Entering Good Metadata on Your Webpages

Metadata is required for all content published in epa.gov. The procedure and elements may differ between the WebCMS and other servers, such as www3, but the same principles and guidelines apply.

• About Metadata
  • What is Metadata and why do we need it?
  • How to create good metadata
  • Metadata for foreign language documents
  • PDFs, Word Documents, Excel and Powerpoint
• Required Metadata Elements
  • Title
  • Description
  • Publisher
  • Type
  • Channel
• Optional Metadata Elements
  • Keywords

  • Taxonomy Topics and Facets

What is Metadata and why do we need it?

• EPA's Information Architecture and Web Taxonomy

• Using Siteimprove to evaluate titles and descriptions in search

How to create good metadata

• Write good titles and descriptions first, add in keywords as needed.
• Use metadata fields to succinctly describe the current page or document. Do not generalize; do not describe the whole web area or the general concept of your site.
• Know your analytics and your audiences. Look at your search logs, site traffic reports, and metadata error reports. Identify your users' current search terms and the search terms in your page or document. Make sure the metadata repeats these important terms from your content.
  • More about web analytics
  • More about identifying audiences

Metadata for foreign language documents

As a best practice, you should always try to create metadata in the language of the document itself. However, there are some exceptions:

• Most systems do not allow special characters, so documents in languages such as Chinese, Japanese, or Arabic require English metadata. We suggest adding a note to your title and description fields.
  • Title example: "Document Title (Chinese Translation)"
  • Description example: "Chinese translation of..."
• Also due to the limitation on special characters, accent marks or other diacritical marks must be omitted (such as those used in Spanish or French).

PDFs, Word Documents, Excel and Powerpoints

• GSA 508 Tutorials, Guidance, Checklists
• Metadata for PDF Documents

Title

Metadata tag: "DC.title"

• WebCMS automatically creates the metadata title from the page title. For News Releases, WebCMS creates the title from the Headline.
• Page Title appears in:
  • URLs
  • the HTML title tag (<title>)
  • dynamic lists of related content
  • search results

When creating a page title, it is important to:

• Create titles that describe the content fully, such as "Technical Summaries of Selected Homeland Security Research Topics", rather than "Technical Summaries" 
• Verify the title is unique and does not exactly match the title of another page in your web area. If the title of the new page matches the title of an existing page, a "-0" will append at the end of the URL. As an example:
  • Existing page: 
    https://www.epa.gov/gulfofmexico/why-it-important-protect-gulf-mexico
  • New page with the same title:
     https://www.epa.gov/gulfofmexico/why-it-important-protect-gulf-mexico-0
• Keep in mind that pages that have the same title but different URLs will make it more difficult to find your page and cause confusion. 

Do:

• Include your most important and/or critical search terms in the page title.
• Make your title understandable without other context, such as "Water Quality Standards Training" instead of “Training”.  Remember that many visitors will come straight to your page from a search engine.
  • This is important because search engines will search terms in your title. Descriptive titles also promote better link text, another important factor in search results. See: Improving Relevance Ranking in EPA Search Results
• For non-www applications: Match DC.title to the left-most portion of the HTML title (<title> tag). Only include the Area Name if it provides needed context, such as "Basic Information | Asbestos." 
• For document pages:
  • For complete PDFs with official titles, write the complete, official document title in the page title.
  • For segmented PDFs with official titles, write the complete, official document title in the page title. Include chapter or section information, as needed.
  • For PDF collections or PDFs without official titles, write descriptive titles incorporating critical search terms. Include details such as the type of document (letter, memo, etc.), the date of the document, and/or its purpose and identification numbers (permit, review, etc.).

Do Not:

• Do not use acronyms unless you spell them out within the description field.
• Do not title document pages with generic, general titles such as "[Web Area] Publications" or "[Web Area] Resources" - this kind of title tends to indicate your document page is too broad and you need to break up documents into smaller more specific groups on separate document pages (see Handling a Collection of PDF Documents).

Description

Metadata tag: "DC.description"

The description is a short explanation of the content of the page. EPA Search uses the description to find pages that match queries. It also displays it in search results beneath the page title and URL to help the user select pages of interest.

