the plugin will add the needed tags to your pages. (Remember, every post is still a Web page.)
The plugin will add this information:
- Site name as DC.publisher
- Site URL as DC.publisher.url
- Post title as DC.title
- Permalink as DC.identifier
- Date created as DC.date.created
- Author (last name, first name) as DC.creator.name
- Categories and tags as DC.subject (repeated element, excludes default category)
- If WordPress 2.1 or higher, DC.language
- If license is set, DC.rights.license
- Author name as DC.rights.rightsHolder
This is certainly not an exhaustive list of what DCM can do for you, but it’s a start.
I just installed the plugin, and am getting good traffic from Google every day. Let’s see if it helps boost the rankings or not. I’ll keep you posted.
