Why Metadata Optimization Is Key to Your Natural Products and Cannabis Content Strategy

There are all sorts of reasons to include well-written cannabis content in your brand’s marketing plan. Some of those reasons are up front and center—engaging web copy and blogs establish a clear brand voice and tone that will resonate with your target audience, creating an emotional connection. 

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This type of owned media also lets you establish your brand’s unique blend of expertise, authority and trust, educating consumers not only about your products and their value, but about the broader world of natural products, including cannabis and psychedelic substances. 

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But even the best-written cannabis marketing content won’t make an online impact if your metadata isn’t given the same time, skill and attention. Metadata might not be the part of your blog or web copy that your potential customers and clients read. In fact, it’s not even visible to the naked eye that’s browsing your website and search engine results. 

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Metadata, however, is exactly what the thousands of bots trawling the web at any given time are reading. And metadata is what those same bots are using to determine whether your audience sees the valuable content you’ve invested in, or if it’s consigned to the proverbial slush pile of the World Wide Web.

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So how can you optimize your metadata to ensure your owned media strategy goes the distance? Here’s what cannabis brands and psychedelics brands need to know:

What Is Metadata, and How Does It Affect Cannabis Owned Content?

The term metadata is often broken down as “data about data.” In short, metadata is information about a piece of content such as a blog post, web page, photograph, video, book, magazine, choreography, graphic design composition, etc. 

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Different types of metadata can include:

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For much of human history, metadata referred to the kind of descriptive properties that, say, librarians would need to find a particular book in the stacks, or an article in a back-issue periodical like trade publications. Organizational digits like International Standard Serial Numbers (ISSN, the numeric identifier assigned to academic journals) and International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN, the numeric identifier assigned to books) are classic examples of metadata. And card catalogs are an analog means of organizing metadata for ease of use. 

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With the advent of computers, however, and eventually the Internet, the body of global metadata grew exponentially. The period of data commodification that began in the mid-20th century, best known as the Information Age, has led to an availability of intelligence on, say, cannabis irrigation equipment or psychedelic aftercare on an unprecedented scale. 

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But the Information Age is just as apt a descriptor for the way our lives are shaped by a gargantuan, largely invisible body of metadata that keeps all that knowledge at our fingertips.

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Web 2.0 and Metadata

Metadata connects the dots between online queries and relevant information. When you’re searching online for something like “best cannabis PR agencies” using Google, YouTube or Bing, the computers and servers fulfilling that request use keyword metadata to connect you to the likeliest helpful results. 

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When you click on one of those search engine results and go to a webpage or blog, the way that page appears on your screen is dictated by metadata that tells your computer and browser what images, fonts and colors to populate. 

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When you follow links and interact with features across a website—adding a new hat to your shopping cart, filling out a “contact us” form or spending a minute or two reading a case study—metadata is creating a record of your activity. That metadata might in turn trigger marketing automation tactics, such as assigning you a lead score in a company’s customer relationship management (CRM) tool or using cookies to serve up targeted online ads as you continue to explore the web. 

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Metadata can be used for marketing segmentation, to fine-tune your digital marketing tactics, and to let search engines like Google know what cannabis SEO keywords you want your site to rank for in the ultra-competitive world of search engine optimization.

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How that’s accomplished, however, is of course easier said than done. Read up on our metadata best practices for cannabis brands for actionable advice on taking your cannabis content strategy to the next level.

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‍The Grasslands team is always ready to talk through your brand’s unique needs and pain points to find a custom solution. But if you aren’t ready to start that conversation yet, check out our PR and marketing services to learn more about how we transform brands with our proven process.