Basic SEO
- Jeremy Simpson
- Tom Knuth
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an in-depth topic. This article is meant to be a brief introduction to SEO with a few concepts you can implement in Checkout Champ to get you started.
Search Engines & SEO
Search Engines use bots to scour the internet, crawling from link-to-link, page-to-page, cataloging and indexing everything they discover. Successful SEO simply helps Search Engines index and serve up your site for relevant searches through a combination of website structure, page content and relevant links. The term “relevant” is used often, because all Search Engines are looking for relevant pages to answer very specific search queries.
Behind the Scenes
The first aspect of SEO happens behind the scenes, so to speak. Search Engines don’t actually read the content on your pages. They index everything they crawl and use that data to answer search queries. Creating Meta Data tags in your page code helps them understand what they’re indexing by specifying your page Title, Description and, to a lesser extent, Keywords.
The Title tag specifies the main topic of the page, typically using your main keyword. Your page titles should be 60 characters or less. Google typically won’t display anything beyond 60 characters.
The Description tag offers a short overview telling readers what they’ll find on your page. It’s also a good idea to use your main keywords to reinforce their relevancy. However, you want the description to sound “natural”. Keep it relatively short, 160 characters or less because Google tends to cut off anything over 160 characters.
The Keywords tag is nowhere near as useful as it once was. Some experts simply ignore it. However, there are still instances where the tag is used to reinforce relevant keywords found on your page. Just don’t overdo it. Limit this tag to a just few keywords actually used on the page.
CheckoutChamp can automatically add Title and Description to your sit’s default page. See the bottom of this article.
It’s worth mentioning Keyword Research is an-depth topic well outside the scope of this introductory article. However, Keyword Research is absolutely essential to successful SEO. Spend some time researching keywords so you don’t focus your pages on what customers “might” be searching.
The Title and Description tags you specify also tell Search Engines what text to display on their results pages. This information can have a direct impact on potential consumers and site visits, so you want to be descriptive to drive clicks-throughs.
If your Title and/or Description tags are left blank, Search Engines pull information from your page to display in those sections. Your goal is to deliver the information they’re looking for, in the format they’re looking for it. So, fill out the Title and Description for every page you’d like to see in the Search Results.
Images
Images are just as important to Search Engines as they are to consumers. However, Search Engines can’t actually see those pictures. They see data. That’s why you need to tell them what they’ve just found. Use short, descriptive file names, as well as filling out the image Title and the image ALT text in the Page Builder.
The image Title is used to tell people what they’re looking at, so it’s less important for SEO. The image ALT text tells the Search Engine what it’s seeing and how to catalog it, so it is essential. However, it’s good practice to fill out both with short, descriptive names.
You’ll also want to make your image files are as small as possible. That doesn’t mean you have to use tiny pictures on your pages. It means you want the file size to be as small as possible. Small files help the page load faster and speed counts. Slow loading pages won’t rank as high in the Search Results as fast loading pages.
The Key to Successful SEO
While page titles and descriptions are important for SEO, they’ll do very little if the content on your page is irrelevant. Search Engine results are fueled by online storefronts, product pages, news stories, articles, blog posts, pictures, videos, social media and all the trends that go with them. There is no shortage of information. That also means there in an abundance of competition out there.
The key to seeing your sites in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) is providing relevant, useful information on your pages. “Thin” pages, or pages with very little content, typically do not rank as well as other pages for competitive keywords. That does not mean each page needs to be a novella. However, each page does need to have useful, searchable content if you want to climb higher in Search Engine results.
The days of stuffing a page with lists of keywords and little else are long, long gone. Search Engines evolved to provide users with the information they’re looking for, when they’re looking for it. It’s your job to provide relevant, useful information to answer their searches. Of course, keywords still play a significant role in Search Results and it’s important to target specific keywords on each page. However, you need to use those keywords in a “natural”, conversational way as part of your product descriptions and other on-page content.
Just think about your own search habits. When you’re looking to buy something you’re more likely to click on (and stay on) a page that has relevant, useful information, right? A page that gives you the information you feel you need to know to make an informed decision. That’s what we all do. So make it easy for consumers to find your products by offering short, relevant titles, detailed product descriptions and useful information on each and every page you’d like to see in those Search Results.
Links
SEO starts and ends with links. That’s how Search Engines jump from page-to-page, site-to-site.
Once your site is live, you need to share it. Whenever you launch a new site or new product page, share a link on your company’s social media sites. That’s the easiest way to leave a trail for Search Engine bots to pickup. Being found online doesn’t happen overnight, but Search Engines never stop crawling. They never stop looking for new pages. They use those links to connect your site to rest of the world.
If you’d like to dig deeper into SEO, you could try these resources:
CheckoutChamp (making it easy)
CheckoutChamp will automatically place search engine tags in the head of the default page in your funnel. This is placed only on the default page. This makes it easy to have your page crawled by search engines. It is then your responsibility to optimize your page content for SEO.
CheckoutChamp adds OpenGraph and Twitter meta tags to the page head.
Edit your checkout funnel
Go to Settings > Maintenance
Choose to allow search engines to crawl your pages
Page Title - enter a title to be displayed in search engine results. This value defaults to the funnel title.
Description - enter a short page description to be displayed in search engine results.
Feature Image - select an image that will show on social media search results
Close the Maintenance window
Edit the default page in the funnel
Save the page (you do not have to make any changes to the page) and exit the page builder
Publish
Here is a page example with SEO tags automatically added
No Index, No Follow
In some cases, you may want to let Search Engines know you do not want a specific page to show up in search results. This could be for a variety of reasons, typically used to stop duplicate content warnings or to stop pages like “Thank You” pages from being indexed. In any case, you can add a new meta tag to influence search engine behavior.
To let Search Engines know you do not want a specific page to be indexed, you would add the following meta tag in the <head> section of your page. In Checkout Champ pages, you would do that by adding the following meta tag just above the <title> tag in the HTML:
<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="noindex,nofollow">
After saving the page and publishing the funnel, you will see the new meta tag in the <head> section of the page.