Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps your content appear in search engine results, making it easier for users to find your pages. While your site’s global SEO settings are already configured, you have the ability to customize certain page-specific SEO settings, such as the meta description and social media preview. This guide explains briefly what SEO is, why it matters, and how to edit individual page SEO settings.

What Is SEO and Why Does It Matter?

SEO is the practice of improving your website’s visibility in search engines like Google. For University websites, SEO helps prospective and current students, faculty, staff, and community members find the information they need quickly. Good SEO helps:

• Increase traffic to your site
• Improve the quality and relevance of that traffic
• Ensure your content is discoverable by the right audience

Key Page-Specific SEO Elements to Focus on

While many technical SEO settings are already handled globally for you in WordPress, you may consider customizing the following on a per-page basis:

• Meta Title (optional override of the page title, should rarely be changed)
• Meta Description (summary shown in search results describing the page, should be under 160 characters)
• Social Media Preview (image, title, and description for social media platforms like Facebook and X)

Editing Page-Specific SEO Settings in WordPress

1. From the Dashboard, navigate to the content you want to edit (e.g., Pages, Posts, etc.)
2. Hover over the item you want to edit and click Edit.
3. Scroll down to the Yoast SEO panel at the bottom of the screen.
4. Make page-specific SEO changes as needed. These fields use the globally set values by default, but you can override them on a page-by-page basis:
   • SEO title: Page title by default.
   • Meta description: Global meta description by default.
   • Social image: Global social image by default (usually the App State block "A" logo). Use a 1200x630px image for best results.
   • Social title: Page title by default.
   • Social description: Global media description by default.

Page-Specific SEO Best Practices

• Include commonly searched for keywords in your meta description naturally.
• Do not worry about every field. Focus on the meta description and social preview.
• You do not need to aim for a "green light" for SEO ranking. This is a helpful guide, not a requirement.