The first place you can add SEO info on your CCK website is directly on each of your pages.

Add SEO page titles and meta descriptions for each of your pages by opening your page menu, selecting your page settings > show settings as shown below:

On the next pop-up screen you will have the option to view Page Info or SEO Info:

Page Title - this is the title that outlines what the page is about. It is the page used by Google to show the results page. The orange tracker bar shows the optimal title length of the Page Title. Make sure you have a compelling sentence with keywords that are relevant for page visibility.

Meta Description - this is a brief explanation of the page. Make sure you also include your keywords in the description and write your description in such a way that it makes people click on the page when it shows up in Google.

Add to Sitemap - that adds or removes the page from the Sitemap.xml that helps Search Engines to index (find) your page. If the page is still being built, make sure that it is removed from your Sitemap.

Share Image - this is the image used on social media when you share a link to the page. If you do not add an image here, the main website social sharing image will be used.

Let’s start with the basics. If you look at the source of a page (right-click on the page, then choose View Page Source), you find a title in the head section. It looks like this:

This is the HTML title tag, which we also call the page title or SEO title. When you look something up in a search engine, you get a list of results that appear as snippets. Often, the SEO title is part of the snippet together with at least a URL and a meta description. Of course, some rich results also display ratings and other additional information.

In most cases, the first thing people see, even before they get on your site, is the SEO title. Just to be clear, you should not confuse the SEO title with the main heading of the page. The main heading is what users see after they click on the SEO title and get on the page itself.

In tabbed browsers, you will usually also see the SEO title in the page tab, as shown in the image below.

The purpose of your SEO title is to make people click on it, visit your website and read your post or buy your product. If your title is not good enough, people will ignore it and move on to other results.

Essentially, there are two goals that you want to achieve with your page title:

An XML sitemap is a file that lists a website’s essential pages, making sure Google can find and crawl them all. It also helps search engines understand your website structure. You want Google to crawl every important page of your website. But sometimes, pages end up without internal links pointing to them, making them hard to find. A sitemap can help speed up content discovery.

You can find your CCK sitemap page by typing in your domain and adding /sitemap.xml at the end of your URL. See below:

The meta description is a snippet of up to about 155 characters, which summarizes a page’s content. Search engines show it in search results mostly when the searched-for phrase is within the description. So optimizing it is crucial for on-page SEO.

The purpose of a meta description is simple: it needs to help someone searching with a search term on Google, find your website or page. In other words, meta descriptions are there to generate click-throughs from search engines.

Search engines say there is no direct SEO benefit from the meta description, they don’t use it in their ranking algorithm.

But there is an indirect benefit: Google uses click-through rate (CTR) as a way of working out whether you’re a good result. If more people click on your result, Google considers you to be a good result and will, based on your position, move you up the rankings. This is why optimizing your meta description is so important, as is optimizing your titles.

Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that Google will display the meta description that you’ve written. But, as there is a chance it will, it’s always worth the effort to add it to your post or page.

The right length doesn’t really exist; it depends on the message you want to convey. You should take enough space to get the message across, but keep it short and snappy at the same time. However, if you check the search results in Google, you’ll mostly see snippets of 120 to 156 characters, like in the example below.

Unfortunately, we can’t fully control what Google displays in the search results. Sometimes it decides to show the meta description, and sometimes it just grabs some sentences of your copy. Either way, your best bet is to keep it short. That way, if Google does decide to show the meta description you’ve written, it won’t be cut short.

If you consider the meta description of the invitation to your page, you have to think about your user and their (possible) motivation to visit your page. Make sure that your description isn’t dull, difficult or too cryptic. People need to know what they can expect to find on your page.

The example in the image below is the kind of description you should strive to write. It’s active, motivating, and addresses you directly. You just know what you’re going to get if you click on the link!

“Hello, we have such and such new product, and you want it. Find out more!” This overlaps with what we said about the active voice, but we wanted to emphasize it once again. The meta description is your sales text. Except, in this case, the “product” you are trying to sell is the page that is linked. Invitations like Learn more, Get it now, Try for free come in handy and we use them too.

If you have a product in your Shopify or WooCommerce store aimed at the tech-savvy, it can be a good idea to focus on the technical specs. For example, you can include the manufacturer, SKU, price, and things like that.

If the visitor is specifically looking for that product, chances are you won’t have to convince them. As in the example below. The watch can help us stay fit? Sign us up, that’s all we needed to know. Note that to optimize your result in this manner, you should work on getting rich snippets.

This is an important one. Google will find out if you use the meta descriptions to trick visitors into clicking on your result. They might even penalize you if you do it. But besides that, misleading descriptions will probably also increase your bounce rate. Which will also lower people’s trust in your company. It’s a bad idea for that reason alone. That is why you want the meta description to match the content on the page.

If your meta description is the same as those for other pages, the user experience in Google will be hampered. Although your page titles might vary, all pages will appear to be the same because all the descriptions are the same. Instead of creating duplicate meta descriptions, you’d be better off leaving it blank. Google will pick a snippet from the page containing the keyword used in the query. That being said, writing a unique meta description for every page you want to rank with is always the best practice.

A good meta description convinces people that your page offers the best result for their query. But, to be the best result, you must know what people are looking for. What is their search intent? Are they looking for an answer to a question? If they are, try to give them the most complete answer. Are they looking for a product? Write down what makes your product stand out and why they would best buy it in your store. Be concise and convincing.

You get real-time feedback on the meta description length in the meta description box on your page. When you start typing in the meta description input field you will notice an orange bar underneath the input field. It’s orange when you start typing and will become green when you’ve added enough information. When you add too much text, it will turn orange again.

CCK has a built-in page title and meta description length assessment checker.

This check measures whether your page title or meta description (less than 120 characters and more than 156 characters) is too short or too long. When your page title or meta description has the right length, you’ll get a green bar. If it’s too long, or too short, you’ll get an orange bar.

Website loading times are important for SEO. The faster your website loads when someone opens it on their desktop or mobile phone, the easier it is for users and search engines to visit (and index) a page.

Images can have a big impact on loading times, especially when you upload a huge image to display it really small – for example, a 2500×1500 pixels image displayed at 250×150 pixels size – as the entire image still has to be loaded. So resize the image to how you want it displayed.

CCK helps you do this by automatically resizing your image when you upload it. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean the file size is optimized as well, that’s just the image display size. So think about the size in which you upload your images.

A great step to take is to resize or compress your images before you upload them to your website. You can do this in a few ways:

➡️ Read more about resizing website images here.

SEO is a tricky subject which many people study for years to truly master. SEO also unfortunately changes as Google updates its algorithm.

It is still, however, worth educating yourself as much as possible on SEO and how you can get the benefits of using it correctly on your website.

A great free SEO course you can take is this SEO introduction course hosted by Yeost SEO: Yoast SEO For Beginners Course