{"id":378,"date":"2020-05-30T22:48:06","date_gmt":"2020-05-30T22:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/help.birthingyourbrand.com\/?post_type=docs&p=378"},"modified":"2020-05-30T22:49:24","modified_gmt":"2020-05-30T22:49:24","slug":"search-engine-optimization","status":"publish","type":"docs","link":"https:\/\/help.birthingyourbrand.com\/docs\/search-engine-optimization\/","title":{"rendered":"Search Engine Optimization"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

You’ve probably heard a lot about local SEO being one of the most important facets when it comes to marketing your business online. This article will break down the basic steps for completing on-page SEO and off-page SEO for your birth professional business!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is Local SEO?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Local SEO serves to promote the visibility of your business on location-based searches. IT is aimed at making sure your business gets found online by people searching for it in your area. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These searches can include geo qualifiers, such as city, state, or zip, and ‘near me’ searches, where Google picks up the geo-location of the person searching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why is it important?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Local SEO is extremely important, especially if you have a business with a brick-and-mortar store or are providing a service for a certain area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Forbes, 95% of smartphone users have used their device to perform local searches, with 61% calling a business found and 59% actually making a visit to that business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This information tells you that leads from location-based searches are a major avenue for potential customers!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Below are instructions to use Birthing Your Brand’s SEO add-on to optimize your website for SEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Titles & Metas<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Title and meta description tags are central to any SEO effort. They are two of the most important factors when it comes to on-page SEO, besides the actual URL of the page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ability to control exactly what is used in search engines means you have control over your pages. Under the Titles & Metas area, you can do this for the entire site, every page, and every post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On the left-hand side, you can see the different pages that you can edit the titles & metas for from this area. Individual pages can have their title & meta description edited by going to Pages > All Pages<\/strong> and selecting Edit Page<\/strong> under the individual page. Scroll to the bottom of the page that opens and edit under the SEO<\/strong> tab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The edited title will appear in the tab in your web browser. We recommend using the following for your Home Page:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

%%tagline%% %%sep%% %%sitetitle%%<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Meta Description is a snippet of up to about 155 characters that summarizes a page’s content. For the Home Page, write something that is descriptive of what your web page and services are about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Single Post Types, we do not recommend making any changes to the title and meta descriptions. However, we do recommend selecting the checkboxes for “Display date in Google search results?” and “Display post thumbnail in Google Custom Search Results” for Posts. This will indicate in search results when the post was written, so only use this if you plan to consistently write new blog posts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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No other changes are recommended under Titles & Metas. We would like to take this opportunity to remind you to edit the Titles & Metas for your individual pages (about, contact, services) on their individual Edit Page<\/strong> screens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sitemaps<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

XML sitemaps are used by the search engines to help them crawl your website and see what is on your website. HTML sitemaps are there to help direct visitors to pages they are looking for. Both help bots and human visitors navigate your website and can be set up in less than a minute!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We recommend that you use the settings in the following image:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Social Networks<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Knowledge Graph<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Google Knowledge Graph is a huge bonus for your business. If you don’t know what it is, search for a brand, artist, movie, or business and look to the right of the search results. You should see a box containing a short bio, social media links, weblinks, and more information. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s the Google Knowledge Graph! You can create your very own for your business which will be shown when you come up in search results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To begin, select if your business is named after you as a person or its own organization. Add your name\/organization and a photo (recommend jpg or png format).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you are an organization, complete the remainder of the page. Be careful and follow instructions for the phone number as you must use the internationalized version.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have questions about the contact type, we recommend defaulting to Customer Support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your Social Accounts<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enter the URLs for any social media account that you have for your business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Facebook Open Graph<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When someone posts a link to a website on Facebook, Facebook shows a preview of the linked page content. Facebook is able to do this by crawling your website for “Open Graph” tags on your site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From this settings area, you can set the default open graph for your website. This can be overridden on specific pages and posts by editing under SEO<\/strong> on the Edit Page<\/strong> or Edit Post<\/strong> pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You only need to complete two sections on this page. The first <\/strong>is to “Select a Default Image” and the second is to enter a “Facebook Link Ownership ID”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For your default image, follow the minimum size instructions on the page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To find your Facebook Link Ownership ID:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

— From News Feed, click Pages in the left side menu.
– Click your Page name to go to your Page.
– Click About in the left column. If you don’t see About in the left column, click See More.
– Scroll down to find your Page ID below More Info.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twitter Card<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Twitter Card works the same way as Facebook Open Graph. Add a default image and set the image size to Large for best results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Analytics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Through the Analytics tab, you can set up Google Analytics; however, we recommend NOT setting this up through the SEO add-on. Use the Google Analytics Suite add-on instead!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is very important that you set up Google Analytics. Here is just a few of the many questions about your website that you can answer using Google Analytics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n