Do:

• Be specific to your topic and provide context so that users will select your link from their RSS feeds or search results.  Highlight key concepts or issues.
  • Poor: "This site is...", “This page is …”, “This area is …”.
  • Better: "Water pollution is..." (because it uses critical search terms while describing the topic)
• Include critical, important search terms for the page.  
• Include terms not already in your title.
• For web forms, describe the main pieces of information the form will collect and who it will be submitted to.
• Hint: you may already have an introductory paragraph on the page that you can condense and use for your description. For a document page, open the attached PDF and use introductory text from the document.

Do Not:

• Do not copy the page title or web area name into the description field.
• Do not generalize.  Do not describe the site itself, the navigational choices, the environment or EPA in general (unless your web area is about creating web sites or the Agency itself).  
• Do not use the same description for every page in a web area.

Publisher

Metadata tag: "DC.creator"

In WebCMS:

You are only required to enter the publisher on web area homepages, on the Web Area Settings tab. The same DC.creator will then be applied to all pages in the web area. You can select the correct EPA office from the dropdown after you start typing.

For non-www applications:

• Only list the web-owner office that publishes the document to the web, not the original author, the document creator, or even the originating EPA office, branch, or lab.
• Follow this specific format:
  • US EPA, AA/RA

Type

Metadata tag: "DC.type"

Type is required for all content except for Events. It indicates the type of information that your page contains. Choose one type for each page.

Do:

• Read the scope notes below to determine the type best describing the majority of content on your page.
• Select the type that describes most of your content. For example, if you have written guidance that includes only a short introduction or overview of the issue, your type is “Policies & Guidance” not “Overviews & Factsheets.”
• For non-www applications: Copy and paste the type name exactly as it is below.

Do Not:

• Do not apply Overview & Factsheets to every page in a web area. See if there is a more specific or narrow type you can apply.

Channel

Metadata tag: "DC.Subject.epachannel"

Channel is required of all content types except Webforms. For Regulations, the Channel is automatically set to Laws and Regulations. For News Releases, it is automatically set to About EPA.

Do:

• Read the target audience and scope notes below to determine the channel that best fits your content (Read more about identifying audiences)
• Select at least one channel for your page. You can select multiple channels:
  • Select channels that best describes the majority of your content.
    • If your page has both scientific and regulatory content, apply both channels. If you have educational content, scientific content, and information about the Agency, apply three channels.
    • If all four channels apply, you may want to re-think the content on your page.
• For non-www applications: copy and paste the channel name exactly as it is below.

Do Not:

• Do not apply "Learn the Issues" to a page unless that content is actually appropriate to that channel. For example, any content that is tagged “Laws & Regulations” should not also be tagged “learn the Issues” since “Laws & Regulations” content is by definition not appropriate for a “Learn the Issues” audience. 

Keywords

Metadata tag: "keywords"

Keywords used to be required, but are now optional. They are no longer required because evidence shows that prominent search engines, especially Google, no longer give keywords much weight in search ranking.

Your most critical, important search terms should be in your title and your description.  Keywords should refer to additional specific but less prominent topics mentioned on your page.  

Do:

• Pull keywords from the actual text of your content.  Look for terms in your headings, table of contents, anchor links, introductory paragraphs, etc.
• Remember, your most important terms belong in the title and/or description.
• Be selective with keywords.  In most cases, ten or less keywords per document are sufficient.
• Enter up to 255 characters in the keyword field. If you enter more than 255 characters, you will get an error when saving the page.
• Separate keywords with a comma or a semicolon.

Do not:

• Do not repeat terms from the title or description.
• Do not create keywords for every possible combination of terms, or for capitalization, plurals, etc.
• Do not use the same keywords for entire set of pages in a web area or TSSMS.
• Do not use general terms, such as “EPA” and “environment”.
• Do not separate keywords with a semi-colon. The system interprets that string as one long keyword.

Taxonomy Topics and Facets

Adding terms to pages from EPA Web Taxonomy is not required but strongly encouraged. The EPA Web Taxonomy allows audiences easy access to relevant information from EPA programs, by using a common vocabulary to describe EPA web content. The web taxonomy is organized into multiple facets, arranged hierarchically (see table below).  Read more about the Web Taxonomy.

Do:

• First look up terms and descriptions in the Web Taxonomy Search: you can search or browse these terms across all categories, or specify a particular taxonomy topic or facet in "Tier 2."
• Choose terms that are as broad or narrow as the content dictates. 
• Choose only the terms that describe a significant portion of the content. 

Do Not:

• Do not leave all topics and facets blank.  At least one topic or one facet should apply to the page.
• Do not choose terms that are only indirectly related to the page content or are about the web area in general.