Metadata

Metadata is often defined as "data about data." It's any information that describes a piece of content rather than being the content itself, such as: the author, the publish date, the category, the meta description, or the file size of an image.

Essentially, the content is the article you read or the video you watch, while the metadata is everything around it that helps systems and people sort, find, and make sense of it. Good metadata is what lets your site filter products, surface related articles, or feed a search engine the context it needs.