Preparing your Website for Traffic – SEO and Social Networking Buttons

Modern websites have two main methods of attracting traffic – SEO and social networking. SEO involves optimizing a website for search engine traffic. Search engines need certain words (keywords) to identify what a website is about. Below, we discuss how you can use relevant keywords in meta title, description and keywords – and set alt and title tags of images.

Just as important as SEO is social networking. Never have all your eggs in one basket. It will be wise to use SEO along with social networking buttons to attract a variety of organic traffic. In the second part of this tutorial, a popular method of adding social networking buttons to a website is discussed.

This is part 6 of our Build a Portfolio Website with Webydo series. Find the previous tutorials here:

1. Build a Portfolio Website
2. Full Page Slideshow
3. Create a Gallery
4. Contact and Bio
5. Navigation Menu

1. Setting SEO of Images

   
   Open your Webydo portfolio. Double click an image to select it. In the top settings bar, fill in a title and alt tag.
   
   The title tag is the text which appears as a popup when the cursor is hovered over an image. The alt tag only appears to viewers if for some reason an image does not load, such as a user having images turned off in a web browser.
   
   What you enter here is up to you, but it will be a good idea to insert relevant keywords. Also keep the title and alt tags at most three or four words, as any more may appear spammy to search engines – and may have the opposite effect of getting a lower search rank for your  images.
   
   

2. SEO of pages

   
   Select Pages in the top menu, then hit the SEO link alongside any page.
   
   Set the SEO of pages to allow search engines to know what certain pages are about. The title and description meta tags will appear in search results - so along with including relevant keywords, try to make them interesting enough to influence clickthroughs.
   
   The description can be any length, but try to keep it less than 160 characters, as any more than that will be cut off in search results on Google. The description also appears when a page is shared at some social networks (such as Facebook).
   
   As for keywords, try to pick a few relevant to your content. Here are some general “rules” to follow.
   
   - separate keywords by commas
   - Use different ones on each page to give your website variety.
   - Try to not repeat words. For example, if you have a keyword phrase “abstract art” it will be redundant to have the word “art” as another keyword.
   
   

3. Social Network Buttons

   
   Social network buttons such as Facebook like or Twitter follow are probably just as important as SEO. Those who solely rely on search engines for visitors may end up with disappointment. Google has a tendency to update its search algorithm often. One day your site may be ranked high, and the next you may have a dramatic decrease in search traffic. It’s wise to build a social network following, so there will always be a flow of various types of traffic.
   
   With that being said, I will show you how to add some social networking buttons to your website.
   
   
4. First, go to the Webydo CMS. Grab the Widgets element and drag it to an empty spot on your content area. Make sure the widget is selected, then click HTML at the top. The HTML element is designed for adding any outside HTML code or exterior widgets to your Webydo website. In this case we will use it to add social networking buttons.
   
   

5. AddThis Social Share Buttons

   
   Instead of adding each social network button separately, we will make it easy for you by showing how to include them all at once using Addthis.
   
   
   
   Go to Addthis. If you have not used this before, first create an account. When you have returned to the share button page, first select the Website option, and pick a button style. Notice that the HTML code will be updated in the right panel.
   
   Select any of the styles. In the right panel, below the Preview box, click Disable and select your own buttons. Select the buttons you want in the left panel, and drag and reorder them in the right panel.
   
   Copy and paste the code into the HTML code section of the properties panel in Webydo.
   
   Hit Update. The social network buttons should instantly appear on your website.
   
   Now move the buttons to an appropriate placement, such as the top. Right-click on it and choose Repeat on all pages.
   
   Notice that the icons you chose before will appear, and all others can be selected using the “+” icon. To pick which icons you want in this plus menu, return to Addthis.
   
   Go to Settings in the top menu. On the next page, hit Share Settings in the left menu.
   
   Choose social network services in the left panel, and click “Add” to add them to the right panel. You can select up to 10.
   
   
   Hit the arrows to reorder in the sequence you want them displayed. When finished, click Save Changes.
   
   Congratulations! You now have social networking buttons on every page of your website! These will help in increasing your social shares, and over time will hopefully increase traffic to your website.
   
   Social Profiles Widget - (optional) To make another widget with icons directly linking to social profiles, create the code at the Addthis Follow Buttons page.

 

If you are following this tutorial series, we would love to know. Please include any websites or portfolios created with Webydo in the comment section below.

Watch for the next post in this series next week!