Nicely-written text in the search engine listing can also influence people to choose to visit your site over sites that may rank higher. If more people choose your site, this then will help you move up the search engine rankings.
On this page:
- How to change the search engine listing text
- How to hide pages from search engine listings
- Ideas for well-written text
How to change the text
A search engine listing contains a title and a description. A search engine will almost always use your customised title; it is not 100% guaranteed that a search engine will use your description, but it is still well worth doing.
Edit the page, and go down below the text editor/page builder to the ‘Custom Fields‘ section. (If you cant see this box, try going to Screen Options in the very top right of the page, and seeing if the Custom Fields box is checked)
You may need to click on the little arrow to expand the box. If it is your first time doing this, select Enter new
To change the title, add seo_title in the left box and your title in the right box. This should be short; at most 60 characters.
Note: for the front page of the site, the name of the site is currently used instead of our title for the seo_title.
To add a description, add seo_description in the left box and the description in the right.
The next time you edit a page, the seo_title and seo_description options will already be there
Hiding your post from search engines
Set a custom field with the name noindex and value yes. If you want to make the post available again, you can set it to no or just remove the custom field entirely.
Ideas for good search engine listings
Make it engaging. The key is to encourage people to click on link and visit your site.
It needs to be short and simple, not too ‘wordy’. Consider starting with a verb:
- Discover how to meditate
- Learn more about our free meditation classes
- Learn how to meditate and make it part of your daily routine
- Find out how to meditate
It helps to emphasis the specific value of our classes, to distinguish ourselves from the myriad other groups out there.
- You are welcome to try our free classes and workshops which combine simple, effective meditation techniques and ancient spiritual wisdom for the modern world.
- Discover our heart-based approach to meditation and spirituality.
- Courses offered by Sri Chinmoy Centre.