Improving Site SEO

What is SEO?

SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization” and it refers to how well your site ranks on Google and other search engines. Having better SEO means your site is better optimized and will generally perform better in search results.

How important is SEO?

Depending on the purpose of your site, you may not need to prioritize your appearance in search results. It all depends on who is viewing your site and where they’re coming from. If your site is generally used as an intranet for students who will use a direct link to find your site, for example, you may not need to put as much time and energy into improving your SEO. On the other hand, department sites that rely on discovery from new users searching on Google should definitely pay attention to how well their site performs.

Optimizing Your Site

What are search engines looking for?

SEO is very simple in the sense that search engines are just trying to provide users with the answers and results that are relevant to their query. If your site answers their question well, it will appear higher in the search results. However, there’s a lot of extra steps you can take to ensure your site is optimized for what your prospective site visitors might be searching for.

The CALSv4 theme is built with SEO in mind. So the good news is, you’re already most of the way there! Here’s a few things that we take care of so you don’t have to.

• Good, clean code – Search engines need to understand the code and content on your site in order to provide results, and we’ve taken care of making sure they can read the code.
• Mobile-friendly – As of January 2025, over 60% of all website traffic comes from mobile devices, so Google ranks sites that are optimized for mobile devices more highly.
• Site formatting – Our theme is coded to help search engines understand your website title, page titles, and descriptions for each page so that your content is displayed correctly in search results.

What can I do to improve my SEO?

• Edit page/post SEO meta fields – The CALSv4 theme gives you control over how each page displays in search results and social media. You can control the page title, description, image, and even add custom meta tags. To edit the fields, open the document settings panel on the right (the sidebar toggle next to the save button) and make sure “Page” (or “Post”) is selected on the top. Find the button in the panel that says SEO Settings.
  Please note: Editing your title or description will not guarantee it will be used in search results. Sometimes, search engines may choose to use a different title or description based on the user’s query and their indexing of your site. Keep in mind updates can also take several days or weeks to register in search results.
  • Meta Title – The content of the clickable link to your page in search results and shares to social media. If no meta title is provided, it will fall back to the actual page title.
  • Meta Description – The description underneath the title in search results and shares to social media. If no meta description is provided, it will fall back to the page or post excerpt, which can be manually entered or automatically generated by WordPress. Keep in mind that any excerpts longer than 150-160 characters will typically have the ending trimmed off in search results.
  • Social Media Image – The image that will be displayed if the page or post is shared to a social media site, such as Facebook or LinkedIn. If no image is provided, the featured image or site default will be used.
    • To edit your site’s default social media image, go to Appearance > Customize from the admin dashboard. Choose SEO and you’ll see a spot to upload or replace your site default.
  • Custom Meta Tags – If you need more fine-grained control over a page’s meta tags, you can add your own here. They will be added to the page as property, content pairs.
    <meta property=”property” content=”content” />
• Make sure your site is set to be indexed by search engines – There is a setting in WordPress that tells search engines they shouldn’t show your site in search results. This is useful when you have an unfinished site, but will be detrimental to your SEO. CALS site administrators always make sure to disable this option when making a site live, but it’s always a good idea to double check. To access this setting from the dashboard, go to Settings > Reading > Search engine visibility and make sure “Discourage search engines from indexing this site” is not checked.
• Optimize your content for SEO – Create quality content that users are searching for. You can review Google’s recommendations for content as well as do your own research on how to write content that scores well. Keep in mind: it is important to write content for people, not search engines. Stuffing your content with keywords you think users will search for provides a poor user experience and could even be flagged as spam by search engines.
• Manually submit your site to Google – Search engines generally do a good job discovering new sites and indexing them. However, you can prompt Google to index your site manually by visiting https://search.google.com/search-console/welcome. You will be asked to verify your ownership of the site before you can access the panel:
  1. Enter the Google Search Console. If you are prompted to choose between Domain and URL prefix, choose URL prefix and enter your site’s domain name.
  2. Obtain your Google site verification code on the ownership verification page in Google Search Console by choosing the HTML tag method.
  3. Return to your site. Enter the customizer by selecting “Customize” from the top admin bar or from the sidebar in your dashboard (Appearance > Customize).
  4. Once you are in the customizer, navigate to Advanced > Google Site Verification. Enter your code here and click the “Publish” button at the top.
  5. Return to the Google Search Console. You can follow the WiscWeb KB article here for steps to submit your sitemap.

Why isn’t my site showing up in search results?

• Your site might not be indexed – You can check to see if your site has been indexed by Google by searching “site:yourdomain.cals.wisc.edu” in a Google search. If it is not indexed, you can submit the site to Google following the steps above for “manually submit your site to Google.”
• Your site might be new – Improving SEO is a slow process, and it can take several months to start seeing the results of your optimizations. If your site is still brand new, you may need to wait a few months before you start seeing it in search.
• Your SEO might be poor – Consider making some changes to improve your SEO. See our recommendations above for improving your performance.