EasyDNN News – Win the SEO race with this DNN module

Writing and publishing blogs, articles, news, events and other types of posts play a significant role in today’s content marketing. In addition to superior texts, you need a superior publishing tool which will do the work on the technical side and ensure that your posts find their way to as many readers as possible. Our EasyDNN News module is exactly that tool, developed with the goal of making sure that your posts are read by as many readers as possible. 

Great SEO possibilities

Since the first version of EasyDNN News, excellent SEO has been our focus. As search engines often change algorithms, we constantly monitor the changes and implement new best practices. This is an on-going process. The users of our modules, who regularly upgrade, have the assurance that the SEO will be improved after installing a new version of the module.

EasyDNN News brings a complete set of SEO features and great flexibility for SEO experts. It is hard to find a tool on the CMS market that offers more in terms of SEO features. You don’t need to worry even if you're not an SEO expert. In this article, we will drive you through all SEO features, but also explain the best SEO practices that will help you rank high in search engine result pages (SERP).

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

Accelerated Mobile Pages are a special version of web pages adjusted to mobile devices in order to load content very fast on mobile devices. AMPs are generated from standard pages. In order to make the generation of AMPs possible, the standard pages must be coded according to AMP standards. Posts published in the EasyDNN News module support the generation of their AMP versions. Even if it is not possible to generate AMPs for your complete DNN site, you can enable AMP in the EasyDNN News module; that way, you will enhance the SEO of your posts. Also, Google will add the mark fast next to your articles in search engine result pages. You can even enhance the SEO of your post by installing the latest version of EasyDNN News today.

Structured data (Schema.org)

Structured data, also known as Schema.org, is a semantic format for adding metadata to the HTML code of web pages to improve the way in which search engines read and present the pages. Structured data is a joint project of leading search engines Google, Yahoo, and Bing. With the help of Schema markup, it is possible to control the rich snippets displayed under the page title on search engine result pages.

Structured data enables Google and other search engines to understand better the content of the pages, and with the help of rich snippets, shows the user more information about the page, and in such a way informs the user if it is an article, event, review, product etc. It is not known how much structured data impacts SEO, but using structured data makes click-throughs better because the visitor knows how the page is relevant for its search.

In the EasyDNN News module, there is a template system for structured data that enables the selection of different templates depending on the type of the content you are publishing. Also, you can edit metadata individually in every article.

Facebook Instant Articles

Using Facebook Instant Articles doesn’t directly impact SEO, but their long-term use brings other benefits. What is this all about? Facebook Instant Articles are a Facebook version of AMP. Standard articles shared to Facebook aren't optimized for mobile devices so they require a long time to load. This is why Facebook offers Facebook Instant Articles as an answer to this problem. Content is stored on their servers, which enables fast loading of articles on mobile devices. According to Facebook, the readability increases by 20%, and the probability of abandoning articles is decreased by 70% when using Facebook Instant Articles. EasyDNN News enables the use of Facebook Instant Articles.

Canonical URLs

If you have ever tried to optimize your pages for search engines (SEO), then you are probably familiar with the duplicate content issue. This issue occurs when the same content is displayed in more places on the website, and the search engine doesn’t know which version is the preferred version. This issue can be solved by using Canonical URLs. A canonical element is added to HTML so that a search engine can determine which the preferred version is. EasyDNN News enables you to use the Canonical URL function.

SEO friendly URLs

Search engines prefer clean links without parameters. That is the reason why, for example, the link mysite.com/blog/tab/1/mod/4/article3543 will be lower ranked on search engines than the link which looks like this: mysite.com/blog/here-goes-article-title

This is the reason why we have developed EasyDNN News URL provider, which comes free with the EasyDNN News module. Thanks to the EasyDNN News URL provider, links of your articles won't contain parameters, and the form of your URLs will be best for a good SEO result.

Page title

The page title is considered a very important SEO factor. EasyDNN News offers great flexibility in configuring the page title. You can simply adjust the form of the page title in the module settings and these settings will be valid for all articles. You can also customize the page title individually for each article.

XML Article Sitemap

XML Sitemap is an XML file that contains a list of links. Its role is to improve indexing of articles by search engines. EasyDNN News generates an XML file with the list of articles published in the module. A sitemap needs to be added to Google Search Console.

ALT Tag (Alternative text)

ALT Tag is an HTML attribute added to images as a textual alternative of the image. In other words, the ALT tag is a textual description of the image. Thanks to a textual description, search engines know what is on the image so the ALT tag contributes to better SEO rankings. Also, using ALT tags is mandatory if you want your website to be fully compliant with site accessibility standards. EasyDNN News uses the image title as the ALT tag for images added to the article gallery. All you need to do is add the image title into the image title field.

Metadata

Metadata is data displayed on search engine result pages as a result of a certain inquiry. We are talking about a page title, page description, and meta keywords. They also help search engines to understand better what the page is about. Metadata can be added or adjusted in the EasyDNN News module individually for each article. They are an important SEO factor.

