Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization is the optimization of websites and apps for people who use search engines. SEO is focused on improving visibility of online information in organic (unpaid) search results. SEO comprises both a technical and a creative side and involves many different aspects: from the words used on the web page to other websites referring to yours.

SEO technology by Genkgo

Usually, SEO is simply structuring your website in a way that search engines can understand. In building websites and web applications, Genkgo takes search engine requirements into account. Therefore, the technical side of SEO is covered by use.

SEO through Genkgo software

SEO is not only about technology. Another aspect is the improvement of your website for other people. This mainly concerns content and structure. You are free to structure your website as you wish by means of our website managing software. However, to achieve the best results we recommend using a number of basic rules.

This article briefly explains these rules and what the most important improvements are that you can make. We will sometimes refer to other support articles that give more information about specific subjects and can help you with making improvements. Several other sources were used for the compilation of this article. We highly recommend that you explore these sources yourself as well. You can find the references on the bottom of this page.

Content

  1. Give pages unique and accurate titles
  2. Use the Meta Description
  3. Improve the structure of your URLs
  4. Make navigating you website easy
  5. Other tips
  6. References

1: Give pages unique and accurate titles

The title is one of the most important elements of a page. This tells the users and search engines what the page is about. Search engines show this title in their search results.

In Genkgo, the title is automatically composed of:

  • The title entered in the properties of the page
  • The name of the website

In Genkgo:

When you are creating a new page, you are asked to enter a title. Whatever you enter into this field will be used to generate the page title, the name (see 3.) and the URL (see 3.). As administrator, you can see and edit this title. Support article: edit a page.

Tips:

  1. Make sure the title gives an accurate description of page contents: “What is this page about?”
  2. Give each web page a unique title.
  3. Limit the amount of words in the title: use a few words or at most one sentence.

2. Use the Meta Description

The Meta Description gives search engines a summary of the contents of a page. In contrast to the title, this description may be a few sentences long.

Search engines can use the Meta Description as a snippet of a page. This snippet is the text that will be shown under the title of the page in the search results. Search engines show the Meta Description and/or parts of the page that match the search query of the user.

In Genkgo:

Like the title, you can find the description of a page in the Properties. As administrator, you can view and change the Meta Description. Support article: Edit a page.

Tips:

  1. Write a description that not only informs, but also addresses the user. Answer the question: “What does the page contain and why should I read it?”.
  2. Give each page a unique description.
  3. Use one or more short sentences.

3. Improve the structure of your URLs

The URL is the web address of a page, displayed in the address bar of your browser. The URL is composed of the head URL of the website and the name(s) of underlying page(s), separated by a slash sign (/). Take a look at the URL of this page as an example. The URL is an important factor in how easy a web page is to find.

URLs need to be easy to understand, and they need to clarify which information is contained in the web page. This means that URLs have to be descriptive. This will ensure that the website has a good structure, and in turn that will ensure better crawling of documents through search engines. Crawling means dicovering websites through search engine software (bots) in order to index the content of these websites.

If a URL contains relevant words, is gives users and search engines can get more information about the page. URLs are also displayed in search results. This makes it extra important to give users a good indication of the content using URLs.

In Genkgo:

In Genkgo, URLs follow the structure of the Website Tree in the Admin. Some URLs are automatically generated because of specific website modules. Genkgo automatically makes these URLs descriptive and structured well.

However, when an administrator creates a new page, he has to decide on the text that will appear in the URL. Like the title and the Meta Description, this can be done in the properties of the page. Use the field ‘Name’. Support article: Edit a page.

Tips:

  1. Choose normal and clear words in URLs.
  2. Choose a URL structure that organizes the content of the website well, and also makes it easy for visitors to see where on the website they are.
  3. Keep the structure of the website simple. Do not make more than two or three layers of pages (pages under pages under pages etc.). Make sure a person can understand the structure and keep a good overview while using the website.

4. Make navigating your website easy

Navigation is important for search engines and for visitors of the websites. Easy navigation helps in getting the right information quickly. Good navigation starts with good hierarchical page structure. The hierarchy starts at the head element: the home page. To create the best structure for your website, you need to put yourself in the shoes of a visitor and think of how the visitor would like and expect to move from the home page to the subpages with more specific content.

In Genkgo:

Most often, Genkgo will set up the basic page structure while creating the website and the navigation menu on the website. It is up to the administrator to decide which pages appear in this menu, the name they get and in which order they appear in the menu.

Breadcrumb

Next to the navigation menu, there is a second navigation active on most of our websites: the breadcrumb navigation. This navigation leaves breadcrumbs for visitors to make them able to quickly go back from underlying pages to their parent pages.

Sitemap

Genkgo makes sure that a website has an XML sitemap. A sitemap is a digital map of the hierarchical structure of a website. Search engines use this sitemap for crawling. All pages of the website are included in the sitemap by default so that search engines can detect the pages and show them in the search results. However, if you do not want to include a certain page in the sitemap, for example when the content of a page is not finished, you can take it out of the sitemap in the properties of the page. Support article: Edit a page.

5. Other tips

  • Make sure that your 404 page (and if relevant, your 401 page) are good. The 404 page is used when a requested URL does not exist (anymore). The 401 page is used when a secured page is requested and the visitor does not have access. Most often, you can find these pages in the Website tree on the highest level.
  • Optimize the information about images by adding an alt tag. The alt tag is a description of the contents of the image. This text will be displayed if the image itself cannot be displayed. Learn how to add an alt tag to an image.
  • Create good headings for text pages. The available headings range from h1 (largest, most important heading) to h6 (smallest). They can bring hierarchy to the text and give the reader the ability to quickly get an overview. Like the title of the page, it is important that headings relate to the contents of the text underneath. The hierarchy and the relevance of the headings help the reader, but also help search engines.
  • Many SEO manuals make mention of keyword optimization. In the early days of search engines, keywords were of great importance. Today, keyword optimization is an outdated concept for Google. Google has become a lot smarter and does not look at specific words anymore, but looks at real meaning. However, other search engines may still use keyword optimization. Although Google is by far the most widely used search engine in the Netherlands, there are some other search engines that have a market percentage, like Bing and DuckduckGo.
  • The ranking of a website is co-dependent on the amount of links that are made to the website. It is positive when another website links to your website.

6. References