Adding Search Engine Info

This page guides you through defining information about your web site specifically for search engines (such as Google, Yahoo and Bing). For advice on selecting keywords, read Better Search Engine Rankings in 3 Easy Steps.

Topics:

A typical search engine listing

The big 3 search engines display search engine listings something like this (screenshot from Google):

Each listing has 3 parts:

  • The title that you click on to visit the web page - in this case "Southern Highlands Therapies: Stress, Pain Relief & Pregnancy".
  • The snippet that tells you a bit more about the page - in this case "Mobile natural therapies for women and children ..."
  • The URL that tells you which web site this page comes from.

The administration system allows you to control some of the information that appears in your search engine listings.

SEO tab

Each page on your website has an SEO (search engine optimisation) tab which allows you to edit the title, search keywords and other information displayed by search engines for that particular page. 

To access the SEO tab, log in and choose a page to edit, then click the SEO tab.

SEO tab

If you're in a hurry, make sure you fill out the page title, and leave the other fields blank.

Page title

The page title is used as the clickable title in the search engine listings, and is also used by the Browser (as the title bar, as well as when someone bookmarks your page). Tips for creating a good page title:

  • Never ever leave your page title blank.
  • Come up with a succinct 2 or 3 word site title that you can use as part of the page titles throughout your site. Ideally this should be keyword rich, for example: "Remedial Therapies Melbourne".
  • Use the site title alone (or with your business name) for the home page of your site.
  • For all other page, use the name of the page together with the site title, for example: "Bob Smith: Remedial Therapies Melbourne".
  • Don't make it too long, or it will be truncated. (The system will automatically check the length and warn you with red text if it doesn't fit in with accepted guidelines.)

Keywords

The keywords field allows you to tell the search engines what your page is about. However in today's world, most search engines actually ignore the keywords data completely, and instead check the text on your page to work it out for themselves. Tips for entering keywords:

  • It's absolutely fine to leave the keywords field blank.
  • Include your location and suburbs served in the keywords for each page (e.g. melbourne, carlton, fitzroy, collingwood, richmond)
  • Include your site wide keywords on each page (e.g. naturopathy, massage, acne, stress relief) as well as keywords that relate specifically to that page.
  • Separate each keyword with a comma (e.g. "remedial therapies, melbourne, acne").
  • Don't list hundreds of keywords for each page - stick to the most pertinent. (The system will automatically check the length and warn you with red text if it doesn't fit in with accepted guidelines.)

Description

The description field may be used as the snippet by search engines (although often the search engine will display an extract of the text from your page instead) and is sometimes automatically picked up by directories. Tips for entering descriptions:

  • Descriptions should either be blank, or unique for each page. We recommend entering descriptions for the most important pages of your web site.
  • They should describe the contents of the page accurately in 1-2 sentences. (The system will automatically check the length and warn you with red text if it doesn't fit in with accepted guidelines.) 
  • It's a good idea to work your main keywords and location into the page description.

URL

In most cases, the URL of the page will either be fixed or worked out for you automatically. If you do need to specify a URL, make sure it's unique for each page.

Saving your changes

When you've finished editing your search engine settings, click the Save button to update your web site. If you make a mistake, you can click the Cancel button to return to the menu without saving. (Note that clicking Save or Cancel will also save or cancel any edits you've made to your page's text or images on the main editing screen.)

The changes you've made will be picked up by the search engines next time they visit your website to check for updates (which can sometimes be days, but may well be in a few weeks time).

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