My setup for using SEO Helper stacks in Rapidweaver

Why SEO Helper?

We used to get by without SEO helper of course using the basic meta tags pane provided by Rapidweaver. This allowed us to enter some metadata items such as Meta Description and a free format area to define our own tags but without any discussion of what to put in those tags. You could also enter into the page specific HTML code your own structured data code but you would have to go somewhere else to find a site that could generate that code for you.

SEO Helper gives you a whole set of ready made stacks that are like template forms that you just have to fill out and publish and you are done. But how do you decide what to put into the templates that it provides and which ones to use where?

So first up I would say that you have to understand that SEO helper is merely structuring the data in the fields in the stacks as you enter it and adding it to the published page in the correct format. It cannot know whether you have duplicated a meta description on several different pages for instance so you need to understand some of the basics of SEO first before you start adding SEO Helper stacks to every page.

On this site you are looking at, the Home page is targeting the keyword 'Web Design York' which has 130 searches per month. The SEO optimisation page is targeting the keywords 'search engine optimisation' and 'SEO in York' (100 searches per month). I mention this because any website probably has a number of different products or services that you want to target for. It would be a mistake to try and target every page for 'Web design York' for example as Google would then get confused about which page is the landing page for a search on the keyword 'Web design York'.

So for the basic stack in SEO Helper called SEO Basics I put this on every page that I want to be found in a search query but make sure that there are different texts especially in Meta Title and Meta Description.

NB. Note that the standard meta data fields in the right hand Meta Tags pane of Rapidweaver are all empty. This is deliberate, as using the SEO Meta Tags stacks, Structured Data stacks etc replaces the standard Meta Tags pane in Rapidweaver. Using both is NOT advised and a warning message will pop up if you leave anything showing or checked in the right pane in the image above.

NB: The only exception to the above is that I still define Browser Title in the Rapidweaver pane called General Settings on each page making sure that it is unique and contains the relevant keywords where appropriate.

Structured Data

I also have on this Home page the Structured Data - Organisation stack which I also put onto every page that I want to be found and I don't believe that making this the same on every page will hurt.

There are numerous structured data stacks available in SEO Helper. The role of structured data is to tell search engines what your page is about and what sort of category it might fit into. For a lot of websites it may be obvious that a page is about a product for example. For my site it is not so obvious how to categorise pages apart from the About page which has the structured data schema for Person on it.

If you have a client's site check whether there is a structured data schema for their line of business. I only recently realised that the Structured Data - Local Business schema has a specific entry for 'Locksmith' for example.

Image Alt Tags

Image alt tags are designed to aid accessibility and will read out to a partially sighted viewer whatever you put into them as a description of the picture you attach them to. They can be used for SEO purposes but should be used sparingly. Web Site Auditor usually flags up keyword stuffing if I try and use more than one picture on a page to contain keywords so if you do add keywords into image alt tags - do it sparingly as this activity may be penalised.

Pages you don't want/need to be found in searches

I do not have any SEO Helper stacks on the following pages, apart from Page Language set to English:

Blog Admin, Blog Edit, Reviews Admin, Reviews Edit, Admin, Page Not Found or PWA

Duplicate Meta Tags found message

This message will appear in preview mode only, if you have anything set up on the meta tags pane in Rapidweaver. If you are using SEO Helper make sure that you have all the fields in this side panel under meta tags cleared out including Enable Robot meta tags.

You should also clear out the Generate Social Tags check box on the General page in Settings in the left pane as SEO Helper will also generate all the settings you need for Facebook, Twitter etc.

TCMS Blog and Structured Data

TCMS Blog creates its own meta data for most things except structured data. If you want to add a structured data schema to a Blog Post page you could choose either Structured Data - Blog Post or Article I think. They are very similar but because they contain several variable data fields rather than static ones you need to be aware of how Blog Post macros work. It helps to have the Blog Macro Hints stack on the Blog Post page whilst you set it up but here is my working set up:

When setting this up I got quite confused when trying to get the image to work until I realised with some help from Joe that I was using the Blog Gallery (plural) rather than the Blog Image (single image) on my Blog Edit page. As a result my attempts to target blogImage weren't working because that relates to a single image set up on the blog post page.

The key intervention that Joe made was to release new versions of the Blog Macros that strip out HTML code so make sure that you use those if you are following what I have done. Before that release I was getting numerous errors every time I inserted lists, images that were centred and anything else that used HTML inside the HIPWIG code.

Rich Results Test

So how do you go about validating what you have done with structured data schemas? Google provides the Rich Results Test which allows you to check that your set up is valid. Here is the result of this test against this blog post entry. Curiously, although I added the Blog Post entry, Rich Results thinks it is an Article but I don't think it makes much difference.

The Rich Results Test can be used on any page where you use structured data, not just Blog Posts.

Does structured data help SEO?

Google don't definitively say that it does but on the other hand they don't definitively say that it doesn't. What they say is that it helps robots identify what a page is about and help to categorise it so the accepted view amongst most SEO professionals is that this is going to help Google and other search engines understand your pages and that can't be a bad thing. Indeed audit tools that I have seen will flag up any pages where you don't have structured data as a bad thing so really its increasingly becoming a no brainer that you should make the effort to add it.

Tools Used

I use Website Auditor to check my pages are properly optimised and technically set up correctly.

I use Rank Tracker to monitor my ranking positions for Google (UK) Google Mobile (UK) and Bing (UK).

Summary

Getting your on-page optimisation done is a key part of SEO and getting your meta data set up correctly is an important part of that. I haven't gone into here how I tackle the technical side of things but I also spend a lot of time making sure that my page speed loading times are acceptable.

It is only one part of the overall picture though. Attracting natural, relevant links into your site is also important but probably the biggest contributor to SEO is the text content that you have on your page. There is an old adage that 'Content is King' and that is still very much true today. Having lots of well written, jargon free, relevant text content that is engaging for readers of your site is still as important. If you get people to click on your site link on a search results page you still have to engage with them and keep them viewing your site for long enough to realise that whatever service you are providing or product you are selling is exactly what they are looking for.