Other factors that impact SEO

Lots of factors directly or indirectly impact SEO. A good SEO means the implementation of all good practices and techniques important for SEO. Nothing should be overlooked. Google and other search engines often change algorithms, and then some things that weren't important become important. The study of actual SEO trends and their implementation in the EasyDNN News module is an ongoing process for us. In the following text, we will introduce you to other factors important for SEO. 

Right CSS structure

The H1 tag needs to be set to an article title, and H2 tags to subtitles. Only one H1 tag is allowed per page. All our out-of-box templates that come with the EasyDNN News module follow this rule.

Responsive design

Google and other search engines give a higher priority to pages which are adapted for mobile devices. In order to respond correctly to both desktop and mobile devices, the pages need to be responsive. All of our out-of-box templates are responsive and mobile friendly. Note: the main theme (site theme) also needs to be responsive.

Page loading speed 

Page loading speed is one of the factors that impact SEO. The loading speed of your website depends on many factors, such as the speed and workload of your web server. To improve the loading speed of pages where the EasyDNN News module is added, we have implemented the DNN cache to load articles as fast as possible. It is sometimes possible for a user to open more articles without any performed SQL query.

Combining more CSS and JavaScript files into one is another way to improve page loading speed. With DNN, this task is performed by Client resource management. All themes that come with the EasyDNN News module support this function.

I would also like to mention that the server often has the key role in the speed on your site. To save costs, users often choose very inexpensive hosting services with limited resources. This small savings of just a few dollars monthly on hosting can cause a much greater loss through decreased SEO rankings.

Social signals

Social signals are shares, likes, comments, shares and overall visibility on social networks. Although there is no definite proof that social signals impact SEO, research shows a correlation between greater social network presence and better positioning on search engine result pages. All of our themes are accompanied by social share buttons, and the module also supports integration with AddThis service which makes it possible to customize social sharing buttons. We have also implemented Open Graph and Twitter cards. Open Graph and Twitter cards are responsible for the correct sharing of articles, meaning that the correct image and text is shared. You can configure using Open Graph and Twitter cards in templates, but EasyDNN News also enables customization of Open Graph and Twitter cards in each individual article.

Engaging multimedia and Dwell time

Dwell time is the amount of time that a visitor spends on your page before they return to the search engine result pages. Dwell time is also an important SEO ranking factor. The longer the user stays on your site, the better it is for you. The time that a user spends on your site depends on how interesting the content of your page is or how relevant the page is for the user. EasyDNN News enables the simple adding of image, audio and video galleries in your posts. Multimedia is a great way to keep visitors on your page as long as possible.

Other ways to reach readers

Our goal is to make EasyDNN News a unique tool that brings as many readers as possible to your posts. We’ve already mentioned some of the methods to achieve this in the context of SEO, but there are other features that help your posts reach the greatest number of readers. We base a large part of our marketing efforts on articles published in the EasyDNN News module, and this works very well for us.

Auto-posting to social networks

Promoting blogs and articles on social networks is a great way to reach a high number of readers. EasyDNN News enables automatic posting of new articles to social networks. Auto-posting to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn is supported. Although it is always possible to manually share articles to social networks, things work better when they are automated, especially when the site has more editors.

Social sharing buttons and AddThis

The presence, look and position of social sharing buttons increase the probability of sharing your content to social networks. All of our out-of-box templates have social sharing buttons. The module also supports integration with the popular AddThis service which enables customization of social sharing buttons. Social sharing buttons are added to templates by using tokens so it is possible to change their position if the original position doesn’t work for you. If for some reason you don't wish social sharing buttons in your articles, just delete the token from the template.

Related articles and More links

Your goal is to keep readers of your post as long as possible on your website. The Related Articles and More links functionalities in the EasyDNN News module can help you with that. Related Articles are articles with which EasyDNN News automatically connects based on the same tags. The More Articles functionality enables adding links to other articles which are then displayed at the bottom of the article. With this functionality, you choose articles and add links to other pages. 

Sending newsletters with new articles

To be able to send newsletters with new articles, you need our EasyDNN MailChimp Plus module. With this module, you can send newsletters with new articles to your subscribed users or registered DNN users. The whole process can be completely automated when newsletters are generated from newly published articles and sent in daily, weekly, or monthly intervals. If you want a bit more control, you can select the articles which will be included in a newsletter by yourself and send it at a time that works best for you. 
In addition to sending newsletters with articles from the EasyDNN News module, EasyDNN MailChimp Plus is a complete e-mail marketing solution for DNN CMS. It will enable you to add standard and pop-up signup forms to your website, to synchronize your registered DNN users with MailChimp lists, and more.

How to Get the EasyDNN News Module 9.4

You can download a free 15-day trial version of the module from our website. You can purchase a commercial version of the module from the DNN store, individually or as a part of the EasyDNN Theme & Module Collection. If you have a valid subscription, you can download EasyDNN News 9.4 from DNN store > Patches.