An excellent blog by Weebly to maximize the SEO settings on your website.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) might feel like a confusing game with too many rules to rank highly for any search terms you consider important to your business. And there are tons of websites all claiming they contain the best secrets to guarantee increased traffic and search rankings. But as with most things in life, SEO is best tackled one step at a time.
The first step? Putting Weebly's many simple and powerful SEO features to use.
Page Titles & Descriptions
Page titles and descriptions appear directly in search results when someone finds your site on a search engine, giving you a great opportunity to influence searchers to visit your site. These also provide you with the ability to use search phrases you'd like to rank for. For example, let’s say you own a business in Oakland called Rockridge Bakery that has been around since 1972.
Page title: About Rockridge Bakery: Serving Oakland since 1972
Page description: Rockridge Bakery is a family-owned bakery and cafe that has been part of the North Oakland community since 1972.
The option to add Titles and Descriptions can be found in the same place as the permalinks discussed next.
Page Permalinks
Every page on your site has a name that you provide (separate from the title noted above), and this name is used by default to both generate your navigation and to create links for each individual page. You'll generally want to keep these names short and to the point for navigation purposes: Contact, About, Store, etc. And when you do this it also means that you end up with very short links: mysite.com/about, mysite.com/contact, etc.
The thing about using these short names for your links is that you're missing a valuable opportunity to use those links to highlight how you'd want them to be found via a search, since search engines take those names into consideration when ranking your site.
So for your About page, you could be more descriptive for your permalink (about-the-rockridge-bakery-team).
The first step? Putting Weebly's many simple and powerful SEO features to use.
Page Titles & Descriptions
Page titles and descriptions appear directly in search results when someone finds your site on a search engine, giving you a great opportunity to influence searchers to visit your site. These also provide you with the ability to use search phrases you'd like to rank for. For example, let’s say you own a business in Oakland called Rockridge Bakery that has been around since 1972.
Page title: About Rockridge Bakery: Serving Oakland since 1972
Page description: Rockridge Bakery is a family-owned bakery and cafe that has been part of the North Oakland community since 1972.
The option to add Titles and Descriptions can be found in the same place as the permalinks discussed next.
Page Permalinks
Every page on your site has a name that you provide (separate from the title noted above), and this name is used by default to both generate your navigation and to create links for each individual page. You'll generally want to keep these names short and to the point for navigation purposes: Contact, About, Store, etc. And when you do this it also means that you end up with very short links: mysite.com/about, mysite.com/contact, etc.
The thing about using these short names for your links is that you're missing a valuable opportunity to use those links to highlight how you'd want them to be found via a search, since search engines take those names into consideration when ranking your site.
So for your About page, you could be more descriptive for your permalink (about-the-rockridge-bakery-team).
To change your permalinks go to Pages and click the page you'd like to change. Then choose the SEO Settings options for that page and enter a Page Permalink in the provided box. You'll need to Publish your site for the change to take effect.
And don't go overboard. Still try to keep your permalinks to five or six words.
The Header & Footer Code
The header and footer code are for HTML or JavaScript code. A very important SEO step you can take that involves the Header Code is submitting and verifying your site with Google Search Console. See Weebly's detailed guide on how to do just that.
And don't go overboard. Still try to keep your permalinks to five or six words.
The Header & Footer Code
The header and footer code are for HTML or JavaScript code. A very important SEO step you can take that involves the Header Code is submitting and verifying your site with Google Search Console. See Weebly's detailed guide on how to do just that.
301 Redirects
If you're moving a site from another host to Weebly, ideally you don't want to lose all the search engine history and optimization you gained from your time with that site. And, thankfully, there's a way to redirect both traffic and search engines from your old pages to your new ones within Weebly using the 301 Redirects feature.
This option is found under Settings > SEO in the editor, at the very bottom of that page. All you need do here is enter the page permalink from the old site and select which new page that should point to in the new one. Then Save.
If you're moving a site from another host to Weebly, ideally you don't want to lose all the search engine history and optimization you gained from your time with that site. And, thankfully, there's a way to redirect both traffic and search engines from your old pages to your new ones within Weebly using the 301 Redirects feature.
This option is found under Settings > SEO in the editor, at the very bottom of that page. All you need do here is enter the page permalink from the old site and select which new page that should point to in the new one. Then Save.
That's it. Once you Publish your site, all those old pages will redirect to the new ones so that you continue to get value from them. But note that this is only works if you're using the same domain with Weebly as you were using at your previous host. Weebly's article and video explain this in detail.
Once you get these basic Search Engine Optimizations in place, you'll be well on your way to seeing your site ranking much higher in search results. Next up, read a more advanced SEO guide like Are the Right People Searching for You? or How to Create a Perfectly Optimized Page.
Once you get these basic Search Engine Optimizations in place, you'll be well on your way to seeing your site ranking much higher in search results. Next up, read a more advanced SEO guide like Are the Right People Searching for You? or How to Create a Perfectly Optimized Page.
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