What is it?

Search Engine Optimization allows you to customize how a Channel, Page, or Space interacts with search engine robots, and how they are described in a search engine’s results. This feature also allows you to choose the default bookmark name will be if a digital workplace member creates bookmarks to easily access your workplace from within their browser. You can also restrict search engine robots from interacting with publicly accessible areas of your workplace if you do not wish for their contents to be indexed.

For a Channel, Page, or Space in your workplace to be visible to search robots, it also needs to be publicly accessible.

Use Cases

Use Search Engine Optimization to restrict search engines from indexing or archiving externally facing parts of your workplace

For Example: A site administrator may want their CEO’s Blog and Customer Forum to be publicly accessible. However, they only want search engine robots to index the Blog, and not posts or replies on the Forum. Using Search Engine Optimization the site Administrator can set up different behaviors for these channels, restricting search engine access to the Forum, while allowing both Channels to be still visible by those not yet in the workplace.

For the forum channel, they would select the NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW, and NOARCHIVE options to restrict search engine robot behavior.

Features and functionality

Page title

By default, the title of the page you are on will be the same as the title that has been set for the current Page, Space, or Channel. This will be displayed in your browser’s tab and bookmarks in the format: title - workplace name. Setting the Page Title in Search Engine Optimization will override the title of the Page, Space, or Channel with what has been entered.

Meta description

When a search engine displays its results each item typically has a brief description of the page. The text that you enter in this field is what the search engine will display and should clearly and concisely provide a description of your web page that would be useful to those who are not members of your workplace.

Meta keywords

Use a comma-separated list of keywords that accurately identifies the contents of your web page. These keywords are used by some search engines to better inform search results. For example, if your workplace has a publicly facing Blog which announces new product releases, you should have Meta Keywords relating to the type of product you offer and the industry it relates to. For instance, a company that makes hockey equipment could use Meta Keywords such as: sports, hockey, equipment, skates, sticks, helmet.

Meta robots

These options all limit the behavior of search engine robots. NOINDEX will ensure that the web page will not be indexed, and as a result not appear in search engine results. Typically, when a search engine robot accesses a web page it builds a list of all the links on a webpage which it will later try to access, selecting NOFOLLOW will prevent the links on a page from being followed. Some search engines will archive the contents of a web page allowing an archived version to be accessed even if the web page is currently not available. By selecting NOARCHIVE this archiving behavior will be disabled.

How to access search engine optimization

Search Engine Optimizations are set separately for each web page in your workplace and only need to be set for pages that are publicly accessible. To make a web page in your workplace publicly accessible read our article on Anonymous Access.

Step 1: Open the Action Menu

In the top right corner of your Channel, Page, or Space there is an icon that looks like a downward pointing triangle, select it.

Step 2: Select, Advanced

After you select the Action Menu icon, your Action Menu will appear. Select, Advanced from the provided list of options.

Frequently asked questions

Does search engine optimization impact the search results within my workplace?

No. These settings only affect external search engines.