Implementing SEO on Your Website

What is SEO? 

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.

Non-organic search results would be considered as ads from Google Adwords or other 3rd-party areas where people would search to find your website.

Looking at the different parts of SEO are as follows:

• Quality of traffic. You want to attract visitors who are genuinely interested in the services that you have to offer.

• Quantity of traffic. More traffic with the above quality is perfect, as this will keep people interested in what you have to offer - even if they can’t do it right now!

• Organic results. Organic traffic is any traffic that you don't have to pay for.

How do I start?

• First, you will want to think of your mission statement and what it entails. Some questions could be:
  
  

  • What is my target audience? Adults, teenagers, seniors, all, etc.

  • What is my most successful service that I have to offer people? Church planting, evangelism, international missions, local opportunities, etc.

  • What are some keywords that tell people about what my organization does and the opportunities that accompany it? Keywords such as local churches, local church opportunities, church planting, etc.
    
    

    • Note: When choosing and using keywords, keep in mind that Google looks at these in reverse order, and anything ending in plural will also be seen as singular.

    • Examples: church planting = planting church, and churches = church.
      
      

  • Where am I located and where do my services span across? This question is extremely necessary as you may want to target people searching for specific areas, which is a great way to get higher-quality leads to visit the page you have these set for.

• Next, you will want to check your content and make sure that your most relevant keyword(s) are mentioned within the Page URL, Page Description (Meta Description), Headings, Body Text, Images, etc. This will drastically increase your page rankings within Google and other Search Engines like Bing, Yahoo, etc. 

How do I do this in SiteStacker?

Below we will list out the steps with screenshots to show you how SEO works within our already amazing product, which you probably already know, SiteStacker. 

1. Make sure that you have the desired content and have answered the questions above before moving on to the backend of your website.

2. Once complete, log in to the back-end of your website using: [yourwebsite.url]/admin

3. Once you are logged in, head over to Site Planner. This is where all of the SEO is implemented for your website.

4. On the Site Plan (right-hand) side, open up the folder for where your public-facing pages are located.

5. Right-click on the page where you would like to add your keywords, content, etc. SEO and choose ‘Edit Page’. This will bring up an ‘Edit Page’ window.

6. You are defaulted to the ‘General’ tab where you can edit the Alias, or the URL, of the page.

7. Once you have made those changes to the URL, go ahead and click on the ‘Metadata’ tab to make further SEO changes.

8. Under ‘Metadata’, you will find a vast majority of SEO options that you are able to change anytime! Here are the descriptions of each field that you see:

   1. No Index: This means the page will be hidden from search, so nobody will ever see it when they are searching (this does not mean that they will not be able to see it on your site if they have the URL.

   2. Canonical Link: Helps prevent duplicate content issues in search engine optimization by specifying the "canonical", or "preferred", version of a web page.

   3. Keywords / Full View Keywords: These would both be the same, and the keywords are what answer the questions from above. Note: Keep in mind not to use too generic of keywords as you want them to be targeted to your organization and what you do.

   4. Description / Full View Description: These descriptions are also known as a Meta Description. This should summarize the page's content and will be what is shown to leads when they see your page in the Search Results. Note: For content that is being loaded dynamically onto a page such as blogs, projects, opportunities, missionaries, etc. you will need a generic meta description for these as this helps from needing 100s to 1000s of pages from being created.

   5. Image: The image set for the page should be one that tells the story of the page, or even if it is the first image on the page. Note: When set, this image will show up when being shared to a Social Media platform such as Twitter or Facebook.

   6. Full View Image: Copy and paste the link of the image you would like to render (preferably the same as the image set above it). This will usually be the image that is used when sharing the desired page.

7. Custom Tags / Full View Custom Tags: These tags make sure that your page looks good when shared on various social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. To learn more about these, please follow Facebook’s and Twitter’s guides to using them, as well as research other Social Media platform tags.
   
   Note: If you would like to display different images for your dynamic content or the images are not being displayed on Facebook or Twitter, please be sure to do the following:
   
   While on the 'Metadata' tab, Add 'Custom Tags' to your 'Full View' Page, or the 'Details' page, as well as the 'Index' page for your dynamic content (see screenshots below). Make sure to check the above resources and check what the variable is that you would like to display as it is what will be needed to display the correct content.

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9. Once you are completed setting all of these up, click ‘Save & Close’.

10. Give your page some time to be indexed by the Search Engines and watch closely for your pages and the traffic coming to them! Note: Google Analytics plays a huge role in tracking this for you! 

If you have questions on this topic, then please let us know. We are always glad to help!

Watch a video to learn a few more things about optimization!