Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the science behind optimizing a website’s content so that the search engines are more likely to show it as a top result for relevant keyword searches. ServiceNow offers OOTB capabilities to support customers in making their portal SEO friendly. We believe that many of our customers are aware that their users rely on organic search engines to surface customer-focused and detailed help content to address their issues. So, to help customers setup their portal in a way they can get the relevant help information easier and quicker, some simple configuration and customization steps have been listed below.
Why is SEO important?
- Improving discovery of content via all channels and connecting customers to that useful content
- Helps deliver better/relevant information and content for search engines
- Increasing quality and quantity of traffic through “organic” search engines
Search engines are smart, but they still need our help!
And also, just to add more weight to that, 75% of searchers begin their search on Google and 67% of the clicks come from the first five results. That means, if you are not in the top 5 results of a search engine then a lot of users who could not find what they were looking for in your website. So, in this blog we will provide some suggestions on how you can setup your portal to be SEO-friendly.
In this blog we will be walking you through the different capabilities ServiceNow offers and the steps to setup these capabilities for your portal. The key capabilities such as:
- Configuring and setting-up Page title and description which will be displayed on search results
- Configuring different meta tags which helps search engines easily understand the content and improve searchability
- Setting up Robots.txt file
Steps to setup SEO for your Knowledge portal:
Setting up Page title and description to be displayed on search results
- Add a static or dynamic variable value to be displayed as Page title which will be displayed based on the page content on Browser Tab information and Search results page.
Steps to setup Dynamic Page Title (DOCS Link)
(Role required – Admin)
- Navigate to Service Portal > Pages.
- Open a page.
- Add one or more variables to the Dynamic page title field
- Click the Dynamic page title variables related list tab.
- Click New to create a new variable.
- To setup a dynamic parameter, associate a field with the query parameter.
- Complete the form.
|
Field |
Description |
|
Name |
The variable to store the value. Must begin with % and cannot contain spaces. This value must match one of the variables defined in the Dynamic page title field. |
|
Application |
Application scope of the page. This value is read-only. |
|
Page |
The page to apply the dynamic variable to. |
|
URL query parameter |
The URL parameter that determines the record to display. |
|
Table |
The source table of the URL query parameter record. |
|
Table field |
Select a field from the table defined in the Table field. This field is used to generate the dynamic page title. |
Example output:
Steps to setup Meta tags/Description for knowledge articles (DOCS link)
Meta tags help search engine crawlers improve the searchability of portal pages and can provide name and description attributes of a page which may be displayed on search results.
(Role required – Admin or SP_Admin)
- Navigate to Service Portal > Pages.
- Open a page.
- Check if Public is selected. Pages that are not public are not indexed by external search engines.
- Click the Meta tags related list tab.
- Click New to create a new meta tag.
- Robots - The HTML meta description attribute.If ROBOTS is defined in the Name field, you can add one of the following content values:
- INDEX, FOLLOW: The search engine shows the page in search results and trusts any links in the page. This is the default value.
- NOINDEX, FOLLOW: The search engine does not show the page in search results, but trusts any links in the page.
- INDEX, NOFOLLOW: The search engine shows the page in the search results, but does not trust links in the page.
- NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW: The search engine does not show the page in search results and does not trust links in the page.
- Description – Two kinds of variable settings could be used to set the meta tag called description.
Create meta tag via service portal(DOCS link)
(Role required – Admin or SP_Admin)
- Create a content variable to populate the content tag with record data.
- If the page loads record data based on one or more URL parameters, you can add meta tags generated from the record data.
- Open a meta tag record and check that the Content field contains a variable, or add a variable.
- Depending on the available URL parameters and the meta tag you would like to define, you can add the following types of values:
|
Value types |
Description |
Example value |
|
One URL parameter variable |
Populates the content tag with the value defined in the associated content variables record. |
%description |
|
More than one URL parameter variable |
Populates the content tag with the values defined in the associated content variables records. |
%description %price |
|
Static value and a URL parameter variable |
Populates the content tag with a static value and the associated content variables record. |
Catalog item: %description |
- In the Content variables related list, click New.
- The Content variables related list is only available after saving the meta tag record.
- Complete the form.
- Associate a field with a URL query parameter. When the value of the query parameter is used to display content, a field from the same record is used to generate the content tag. You can define the field to generate the content tag through the Table field field.
|
Field |
Description |
|
Name |
The variable to store the value. Must begin with % and cannot contain spaces. This value must match one of the variables defined in the Content field in the Meta tag record. |
|
Application |
Application scope of the page. This value is read-only. |
|
Metatag |
The meta tag to apply the dynamic variable to. |
|
URL query parameter |
The URL parameter that determines the record to display. |
|
Table |
The source table of the URL query parameter record. |
|
Table field |
Select a field from the table defined in the Table field. This field is used to generate the value of the content tag. |
- If more than one content variables match a variable defined in the Content field of the meta tag record, the record with the earliest Created date is used.
- Click Submit.
Setting up at Knowledge templates (Docs Link)
(Role required – Admin or Knowledge Admin)
- Navigate to Knowledge > Article Templates.
- Select an article template.
- In the SEO Description Tag field, select an article template field.
- Then follow the same steps as above and add the reference table field as Meta description from the table kb_knowledge as shown below.
The number of characters to be chosen to set the meta description can be controlled using the below property - glide.knowman.seo.pages.meta_description.length
Note: The meta description field of Knowledge table can be still used as a reference variable even if standard template is not used. The system will by default use the description field to populate the configured length of meta description tag. Also, for the meta tags to be visible to crawlers, ensure the fields selected for the meta tags should have the necessary ACLs to be public.
Setting up robots.txt
Robots.txt files control crawler access to certain areas of your site. This will ensure the crawlers can index and rank only intended pages of the website.
- Identify clearly which pages you do not intend to be displayed as part of the search results page
- Robots.txt can be setup using a Google custom search integration plugin (this needs to be requested by the customer)(Docs link)
- Clearly state which pages you do not want the crawlers to index or follow.
The Values should be defined as mentioned below to ensure you indicate the pages you would like crawlers to index and rank.
INDEX, FOLLOW: The search engine shows the page in search results and trusts any links in the page. This is the default value.
NOINDEX, FOLLOW: The search engine does not show the page in search results, but trusts any links in the page.
INDEX, NOFOLLOW: The search engine shows the page in the search results, but does not trust links in the page.
NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW: The search engine does not show the page in search results and does not trust links in the page.
Best Practice : To add noindex, nofollow for any pages that require user login. Please add a reference to sitemap of your website if sitemap is available on the robots.txt file.
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