Creating a Page / Metadata

Creating a Page

When creating a new page in Omni CMS, most of the options presented have little relevance for accessibility, but it is important to consider a few things for the readability of your site's URLs and some basic search engine optimization (SEO). The entries detailed here are commonly called metadata and may also be edited on an existing page's Properties/Page Parameters.

Metadata

noun
A set of data that describes and gives information about other data.

Page Title

The page title is displayed in the browser's tab or title bar. It will also be the primary text used by the search engine to link to your page in search results. Each page should have a unique title (ideally globally unique, not just unique on your site or at SDSU).

• The page title should be less than 50-60 characters in length. Most sites append a site title which adds to the overall character count (the default site title is " | SDSU"). Spaces also count as characters.
• The most specific part of the title should be first, so instead of "News: Man Bites Dog", use "Man Bites Dog | News".

Description

This is a short description of the page which used to be used by search engines to help determine relevance in search results. It should sufficiently describe the page's content in a manner that isn't going to become outdated as the content is modified. While some search engines may still use the description directly in search results, it is not presented to the user by the browser otherwise.

• No description is better than an inaccurate or out of date description.
• The description should be 50-160 characters.

Keywords

Once upon a time, search engines used this field to help determine relevance in search results. The field was widely abused, so modern search engines will reduce your page's search ranking for any keyword supplied here which isn't well-represented in your content.

• It is best to leave this field blank.

Filename

The filename is used to create the page's URL.

• Section/folder names should reflect the category hierarchy of the website.
• Filenames should be human-readable and reflect the contents of the page.
• Avoid repeating words used in the site's subdomain name or the sections/folders that contain the page/file.
• Use hyphens (-) to separate words.

Content

Create an outline of your content to ensure you have an understanding of the page's structure, appropriate heading levels, etc. If you would prefer to do this in Omni CMS, insert a WYSIWYG Content Container snippet into the page, then add your content into the container. Use the Paragraph/Blocks dropdown in the WYSIWYG Toolbar to set the appropriate heading levels based on the flow of the content.