“Metadata is simply data about data. It means it is a description and context of the data. It helps to organize, find and understand data” (Kononow, 2018). For example, when we look at a blog page, the URL, title, author and date all provide meatdata about the blog’s content.
There are three main types of metadata: structural, administritive, and descrptitive. Structural metadata indicates how a digital assest is organised (eg. a table of contents), and more than this; structural metadata indicates the type of relationship between two assest. For exmaple, it could inidcate an edited photo versus an unedited one. Administritive metadata stores data about a digital asset. Administritive metadata can be broken up into three catagories (as per the National Information Standards Organization (NISO)), namely: technical, preservation and rights metadata. Descrptitive metadata helps us to discover and identify digital assests. In HTML, this would be at the beginning of the page and indicate things such asthe language of the website, what other scripts the page is linked to, etc. Thoughts: When it comes to making a website, metadata can become invaluable. Espeically descriptive data in HTML. Semantic elements and microformats are ways in which a designer could bring more traffic to their site. This is because webcrawlers search for key words when they recieve search requests, hence, if a designer uses as many relative keywords as possible, the webcrawler is more likely to suggest their site. Not only this, but having semantic rich HTML makes it easier for webreaders to go through your website - a big advantage for people with disabilities.
[1] Kononow, P., 2018. What is Metadata. [Online] Available at: https://dataedo.com/kb/data-glossary/what-is-metadata [Accessed 2022]. ] MerlinOne, n.d. What are the Different Types of Metadata (and How are They Used)?. [Online] Available at: https://merlinone.com/types-of-metadata/ [Accessed 2022]. [3] World of Dev., 2022. 4 Benefits of Semantic HTML. [Online] Availible at: https://worldofdev.info/4-benefits-of-semantic-html/ [Accessed 2022]