Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips

There are two critical metadata fields you need to complete for every webpage on your site. These are the Dublin Core Title and Description fields. They can be found in the 050 [your publication] > root Tridion page files, under the General tab. You will have to scroll down a little bit to see them.

Search engines rely on these fields to identify each page on your site. They also use the content of these fields to generate the page title and descriptions in their search results. In the screencap below, you can see how Google used the Dublin Core Title and Description fields from DEED's home page to generate the link title and description snippet in this search result.

For the Title field, we recommend repeating a version of what you put in the Page Display Name field. (Sometimes you have to shorten what you put in Page Display Name fields in order to have shorter link names. If you did this, it’s okay to make the Dublin Core Title field a longer version of the Page Display Name field.)

For the Dublin Core Description field, put 1-2 plain language sentences that describe the content of the page.

Please use important keywords that match your page’s content when filling out these fields, but do not stuff keywords in them. For example, the title of a page should be something like “Senior Linkage Line” but not “Senior Linkage Line (service for seniors, senior hotline, seniors services, 65+ hotline).” The latter is an example of keyword stuffing, which will make your site look like a spam sites and will get you docked.

When you set up a page or structure group in Tridion, you have to provide names for these that will become part of the URL. It’s critical that you name your structure groups and pages in ways that reflect the content, rather than giving them generic names. For example, don’t name them things like “section1” or “section2.” Instead, name them things like “talking-book-library” or “senior-linkage-line.” This helps the search crawler (and the human users of the website) recognize content appropriately.

In structure groups, the Directory field is what will become part of the URL:

For pages, the File Name field is what will become part of the URL:

It’s particularly important to include keywords in your H1 heading (the headline at the top of the page) and any sub-headings, like H2s and H3s. Search engines also look to these for data and priority rankings based on the content it finds in these headings.

On the body text of each webpage, make sure to also include keywords users would be looking for, but without keyword stuffing. All keywords in headings or body text should flow naturally within plain language sentences.

Good news for us, as government agencies! This is an area where we really shine. We have TONS of useful content, in the form of our services, our data, and so much more. Third-party search engines love sites with lots of useful content, and will prioritize these sites over others.

That said, having tons of useful content can be a double-edged sword. We have so much quality content that we often wrestle with having too much of a good thing on our sites. User engagement is another thing that search engines like Google look at when ranking pages. While our unique content draws in users, we sometimes put up too much content, which can cause users to disengage, become overwhelmed, and move away from our websites. We should always strive for a healthy balance when it comes to content. Make sure to give users what they need, but without overwhelming them with too much.

Be sure to also keep your content fresh. Add new things regularly and remove the old. A website full of high quality content will look stagnant and outdated to search engines if it hasn’t been updated in weeks, months, or years.

Having a mobile-friendly site is really important. Not only are a majority of visits to state agency websites now coming from mobile devices, but search engines like Google also favor websites that prioritize mobile experiences.

We’ve taken a good chunk of this burden off your shoulders, as all of the out-of-the-box components you can build in Tridion will flex for mobile. However, there are some final touches that you need to do to make sure your website is not just mobile friendly, but mobile optimized. The next two tips address the things you need to do to make sure your site is mobile optimized.

This is so important! Please make sure your image files are not unnecessarily large, either in resolution or in file size. Using large image files significantly slows down your page loading time, and some search engines will de-prioritize your pages if your site doesn’t load quickly. The faster you can get your pages to load, the better.

In terms of file size (measured in KBs and MBs), you want to get images as small as you can without sacrificing too much image quality. Software like Photoshop and Pixlr have saving options that show you the new file size, as well as a preview of image quality, so you can get an idea of what your image will look like before committing to saving it.

In terms of image resolution sizes, for most image files you can size them at 1,200 pixels wide (this will fit across the white boxes of the default Tridion design layout) or less. If you are using a full page layout that goes across the entire screen (such as a header background image, or a jumbotron on a Flex Layout – Main Landing Page ), files that are 2,000 pixels wide should meet your needs. Below is a visual example of a website with a background image that spans the width of the header:

Make sure you have also applied alt text to all your images, too! This is important not just for rankings, but also for accessibility.

Another thing that some search engines look at, when evaluating where to place your site in their results, is how much your page jumps around. This is also called Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). This can happen in a couple different ways:

• One example is if you have content elements on your page that use the same space, but are sized differently. For example, image rotators. If you have not set all images in a rotator to be exactly the same size, then the page will jump around as the images in the carousel rotate. Google does not like this and will dock you points for it.
  
  
• Another example is if you have pop-ups. The more you have, the more you’ll be docked in search results.

Below are some common questions we get regarding search and metadata.

What about adding subject keywords?

In earlier days of the internet, adding subject keywords in metadata fields was a great way to improve SEO. Those days have since passed, thanks in part to spam websites that abused them. While it doesn’t hurt to add subject keywords, the amount of gain you get for the amount of effort is generally not worth the time investment. You are unlikely to have much impact on your ranking in search engines like Google.

What about other metadata fields?

For the most part, we have structured Tridion to automatically provide all other important metadata fields (page creation date, page modified date, etc). Your best bet is to focus your efforts on the critical fields noted above.

I want to be #1 on Google – can you make that happen?

We can certainly help you try to reach number one, but we cannot guarantee it. Google’s rankings are generated through complex algorithms, and they will not respond to requests to place your website at the top. Trying to get to the top of Google's results is a long process that will involve making tweaks, waiting a few weeks to see if anything changes, making more tweaks, waiting again - repeat, repeat, repeat.