Search engines evaluate your website from a technical point of view. In order to make your website appealing to search engines, there are few things you need to think about. Below are some tips about titles, meta-descriptions & meta-tags.
1. Site title & Page title
Site title and Page titles are displayed in the browser tab and search results. Titles are one of the most important aspects of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). A title is a word or a short phrase that describes the website or the page. They appear in a search result as follows: Page title - Site title. Here are a few things you need to think about, when choosing page titles:
— Unnamed page: If you do not choose a title for your page, the title "untitled" will be allocated by default. Note that the title of your page will also be by default the url of the page. Choose a title in order to avoid untitled pages!
— Duplicate titles: You should never have two pages with the same title. Search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc.) consider this as bad practice since it is confusing for the visitor.
— Length: In search result, the page titles will be cut after 65-75 characters depending on the search engine. Make sure that the title is shorter than 65-75 characters or make sure the most important words are in the beginning of the title.
You can change your site title under Settings → General → Website → Title.
You can change a page title under Edit this page → Edit content.
2. Site description & page description
The site and page descriptions, also called Meta description, will appear in the search results under the page url. "Meta descriptions can be any length, but search engines generally will cut snippets longer than 160 characters, so it's wise to stay in these limits." explains Rand Fishkin in this Beginners Guide to SEO. The description has no effect on the page ranking but can draw attention to your site in the search results. Make sure to write a clear, readable & compelling description to encourage the visitor to click on your site.
You can edit the site description under Settings → General → Website → Site meta description.
You can edit the page description in the Edit this page → Settings → Meta description.
3. Site Keywords
The site Keywords will not have any effect on SEO. You can read more about it here. However, you can add keywords if you want Portfoliobox to categorize your site.
Edit the Keywords under Settings → General → Website → Site keywords.
4. Alt text
An Alt text, or Alternative text, is a text associated with an image that describes what the image depicts. Search engines cannot read images and therefore look for the Alt text of each images.
In Portfoliobox, the Alt text of your image is the image title. The image title can be edited in each gallery. You can choose to display or hide the image title on your site under Display Settings — depending on the template you use, the image title will display under the image or on hover. In both case, the image title will be the Alt text.
NB! Keeping the image title field empty migth cause your images to not be indexed in search engines.
Interesting links aobut SEO:
→ Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide
→ The Beginner's Guide to SEO
→ How to Write Killer Meta Descriptions
→ How Search Works
→ 100 SEO Tips For Small Businesses
