Website SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Introduction

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” search results on search engines.

Your Chime site has been built using SEO best practices but there are things that you can be doing to help increase site validity and reputation in the eyes of Google. Remember, SEO is a marathon, not a sprint! You must be consistent with your efforts over long periods of time in order for SEO to be improved and harnessed as a tool. SEO is about building your relationship with search engines as a valuable and reliable website and resource.

This article will review a few important ways you can begin your SEO journey with Chime websites.

• Add Unique Meta Data to Every Page on Your Website
• Start Relevant and Regular Blogging
• Increase Backlinking to Your Site
• Additional Resources
• 301 Redirects

Add Unique Meta Data to Every Page on Your Website

A "meta description" is a snippet of up to about 155 characters – a tag in HTML – which summarizes a page's content. Search engines show the meta description in search results mostly when the searched-for phrase is within the description, so optimizing the meta descriptions is crucial.

Best Practices

• Stay between 50-160 characters for your Meta Page Descriptions
• Stay under 60 characters for your Meta Page Titles
• Put important keywords first
• Do not overdo SEO keywords. While there is no penalty built into Google's algorithm for long titles, you can run into trouble if you start stuffing your title full of keywords in a way that creates a bad user experience
• Give every page a unique title. Unique titles help search engines understand that your content is unique and valuable, and also drive higher click-through rates
• Write for your customers. While title tags are very important to SEO, remember that your first job is to attract clicks from well-targeted visitors who are likely to find your content valuable.

How to Use Chime CMS to Make Changes

To make changes to existing pages in Chime using the New CMS, do the following:

To make changes to existing pages in Chime using the Original CMS, do the following:

*Note that meta keywords are not available to edit on the Original CMS.

Start Relevant and Regular Blogging

Blogging, when done regularly and with relevant information, can help boost your SEO rankings. There are many ways you can use blogging as a Real Estate Agent.

You can use blogging to help establish yourself as an area expert, providing helpful information to future residents or help to educate your Buyers and Sellers on the buying and selling in today's market. People investigate the areas they are moving to and want to understand what there is to do in the area, where the best places to eat might be or how walkable the area is.

You can even use blogging to help increase Backlinking which is explained more in-depth int he following section. For example, if you learn about an amazing restaurant in the area, blog about it and let that restaurant know. Chances are, they will use your link and post it to their social media or site to let their audience know they were featured. This is one way to increase your Backlinking. 

How to Use Chime to Blog

To learn how to use Chime to blog, please reference the following articles depending on which version of the CMS Tool you are using: 

• Original CMS: How to Manage the Chime Website Blog
• New CMS: Blog Page

Increase Backlinking to Your Site

Backlinks are when you are listed on another site and are especially valuable for SEO. They represent a "vote of confidence" from one site to another. In essence, backlinks to your website are a signal to search engines that others vouch for your content. If many sites link to the same webpage or website, search engines can infer that content is worth linking to, and therefore also worth surfacing on a search engine results page. So, earning these backlinks can have a positive effect on a site's ranking position or search visibility

• How many sites are currently backlinking to your site and what can you do to increase that number?

Additional Resources

Below are a couple additional resources to keep in your back pocket. They were created to help you understand the basics of SEO and how it relates to Chime.

• SEO for Real Estate Webinar Series

301 Redirects

Setting up 301 redirects is like forwarding your mail after a move. If you are migrating from an old website to a Chime website, you might have heard about 301 redirects and have a few questions about how they work at Chime. For all requests in this area, please submit a request via your Onboarding Specialist, Customer Success Manager (CSM), or our Support Team (support@chimeinc.com) for additional assistance.

Please note that all 301 redirects have to be done manually. Because of this, Chime is not able to do this on an individual, page-by-age basis. If you have pages that you want redirected, a request can be submitted to redirect multiple pages to one page on Chime. In most scenarios, redirecting to your Chime IDX website home page is sufficient as it keeps site visitors from getting lost.

If you are bringing over your domain to Chime, you can also work on recreating the same pages on Chime. This can work but will depend on the page structure that you are trying to create.

If you are concerned about how a large number of "dead links" will affect your SEO, Chime can help to submit a request to Google to help remove the dead links to avoid potential problems here.

Questions?

If you have any questions regarding this topic or any others, please reach out to our Support Team via email at <support@chimeinc.com> or by phone at 1 (855) 981-7557.