SEO options in the Website Builder

There are a few different places in the Website Builder that house SEO (search engine optimization) options, we’ll go over each of them in this article. 

• The 3 main pages, Home, Signup, and Upgrade, each have an individual setting where you can add a meta title and description for SEO. 
• Custom internal pages that you create give you those same SEO options in the setup process. 
• In the Settings tab, you can choose to enable or disable breadcrumbs and the option to have your beehiiv site indexed by search engines.

How to add SEO to a Home, Signup, or Upgrade Page

In in the Website Builder, there is an SEO panel that can be accessed from the Home, Signup, and Upgrade Pages.

1. Open the Website Builder and select the Home, Signup, or Upgrade Page, then look to the right where you’ll find a cog icon for the SEO panel next to the Example Site option. Click on the icon.
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. The SEO panel will open on the right where you can add the SEO title and description for the page. Enter a Meta Title and Meta Description into the fields, then click on Save.
   
   Note: In this context, Meta is an interchangeable term for SEO content. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. You’ll receive a quick ‘Saved’ message at the top of your screen and the panel will close.
   
   
   

How to remove indexing or enable breadcrumbs for your site

1. From the left panel in your account, go to Design > Website Builder.
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. The Website Builder will open on the Styles tab, but you’ll need to switch to the Settings tab. Then, click on the SEO option.
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. The SEO settings will show on the right for you to configure your search engine optimization details. You can enable or disable Breadcrumbs and Remove Indexing.
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Any time you toggle on or off either of these options, they will be saved automatically and you’ll receive a quick success message for each that says Saved at the top of your screen.
   
   
   
   
   
   

About Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are a helpful tool that keeps track of where a user is at by listing their location at the top of the page. To show breadcrumbs on your site, toggle the option on so that it shows as being checked (as pictured above).

SEO benefits of using breadcrumbs include:

• Increased Crawling: Internal links generated by the breadcrumbs expose the page hierarchy and content to search engine crawlers.
• Better Indexing: Faster indexing speed and increased validations of URLs in Google Search Console.
• Improved Ranking: Breadcrumbs strengthen the internal link architecture and include keywords above the fold.

About Indexing

If you already have your own blog or website that features your beehiiv publications online, you will want to enable Remove Indexing. To do this, toggle the option on so that it shows as being checked (as pictured above).

This setting prevents search engines from crawling your beehiiv website, which helps avoid duplicate content issues and protects your SEO efforts.

By default, when you create a beehiiv publication, a corresponding beehiiv website is generated, hosting all your content in a web archive. However, having your content on both your site and the beehiiv site can lead to SEO penalties due to duplicate content.

Additionally, it’s best to enable Remove Indexing if you don't want your beehiiv site to appear in search results or if it is content that you want to keep private.

SEO for Custom Pages and Posts

When creating a Custom Page that’s internal, there are options to add an SEO title and description for the page. Please refer to this article for Custom Page examples and instructions.

Outside of the Website Builder, you can also add SEO to your individual posts. From the SEO tab in the post editor, you can add an SEO title and description. Then, hop over to the Website tab in the post editor to adjust the slug with keywords from your post. Please refer to this video tutorial on Getting started with SEO for further direction.