Article Sections:
- 2.0 - SEO Overview
- 2.1 - How to Access Your SEO Options
- 2.2 - SEO FAQ's
- 2.3 - Best Practices to Update Your Website Without Destroying Your SEO
- 2.4 - What the SEO Section Will Require?
2.0 - Overview
Search engine optimization is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing the visibility of a website or a web page to users of a web search engine. SEO refers to the improvement of unpaid results and excludes direct traffic/visitors and the purchase of paid placement.
2.1 - How to Access Your SEO Options
To Access the SEO Options, Please Follow the Steps Listed Below:
1. First, in your Visual Builder window, find and select your "SEO Tool" tab in the Tool Palette menu on the left-hand side of the screen.
2. In the drop-down menu Select the "Page Settings" option. Your SEO window will now appear.
2.2 - SEO FAQs
Q: Why is a SEO Important?
A: Search engine optimization is important because SEO is not only about search engines, but good SEO practices improve the user experience and usability of a web site. Users trust search engines and having a presence in the top positions for the keywords the user is searching, increases the web site's trust.
Q: What are external links?
A: External Links are hyperlinks that point at (target) any domain other than the domain the link exists on (source). In layman's terms, if another website links to you, this is considered an external link to your site. Similarly, if you link out to another website, this is also considered an external link.
Code Sample
<a href="http://www.external-domain.com/">Link Anchor Text</a>
Q: What is a Meta (Page) Description?
A: Meta descriptions are HTML attributes that provide concise summaries of web pages. They range between one sentence to a short paragraph. The description is located within the HTML code of the page only and is not visible to visitors of your web page, but they do appear underneath the blue clickable links in a search engine results page (SERP). However, depending on a user's query, Google might pull meta description text from other areas on your page (to better answer the searcher's query).
2.3 - Best Practices to Update Your Website Without Destroying Your SEO
If you have an existing site, you’ll want to design your new site so that the page names are the same.
Example: Old = mcguiresirishpub.com/menu, New = mcguiresirishpub.com/menu
However, your old page names may use a naming convention that is not helpful to visitors.
Example: mcguiresirishpub.com/mcguries1
In this case, you’ll still want to name your new pages so that they properly relate to the page type.
Example: mcguiresirishpub.com/menu
If the old page names and the new page names do not match, you’ll need to redirect the old pages to
the new page names to keep your SEO intact. To do this, you’ll use the URL Mappings section within
the Dashboard.
Today, the major search engines use many metrics to determine the value of external links. Some of
these metrics include:
• The trustworthiness of the linking domain.
• The popularity of the linking page.
• The relevancy of the content between the source page and the target page.
• The anchor text used in the link.
• The number of links to the same page on the source page.
• The number of root domains that link to the target page.
• The amount of variations that are used as anchor text to links to the target page.
• The ownership relationship between the source and target domains.
2.4 - What the SEO Section Will Require?
Page URL: The Page URL will be how you or any visitor to your site will access this particular page.
Page Title Guidelines
Listed below are requirements when filling out the appropriate fields.
1. Be sure to write out in lowercase with no spaces.
2. Use – for spacing for optimal SEO.
3. No Special Characters “{”, “}”, “|”, “\”, “^”, “~”, “[”, “]”, and “`”.
` 
Page Name: The Page Name is a general tag used to organize your pages.
Page Title Guidelines
Listed below are requirements when filling out the appropriate fields.
1. Capitalize the first letter.
Page Title: This field will show up on your web browser's tab.
Page Title Guidelines
Listed below are requirements when filling out the appropriate fields.
1. Capitalize the first letter.
Category: For sites that are content rich, you can create categories to better manage your pages. Perfect for companies with multiple locations, or companies that have similar pages.
Page (Meta) Description: For sites that are content rich, you can create categories to better manage your pages. Perfect for companies with multiple locations, or companies that have similar pages.
1. Page (Meta) Description - Optimal length
Meta descriptions can be any length, but Google generally truncates snippets. It's best to keep meta descriptions long enough that they're sufficiently descriptive, yet short enough that they are not overly truncated. Therefore, we recommend descriptions no longer than 160 characters. Keep in mind that the "optimal" length will vary depending on the situation, and your primary goal should be to provide value and drive clicks to your web page.
Page Title Guidelines
Listed below are requirements when filling out the appropriate fields.
1. Capitalize the first letter.
2. Avoid Duplicate Page (Meta) Description Tags
As with Title Tags, it's important that meta descriptions on each page be unique. Otherwise, you'll end up with SERP results that look like this:
Key Words: (SEO) Similar to “Alt Text,” keywords are words or phrases in your web content that make it possible to find your site via search engines.
By placing keywords in your content, you make it easier for search engines to know what your pages are all about. Keywords should also be unique to each page and associate to the description. Keywords are generally written in lower case and separated with a comma. As a general rule, no more than 6 to 10 keywords for each page should be recorded.
If all Meta Tags are done correctly, you’re search results will look like the image depicted below.
Restrict Page Access: If you select the empty check box next to restrict page access, you will have enabled that page to be password protected.
Index Page: If the index page is checked the page will be accessible to search engines. If your site is not live or you do not want your page found in a web search do not click index page.
Enable Header / Footer:
Default set to "Yes" will enable the page to go live.
Selecting "No" will redirect a user to a 404 page.
The HTTP 404, 404 Not Found, 404, Page Not Found, or Server Not Found error message is a Hypertext Transfer Protocol standard response code, in computer network communications, to indicate that the browser was able to communicate with a given server, but the server could not find what was requested.
Display on Sitemap: A site map is a list of pages of a web site, usually found on the website’s footer. If you do not want the page displayed do not select the check box beside “Sitemap”.