SEO Manual

Target group: Editors

Metadata

Hreflang-Tag

The hreflang tag is used for websites with multiple language versions of URLs. The tag makes it easier for Google to serve the correct language URL in search results.

Further information can be found here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en&ref_topic=2370587

Noindex

Noindex is used to tell search engines to drop the page entirely from search results. It’s a useful tool to control your pages from getting indexed. Generally it’s used to prevent duplicate content as well as keeping internal generated pages out of getting indexed by search engines.

Further information can be found here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710?hl=en

Nofollow

The nofollow attribute is a way to tell search engines to not follow links on a certain page. So the link is still persisting for users but the crawler is not following any outgoing link from this page anymore. This means the link juice of the website is not relayed to other pages. If the crawler should follow but shouldn’t index the page, than you have to use following Meta-Tag noindex/follow:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />

Further information can be found here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/96569?hl=en

Title-Tag

The title tag is the most important on-page SEO element. Google is considering title tags as an important ranking factor, therefore it`s important to place keywords to the front of title tags to improve your position in search results.

Further information can be found here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35624?visit_id=1-636153175105126499-721612477&rd=1

Meta-Descriptions

Meta descriptions accurately represent the content of a certain URL, so the user gets a clear idea of the expected content. The description has no influence on the rankings, but an attractive description can influence the click rate and so the traffic on your website.

Further information can be found here: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2007/09/improve-snippets-with-meta-description.html

Canonical

The canonical tag is used for pages with same or nearly same content. It´s a way to show search engines which version is he original and should appear in search results. Thus, all other versions are no duplicate content anymore and should remove by search engines from the index.

Further information can be found here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en

Structured Data-Markup / Website-Information as JSON-LD

JSON-LD is one different way to mark up your structured data by using schema.org vocabulary. Search engines will understand the data and can present search results more attractively in terms of rich snippets. For example stars for product reviews or the appearance of a breadcrumb.

Further information can be found here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/3069489?hl=en

XML-Sitemap

A XML-Sitemap is a file with all the pages of your website to give google and other search engines an understanding about the organization of your site content. Sitemaps can improve the crawling of your website, so that every site has the chance to get seen by the crawler. Additionally you can tag crawl priorities to each site by using a range from 0-1. Especially if you have a large website with a lot of pages it`s really useful to have a XML-Sitemap.

Further information can be found here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/156184?hl=en