Good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is key to ensuring your website ranks high on the search results of sites like Google and Bing. Achieving a high ranking for specific terms is a complex process with lots of contributors including both on-page and off-page factors.
Syngency uses a number of best-practices for maintaining good SEO behind the scenes, but there are some simple on-page improvements you can do yourself to help. These include:
Ensuring your website content is well structured, well connected and includes the terms your audience are searching for.
Ensuring page titles are appropriate for the content and fully describe the page.
Adding well-crafted meta descriptions to each page of your website.
On-Page Content
Crafting content that performs well against desired search terms is a challenge for many talent agencies, as agency websites are typically media-heavy and low on text content. You may consider some of the following on your website:
An agency introduction on your home page which clearly describes what kind of talent you represent, what services you offer for what kinds of businesses, and in what physical regions you operate.
A detailed About page with an extended version of the above.
Detailed landing pages focused on specific services or regions you operate in.
A brief text description for each of your talent divisions shown on-page.
Text profiles/bios for each of your talent shown with their visual media.
Utilizing the posts feature to promote (and describe) recent work by your talent / agency, or discuss important industry topics in a unique way which may attract more traffic and give you opportunities to share your website externally.
Consider what specific words your target audience is searching for, and review how well (and how uniquely) your website's content aligns. Craft your written content to read naturally, but include relevant terms where possible.
Meta Titles and Descriptions
Titles will affect your pages' ranking so it's important they are brief, unique and accurately describe the page's content. Meta descriptions may be a reducing ranking signal, but they are prominent in search engine results pages so a well-crafted description may influence a searcher's choice of which sites to visit.
For divisions and user-created posts and pages, Syngency has SEO Title and SEO Description fields which will automatically override the default meta description and title for those pages. For divisions, you can find these fields under Settings > Types > Divisions, then click a division to open the editor. For pages and posts, you'll find the SEO fields under the main content editor fields.
For other pages like your home page, submission form or talent portfolios, these titles and meta descriptions will need to be set using some simple Liquid control flow tags and template variables in your website templates.
Remember, Syngency uses the same Liquid template tags that Shopify does, and they have a great resources on what you can do with Liquid, and most relevant to this article, how control flow tags work.
Here's an example to get you started – it should appear at the top of your Master website template. Note: most Syngency-built websites have a similar structure set up by default - you may wish to check with our support team if you're unsure before making changes.
{% assign metaDesc = "" %}
{% assign pageTitle = page_name %}
{% comment %}
Use the SEO Title or SEO Descriptions entered in Syngency
{% endcomment %}
{% if meta_title %}
{% assign pageTitle = meta_title %}
{% endif %}
{% if meta_description %}
{% assign metaDesc = meta_description %}
{% endif %}
{% comment %}
Override titles and descriptions per template
{% endcomment %}
{% case template %}
{% when 'home' %}
{% when 'division' %}
{% when 'model' %}
{% assign pageTitle = model.display_name %}
{% if division %}
{% assign pageTitle = pageTitle | append: ' | ' | append: division.name %}
{% endif %}
{% assign metaDesc = model.display_name | append: ' ' | append: division.name | append: ' model, represented by ' | append: agency.name | append: ' in Los Angeles, California' %}
{% when 'post' %}
{% when 'model_submission' %}
{% else %}
{% endcase %}
{% comment %}
Add the agency name to the end of all page titles
{% endcomment %}
{% assign metaTitle = pageTitle | append: ' | ' | append: agency.name %}
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>{{ metaTitle }}</title>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge,chrome=1">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no">
<meta name="description" content="{{ metaDesc }}" />
<meta property="og:locale" content="en_US">
<meta property="og:type" content="website">
<meta property="og:title" content="{{ metaTitle }}">
<meta property="og:description" content="{{ metaDesc }}">
<meta property="og:url" content="{{ agency.url }}">
<meta property="og:site_name" content="{{ agency.name }}">
<meta name="twitter:title" content="{{ metaTitle }}">
<meta name="twitter:url" content="{{ page_url }}">
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary">
<meta name="twitter:description" content="{{ metaDesc }}">
{% if template == 'model' %}
<link rel="canonical" href="{{ agency.url }}{{ model.url }}" />
{% endif %}
{{ content_for_header }}
</head>
What Else?
Aside from your on-page SEO, a major contributor to the ranking of your website comes from off-page SEO. In simple terms, off-page SEO is the process of getting your website significantly connected to other reputable websites on the internet. Common areas of off-page SEO effort include:
Increasing backlinks (other websites linking to yours). This is a key factor in your website search rankings. Consider that search engines give quality results by providing links to the most relevant and reputable matches to any particular search. If no other reputable websites link to yours, it will be much more challenging to "convince" a search engine that you're a relevant and reputable player in your industry.
Google Business profile (includes showing your business location and information in Google Maps). This helps Google provide information about businesses in or near the searcher's region, which improves your visibility with local searchers when competing for common search terms.
Other online directory listings (may be helpful for localized search ranking).
Tools
In order to get visibility of your website's search indexing and any issues affecting search performance, you will need to use Google Search Console and if Bing is important to you, Bing Webmaster Tools. Adding your primary Syngency / website domain to these tools then submitting your Syngency sitemap will help search engines keep their indexes updated effectively. You can find your Syngency sitemap by appending /sitemap.xml to your primary domain.
You may also like to get a clearer picture of how your website is being used in detail, including traffic sources, user demographics and stats per page. A common tool for this job is Google Analytics. It's free for you to set this up yourself, and once you have a tracking script to add to your site, we'll gladly add it to your website for you - just reach out to our support team.