Making your website visible on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing will bring more visitors to your site, and more visitors to your church or business. To improve your website’s performance on search engines, it is important to follow Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices. Finalweb gives you all the tools you need to optimize your site as efficiently as any professional web developer.

How does Google or another search engine find my website?

Because Google uses automated web crawlers, your pages will most likely automatically begin showing up in search results, though it may take up to a week or two. Automated web crawlers work by following links on pages they visit. Therefore, the more links to your page from other websites that you have, the more frequently your website will be crawled by Google. These links to your website, also called “backlinks”, are also a major factor in determining how high your website will rank on a Google search.

You can manually request that Google crawl your site. With Finalweb, this can be done with the click of a button in the admin panel under "Search Engines/Sitemaps." Finalweb automatically maintains and updates your Sitemap to give you better visibility on search engines

How can I rank higher in Google search?

The number of backlinks you have, the number of websites they come from, and the search ranking of those websites all contribute to your search ranking. A link to your website from a large, popular, or authoritative website will be a good indicator to Google that your website is noteworthy. The text of the link (and the surrounding context) is also important in determining which search terms your website will rank highly for, but it is not the only factor.

How can I make my website show up for certain search terms?

Just as important as how close to the top your website is on Google search results is what search terms your website performs well for. Let’s say you want to rank highly on search results if someone searches “Conference in Los Angeles.” In the past, websites used a meta tag on each page with keywords, and search engines would consider this in their ranking. Since at least 2009, the keywords tag has not been considered in search results, so we don’t recommend using it.

The content of your website is the most important factor. As search engines become more advanced, their goal is to process each page like a human would. If you want to rank highly for “Conference in Los Angeles”, make sure that the page you want to show up for that search term has the words “Conference” and “Los Angeles” featured prominently. Don’t stuff keywords in such a way that feels unnatural for human readers but be conscious of which keywords you are using.

Not all content is created equal. Text with a larger font size will generally be interpreted as more important by a search engine. It is also important to utilize HTML paragraph styles, such as Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.  With Finalweb’s inline text editor, this is as easy as highlighting your heading and setting the paragraph style to Heading 1. Each page should only have one Heading 1, and subheadings should be given Heading 2 tags. These tags help search engines understand the structure of your page, so it is important to use them instead of just increasing the font size for your headings.

Does Social Media affect SEO?

Social media and search engine optimization go hand in hand. Even though links from Facebook or Twitter won’t directly influence your search engine ranking, they can still be very helpful in establishing a community around your organization which will certainly increase your search engine ranking. Finalweb makes it easier than ever to integrate social media with your website.

Share Buttons

Add the Share Buttons section to any page on your website to give users an easy way to post your website on various social media platforms. We also recommend configuring the share buttons that are included by default on the footer of every page. With Finalweb’s custom footer feature, you have complete control if you want to customize them even further. Share buttons are also included by default for every file and blog post.

Facebook App Integration

You can add the ID of your Facebook app in site settings to add a “Like” and share button to the bottom of each page in your footer.

OpenGraph Integration

It’s important that your pages look good when shared to Facebook or other social media platforms. That’s where OpenGraph comes in. Set a default image, description, and other settings when your page is shared. This feature gives you control of how your pages, blog posts, and files look when they are shared on social media.

This is what this page looked like when it was shared before OpenGraph settings were changed:

After clicking "Edit Page" and navigating to the OpenGraph tab, this is what the settings were changed to:

Now this is what a user will see when he or she shares the page! A custom image, description, and title makes every page look great when it is shared, which will maximize clicks and user engagement with your content.

Did this answer your SEO questions? If you'd like personal, professional, and helpful assistance with SEO, social media, or any other aspect of your website, please reach out to us at https://www.finalweb.com/support