AI, SEO and EverWeb: What You Need To Know…

As everyone probably knows, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the current hot property in tech and in modern society today. Whether it’s really ready for primetime is as yet unknown, but the thing is that it’s here to stay and it will increasingly affect all of our lives over the years to come. What AI also does is upset the status quo for search engines with new and different ways of getting search results. How will AI affect your EverWeb made website, and how can you tailor your site to be AI friendly for SEO? In this post, we’ll look at how you can make sure that your website is best positioned to take advantage of AI.

Optimizing your EverWeb website’s SEO for AI like search engines powered by AI, AI voice assistants, and AI bots summarizing web content will involve a mix of SEO, clarity of site content, and structured data. Here’s a checklist of what to look out for in your own EverWeb made website.

Use Clear, Structured Content
This may sound like common sense, but many website’s don’t have content that’s clear and structured. AI favors content that’s easy to understand, is well-organized with headings, and free of ambiguity. Designing your content this way will make it easier for AI to work with your content. If you’ve made your own content for your site, don’t forget to get someone to proofread it to make sure that it abides by these tenets.

In addition, make sure to check the SEO in your site. You should include the following:

1. Use Headings tags on your text. You can easily this feature in EverWeb in the Export Options section at the bottom of the Text Inspector. Simply highlight the text that you want to use for SEO, then apply the Headings tag that you want. For example, the page heading should use an H1 tag and don’t forget to just use this tag once per page. Use the H2 tag for sub headings. This means you can have more than one H2 tag on he page. Use H3 tags for sub-sub headings. There’s little point using the lesser tags of H4-H6, so please don’t! In addition, remember to only use Headings tags on the pages that actually need it. It’s wasting your time to put Headings tags on pages such as the About or Contact pages.
2. Break content into short paragraphs. For this, you can use bullet points, or lists, whenever you can. In EverWeb, this is easily achieved using the Styled Text Editor which is available in widgets such as the Text Section and FlexBox widgets.In a blog, you’ll find a bullet point feature in the Blog Post Editor Toolbar. If you’re working with just a TextBox, use the Option+Function+8 keyboard combination on a Mac and ALt+7 (or Alt+149) keyboard combination on a Windows PC.
3. Use simple, active (rather than passive) language that AI can parse easily. An example of using active language would be ‘The developer updated the website’. If you write this in a passive manner, it would be something like ‘The website was updated by the developer.’

Optimize Metadata and ALT Tags
AI bots and search engines will be looking for the following things in your site, so son’t forget to add them in:

1. The Page’s Web Page Title. You’ll find this field in the Page Settings Tab of the Inspector Window. Add in the page title then a space, then a vertical bar symbol, then another space then your business name and optionally a brief description of what your business does.
2. UseMeta Descriptions. In EverWeb this is your Web Page Description for regular pages. To access this field, go to the Page Settings tab in the Inspector Window, then open the Search Engine Optimization section. Here you’ll find the Web Page Description. Keep the description brief and to the point. The description should also actually describe what the page is about.

   The second place where you’ll find this type of field is in a Blog Post. Go to the Posts page of your blog. Select the blog post you want to add a Meta Description for. Once the post has been highlighted, click on the Settings Cog and select Post Options… (the menu option name may be different in earlier versions of EverWeb, but it’s always the first option on the list.) A dialog box will appear. Enter in your Short Summary. As per the Web Page Description, this blog post’s Short Summary should be a brief description of what the post is about. You can also fill in the Keywords section too which will also help your SEO.

3. Use ALT Text for Your Images. ALT Text is used to replace an image on the page when the image cannot be rendered on screen. It’s also used to help visually impaired people work more easily with computers. So make sure that when adding ALT Text that it describes what the image is about in a concise manner. You’ll find ALT Text fields in the Shape Options tab, but also in some of EverWeb’s widgets that are image focused, such as the FlexBox and Responsive Image Gallery widget.

Pay Attention to Your Website’s URL Structure
AI ranks pages with human-readable, descriptive URLs higher so use folder names and page names that are easy to read and understand. Again, try to be descriptive if possible. Remember as well that some pages in your site won’t necessarily need to be very descriptive as AI and search engines won’t be looking out for Contact and About pages in relation to SEO.

Always Optimize For Moble!
AI will prioritize mobile-friendly websites over desktop specific sites as most people browse the web on their phones rather than at their desk.

1. Use Responsive page layouts rather than fixed width page layouts. Responsive page layouts scale automatically to suit the device that they are being displayed upon. It may take longer to develop your site using Responsive Web Design, but your site will be better for it.
2. When developing a Responsive website Previewing your site on multiple devices is very important in order to make sure that all of the design elements are always placed properly on all devices. EverWeb also features a QR Code Preview feature so that you can quickly and easily preview your current page on a mobile phone or tablet.
3. Use object containers and responsive rows. These two features will add design flair to your site which is often cited as the downside of responsive design. The Responsive Row widget allows you to place objects within it giving you greater design flexibility. We have heard on the grapevine that containers are coming soon to EverWeb which will be an exciting feature we’re really looking forward to! So, stay tuned at AAI for upcoming EverWeb 4.4 news!

Optimize for Page Speed and Performance
AI algorithms often favor fast-loading pages, and you can tweak your pages in EverWeb to help speed up loading times:

1. Enable lazy loading on your images. You can do this by selecting the image your want to lazy load, the go to the Shape Options tab in the Inspector Window. In the Fill section check the box ‘Lazy load image’ then publish when you have done this for all the images that you want to be lazy loaded.
2. Use optimized images (WebP or compressed JPG/PNG) and check the box ‘Export Optimized Images’ in the Site Publishing Settings page in your project file. You can get to this page by clicking on the project name in the Web Page List or using the File-> Edit Publishing Settings menu option.
3. Minimize animations or large video files. These, and large images, will slow your page loading times, so it’s best to limit their use, or use a link to e.g. YouTUbe or Vimeo instead of embedding videos within your site. Check your project file’s Assets List for any large video or image files and either optimize them to reduce their file size, or replace them e.g. use a .jpg file for an image instead of a .png file whenever you can.

Create AI-Friendly Content
Voice assistants and AI often pull from:

1. FAQs
2. How-to guides and
3. Summary blocks

So add these types of content to your page, if it’s appropriate to do so. And don’t forget to keep your content clear and easy to read.

Submit Your Sitemap to Search Engines
AI bots crawl your site more effectively with a sitemap and you can take advantage of this using EverWeb’s SEO PowerUp Addon. This will let you submit your sitemap to Google, Bing and Alexa, as well as giving you additional tools to tweak your SEO further.

For more information about using SEO and EverWeb,either look up the SEO chapter in the EverWeb User Manual, or check out the SEO for EverWeb Video Course.