Want to make sure your site gets the visibility it deserves? In this article, we'll cover essential tools available in our native SEO toolkits - from fine-tuning meta information to advanced SEO settings and accessibility depending on your hosting option.
🤖 SEO is a constantly evolving field, and best practices may change over time. It's important to stay updated with the latest trends and guidelines search engines provide. If you are using Google as your search engine, please check out Google's Core Web Vitals to ensure a smooth and efficient user experience, which in turn can improve your search engine rankings and overall site performance.
1. SEO when using Vev Standard Hosting, FTP/S, SFTP, or AWS S3 hosting
If you are using Vev’s standard hosting option, FTP/S, SFTP, or AWS S3 hosting then you can fully control the SEO options in Vev. Choose a wise domain name by keeping the reputation high and make sure that your page is not associated with any phishing sites. Ensure that you secure your page with HTTPS as it is a confirmed Google ranking signal.
Once you have successfully connected your domain, you should
Update Meta Title
Find the 'Page title' field on the right panel by clicking any empty space outside the canvas.
Enter a concise and descriptive title for your page, keeping it around 60 characters that are aligned with your SEO strategy.
Update Meta Description
Find the 'Page Description' field in the same settings area.
Write a brief description of the page content, ideally between 120–158 characters.
Set up Cover Photo for Social Sharing
By default, Vev will pull through a preview of your project after you have published but you can also set a specific cover image.
Why it's important: The right meta titles and descriptions are crucial for search engine algorithms and users to understand what your page is about, influencing both your search ranking and click-through rates.
Add Meta Tags, Open Graph Metas, Social Media Meta Tags (if applicable)
By default, we pull your project title, cover image, etc. from your page settings. But you can add additional fields, e.g. “Webpage author”, “Add keywords for SEO”, to give the search engine more information about your page. Learn more about the meta tags here.
Advanced SEO Settings (Pro. & Org. Plans)
Robots.txt
The robots.txt file is located in the top-level directory of your domain and will be generated by Vev when you publish your project for the first time. By default, search engine indexing is enabled for all projects published to your hosting. However, you have the option to enable or disable search engine indexing for your projects. To learn more, read the article here.
Custom Robots.txt
For more control, you can create a custom robots.txt file to specify which pages search engines should crawl. Additionally, you can prevent search engines from crawling and indexing specific pages, folders, or your entire site. This is particularly useful for excluding pages like a 404 error page from search results. To learn more, read the article here.
Custom HTTP Headers
You can set custom headers for cache control, domain verification, network rules etc with HTTP Headers. Unless you are experienced with HTTP headers, we advise against using this feature. To learn more, read the article here.
Why It's Important: Advanced settings give you greater control over how search engines crawl and index your site, allowing for more tailored SEO strategies.
2. SEO when Embedding your Vev content, ZIP download, or using Webhook
If you are using our Vev embed code, ZIP download, or webhook option then you are assumingly embedding it into your systems, e.g. CMS or other environments. Unlike the Standard hosting option, here you need to make sure that the Meta descriptions and Meta tags are added to your CMS. By embedding your Vev project, you are not able to pass those Meta descriptions to your systems.
When using the embed code, it's crucial to ensure your embedded content is crawlable by search engines by turning off the encapsulation on the destination page. Learn how to make your Vev content crawlable and disable encapsulation here.
3. On-page SEO techniques
Now it’s time to optimize your content using on-page SEO techniques.
Include your keywords in your URL, e.g. www.mysocks.com/black-cotton-socks
Use H1 in the hero section of your page and H2 or H3 Tags for other headers and keywords
When selecting a text box you can change the text tag from the top bar. The types you can choose range from:
Header 1
Header 2
Header 3
Header 4
Header 5
Header 6
Paragraph
etc.
Why it's important: Having a structured text hierarchy is important for the search engine algorithms to properly crawl your content. From an SEO perspective, it is generally recommended to have just one "H1" tag per page. This practice helps search engines understand the main topic of a page more clearly, potentially improving the page's search rankings.
Optimize your images
Google and other search engines cannot interpret images the way humans do. Therefore, to ensure your images are understood by search engines, it's important to optimize both the image filenames and alt tags. When saving an image, use a filename that describes its content. Additionally, when adding the image to your webpage, provide descriptive alt tags.
Click the info icon of your image in the image library and enter your alt text in the description field.
Use external links
Include several external links to authoritative sites in your article. These links demonstrate to Google that your content is well-researched and reliable.
Use internal links
Whenever you publish new content, make sure to link to 2-5 other pages on your website.
Make sure your site is mobile-friendly
While it's not mandatory to have a mobile version of your pages for your content to appear in Google's Search results, it's highly recommended. Check out our responsiveness best practices here.
Fix any broken links
Broken links can negatively impact your SEO. Therefore, it's important to identify and fix them.
Assess your site’s performance
Ensure your page performs well and loads quickly. If it doesn't, Google may not rank it as you'd prefer. Learn more about Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) as it is a user-centric performance metric that measures the loading speed of the largest content element visible in the viewport of a webpage. It helps to understand and optimize the loading speed of their pages for better search engine rankings.
4. Accessibility
Why It's important? Prioritizing accessibility not only demonstrates ethical web practices but also positively impacts SEO. Search engines favor sites that are accessible to all users, including those with disabilities.
Color Contrast
Use tools like WebAIM Contrast Checker Tool to ensure adequate contrast between foreground and background colors for color accessibility.
Image Alt Text
Provide descriptive alt text for images, aiding screen readers and improving search engine context. Learn how to add alt text to your images.
Semantic HTML Structure
Ensuring a semantic HTML structure is all about using the HTML tags for their intended purpose. In Vev, this means that you should ensure that all your elements are using the HTML tags that define their content. Read more about how to use HTML tags in Vev.
ARIA and custom attributes
ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) attributes are a set of HTML attributes that can be used to add information to web content to make it more accessible to users with disabilities. ARIA attributes should only be used when there is no native HTML element that can describe the content or behavior of an element. Read more about how to add custom attributes