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How does GXportal 5.0 help us improve our visibility in search engines?

By Nicolás Cardelino, GXportal Developer & Eugenio García, GXportal Program Manager.
When we build a website we must take into account that the pages and, consequently, the contents that we publish should be easily found by the users who navigate the Web. To this end, our website must be well ranked in Web search engines. In this article we will describe the features offered by GXportal to achieve this.
 
First of all, let's define what it means to be well ranked in search engines. Basically, it is to be displayed among the first results of a user’s search when certain keywords are used. These are the words that we will have to keep in mind every time that we want something to be easily found.
 
In the past few years, it has gained such prominence that this field has been given a name and there are even experts on the subject. It is known as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and, basically, it is about the tasks that we have to perform in order to adjust the contents of our pages and the structure of our websites to have them indexed by search engines in the best way possible. Let’s see the features offered by GXportal 5.0 in this regard.
 
 
Friendly URLs
 
The use of Friendly URLs, that is to say, URLs that are friendlier for users and search engines makes it possible to provide more information because the URL contains text that is relevant to finding the page.
For example:
 
http://www.gxportal.com/comunidad/blog
http://www.gxportal.com/producto/Caracteristicas
This feature is automatic in GXportal 5.0 and once we publish our website its URLs will have this format.
 
 
Canonical URL Tag
 
This new Tag allows you to tell search engines which is the "preferred" URL to index the page. It is useful when the same page can be reached using different parameters, which can cause the page to be indexed several times and even prevent the indexer from indexing the rest of the pages in our website due to the large number of possible combinations to be analyzed.
For example, GXportal’s website can be accessed through these URLs:
 
http://www.gxportal.com
http://www.gxportal.com/principal
Using the "Canonical URL Tag" the search Engine is told that in fact it is the same page.
In Google’s blog for webmasters it is explained how it works.
 
 
More semantic code
 
Another way to simplify and improve the indexing of pages by search engines is to make the HTML code used in the page more semantic. In GXportal this is achieved, for instance, by tagging the page titles.
Certain tags are used in the HTML code generated for each page to indicate the content’s relevance. For example, the tags H1, H2 and H3 are used to tag what texts correspond to titles within the pages. H1 is used for the most important titles, H2 for the next importance level, etc.
 
 
Keywords and Meta-Description
 
Even though the most popular search engines increasingly give less relevance to the use of keywords that we can specify for each page, in this version we make it possible to define such keywords for each page. In addition, now we also give you the possibility to specify a short description (through the description meta-tag) for each page. All this is available for each language in which the website is being published.
 
 
Google Sitemaps
 
Another way to improve the indexing of our websites is the use of Sitemaps. Basically, it is an XML file in a certain format that we use to specify the list of links that we want to make absolutely sure that the Google indexer will visit. In the GXportal control panel there is an option to automatically generate this XML file. In Google Webmaster Central you can find more information about its use.
 
 
Conclusion
 
All the above options allow search engines to do a better indexing of your pages. However, they don't guarantee that your pages will be displayed among the first search results. To achieve this, the content published on each page is very important, using the right terms and words that you want to provide web users to find your website. In our case, we have built our website and contents so that anyone searching by “saas site builder” can find us among the first options of their search results.




Thus, the key lies in knowing what words to choose and offering quality content because as the saying goes, "On the Internet, content is king."
 
* Read this and other posts at http://www.gxportal.com/comunidad/blog
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