SEO: Search engine optimization for Composer

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Improving your site's search ranking is a never-ending quest for perfection that works best when there is a solid plan of action. To help with that, Composer offers several ways to offer search services focused information about your school and your online presence.

Robots.txt

Robots.txt is a file on your server that instructs search engines which sections of your site are public and should be indexed and which sections should not appear on searches. Composer automatically generates and updates this file based on your SEO settings.

For direct access, go to Domain settings > SEO.

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You can add explicit allow/disallow requests to your site's robots.txt file from that page.

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Make sure you use proper syntax when adding custom requests! Learn more about proper use and formatting at robotstxt.org.

Not comfortable writing code? Composer automatically generates a "disallow" rule for an individual page when the Hide from external search engines option is selected on that page's Settings > General Tab. Open the gear icon in the lower right to access the Page Settings window.

Image alt text

Alt text is metadata associated with an image that describes the picture. Having descriptive text for your images is not only important for SEO, but is also required for compliance with the Accessibility guidelines. Make sure you use descriptive, helpful terms - be concise without sacrificing detail.

  • Bad: "Sports"
  • Better: "Girls Basketball Game"
  • Best: "Senior Megan Reynolds shooting a basket"

Here's what Google has to say about publishing images.

Meta tags

"Meta information" is sometimes called "data about data." There are several different types of meta tags that can be added to your site to describe what sort of information it provides. You can add meta tags and other custom <head> content in the Domain Settings.

Meta tags applied in the Domain Settings will impact every page on the site. You can also set meta tags on individual pages, however, to impact how the internal pages on your site stack up against one another in searches. You might want to ensure that your Athletics landing page has meta content referencing "athletics" for instance, to ensure that users searching for information about sports are directed to that page.

Every page on your site has a Page Settings menu, accessible by clicking the gear icon in the bottom right corner.

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Once inside Settings, click the SEO tab to adjust the meta content for that specific page. Meta content is categorized the following ways.

SEO Title and SEO Description

Title and Description fields in SEO Section

Enter an ideal SEO Title and SEO Description for the way your website would show up in search results. 

Important Note

It's not possible to completely control the description snippet that search engines use, we can only attempt influence what they choose. The best way to do this is by setting a Meta Description in the Page Settings.

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SEO Keywords

Use this field sparingly by only adding a few of the most important search terms relevant to the page.

Mobile friendly

Being accessible to all screen types is an important SEO factor. All Composer sites are responsive, meaning they are equally compatible with desktop screens, phone screens, and anything in between. This makes your site compatible with Google’s Mobile First initiative, which builds their search index based primarily on mobile content.

Sitemap

A sitemap is a file used by search engines to determine what kind of information is stored on your site and how it's organized. It is a very important part of SEO. Fortunately, Composer automatically creates dynamic, accurate sitemaps. You can find yours by adding "/fs/pages/sitemap.xml" to the end of your site's URL. Submitting a sitemap directly to Google via the Search Console is a great way to proactively boost your SEO. Without this it could take a few weeks for Google to recrawl the site.

Finalsite SEO Services

Still not sure where to begin? Start a conversation with one of our SEO experts. The SEO landscape is constantly changing, and Finalsite's team focuses on the day-to-day practicalities of effective SEO both on your site and in conjunction with advertising partners so that you don't have to.

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