One of the short-comings with using WordPress is that it does not provide an easy, built-in way to include metadata for your web page descriptions and keywords (and rightfully so). Why Not? The reason is simply that WordPress cannot read your mind. I know it’s hard to believe when you consider what you can do with wordpress, but it’s true. The issue with Description and Keyword page metadata is that, to be truely effective, it should be created to describe the content found on each individual page. It’s how search engines like google determine how to categorize and index each page. Now, there are some SEO “experts” who will argue that this information is not very relevant anymore, and I do agree with that for the most part, but there are still SEO benefits to including this metadata vs. not including it at all.
I’ve been giving this some thought lately and developed a couple ideas of how to add these features into a wordpress site without too much difficulty. A bulb went off in a moment clarity when I started to think about using the Custom Fields to store page specific metadata. I was even naive enough to think I was on to something new (should have known better) but as I started researching some ideas, I realized there were others already doing similar things. Oh well, a minor detail. I took my own approach to the idea anyway, if for no other reason than a learning exercise. Ultimately, this could be added as a premium feature to any custom theme using a couple hooks and some custom theme options magic.
Continue reading “WordPress: Use Custom Fields To Add Keyword Metadata to Your Posts”