Written by Andre Ever make content updates and wonder if your site is optimized for a keyword? Want to control more of how Google and search engines display your site? We certainly did! This is why we added the SEO Tool to your site.
We’ll show you how you can utilize the SEO tool to verify how well a page ranks for multiple keywords. You can also use the tool to update your Meta Title and Meta Description, social share details (such as the image displayed when you share the link), and visibility features.
As you use this tool, you’ll want to use the exact phrase of the keyword you want to be ranked. For example, “We buy houses Houston” will not trigger the SEO Tool that it’s on your page if you use “We buy houses in Houston.” The addition of “in” will stop the matching process.
Let’s get started on the specifics of the SEO Tool and how to use it.
📝TABLE OF CONTENTS
What the Grader Colors Indicate
General Tab
Your general tab is the default tab when you find this tool. It is the overall settings for Google when selecting what to display for the main title and description of that page. Here’s what it will look like:
The SEO tool can be found close to the bottom of the page. You’ll first see the “General” tab will be an option to view and edit your page’s Meta Title and the Meta Description. There are two main boxes available for review. The left-side box is uneditable and has calculations available to show you the real-width text for Google search engines. This means you can set your title and description so that the entire title and description can be viewed without having to hover over the link. It’s ideal for visitors to read it in its entirety, so try to keep those within the character limits (65 for the title and 160 for the description). The right-hand side displays the content for those sections and is editable should you want to change the Meta Title and Meta Description.
For example, here is what you see when you Google “What is Carrot websites.” The meta title is the first line, followed by the url, then the meta description is displayed below the url.
The Social Tab
The Social Tab is used for anything related to your page’s display once it’s shared on social media. These settings include the content and image shown when a link on your site is shared. Every social media platform automatically pulls details from the page so you don’t have to set these. However, doing so will allow you to have control over what the platforms present for that page’s details. You can find it to the right of the General tab.
- Open Graph Title – This is similar to the Meta Title and will be the first sentence displayed when you share your URL
- Open Graph Description – This is similar to the Meta Description and will be the paragraph displayed below the Graph Title
- Twitter Title – Sets the first line of a link shared on Twitter
- Twitter Description – Sets the link’s description below the title
- Social Image URL – Sets the image shared on social media sites rather than pulling the first image on the page
The Visibility Tab
You can set the visibility of the page on this tab. It’s the third tab of the tool and includes items to stop search engines from indexing pages as well as redirect the page. Let’s dive into those settings below.
- Canonical URL – sets your canonical url for a site if you want to use multiple url’s. Learn more
- Robot Meta Settings – Default settings mean your page is optimized to be found and followed. Change these if you don’t want those options.
- Archive Settings – Change this if you want to hide your page
- 301 Redirect URL – Change this if you want to redirect this page to another URL Add the new URL in this box to redirect the page.
The Audit Tab
This last tab is the Audit tab and walks you through the process of verifying the page is optimized for your chosen keywords. Click the last option “Audit” and enter 1 to 3 keywords you want the page optimized for. Please note, you must use the keyword exactly as it is listed in the tool in order for it to recognize the keyword. We do not recommend inserting a long-tail keyword within the tool. For example, Sell Your Land Houston, Texas won’t be useful if you are using shortcodes in the content. Shortcodes save time when editing your market information but they are not readable in the Carrot SEO Tool. However, you will still rank for the long-tail keyword if you include the city in the page content, headings, and descriptions.
As an aside, we do not set a focus keyword within the tool on every page of your site but that doesn’t mean the page isn’t optimized. Our team chose to set a couple of pages for your reference but the other pages are yours to choose the focus keyword. If you want to find out what keywords to use, our SEO Keyword Bible is listed in the Learn More section below. It is a handy resource to have beside you as you utilize this tool.
Once a keyword is added, click the arrow on the right-hand side to toggle open the analysis. As soon as the keyword is added, the tool starts to analyze the page and you will see 7 ways you can optimize the page, marking each area with either a red flag (not optimized), yellow check mark (slightly optimized), or green check mark (optimized).
- The “Meta title” and “Meta description” are the first items you see when using the tool.
- The “Page URL (A)” and “Page Title (B)” is the first editable box when you are editing the page.
- The “Introduction” is the first paragraph on the page.
- “Subject density” refers to how many times the keyword is mentioned on the page.
- “Linking” will review how many links you have on the page that are related to your keyword. This would mean the text used for the link includes the keyword. For example, if Carrot wanted to rank for Real Estate Websites, then we would include a link “How Carrot is the best when it comes to Real Estate Websites.”
What do the SEO Tool’s colors mean?
You’ve likely seen the block colors within your content telling you the optimization grade for a page. Wondering what those mean? Here’s the low-down on them.
Light green = Excellent
Dark green = Good
Orange = Fair
Red = Poor
Gray = Unknown
Blue = noindex
While gray and blue may seem similar, the gray is used if there’s an error trying to get a score, or if it’s unknown (such as no keyword set) and the blue means the page has specifically been set to noindex from the visibility settings.
This covers the basics of how to use the tool. If you have any further questions, please reach out to our support and we’d be happy to help!
