Perfect SEO with EasyDNNnews DNN module

Writing blog posts and other types of content is a very demanding job that requires a lot of time and efforts. In order for your efforts to pay off, your articles must be well ranked on search engines. It is not enough just to create a phenomenal content, your content must be friendly to search engines or Search Engine Optimized.

EasyDNNnews is the most popular blog & article module for DNN that will help you to rank high and bring more traffic to your site. Even when the module is only added to a page, the initial settings are enough for a good SEO. But if you want more, the module enables you to get the most out of SEO.

We have prepared an overview of SEO best practices supported by the EasyDNNnews module and short instructions on how to adjust these SEO options where necessary.

SEO friendly URLs

The EasyDNNnews URL provider, which is distributed with the EasyDNNnews module, rewrites long URLs with parameters to short URLs without parameters. Your article's link will be automatically generated from the article title and it is also possible to enter a custom link (EasyDNNnews > Article editor > SEO settings).

Instructions: The EasyDNNnews URL provider won't be automatically installed with the EasyDNNnews module but you need to install it separately. You can find it within the same zip file with the EasyDNNnews module. The EasyDNNnews URL provider requires minimum DNN 7.1 or newer.

Title tag and other meta data

The title tag is considered very important for SEO. The module automatically generates it from the article title. What will be included in the title tag can be adjusted in the General settings of the module. It is also possible to enter a custom title tag in Article editor > SEO settings. Here you can also add meta keywords and meta description.

The automatic generation of the title tag can be configured in EasyDNNnews > Dashboard > General settings.

Responsive design

Google gives an advantage to mobile friendly pages. All the themes that come with the EasyDNNnews module are responsive and mobile friendly.

Right structure of CSS

In the templates that come with the module the headings are marked with H1 tag, and subheadings with H2 tags, just like search engines like it. If you are making your own templates, follow this rule as well.

Canonical URLs

Search engines don't like duplicated content if they don't know which content is the right one. The canonical links feature will help Google and other search engines to know which content (article or blog post) is the right one. The feature adds the canonical tag to articles in the instance of the news module where the feature is enabled. It is recommended to enable the canonical URLs only in the instance of the EasyDNNnews module where article details are opened. The canonical URLs can be enabled in EasyDNNnews > Settings > 20. Canonical URLs.

XML Sitemap

XML sitemaps are files where you can lists all of the pages of your site, or in our case all the articles for which you want that search engines know about. The sitemaps help search engines to index articles much easier.

The EasyDNNnews module generates an XML sitemap for every module instance. The sitemap is automatically updated with the newly added articles. The XML sitemap can be found in EasyDNNnews > Settings > 13. Related articles, RSS and Sitemap > Articles sitemaps. Upload the sitemap in the Google Search Console.

If the same articles are displayed on multiple pages of your web site, then we recommend uploading in Google Search Console only the sitemap of the instance in which article details are opened. The sitemaps are another way to tell search engines which duplicate articles are the main articles and thus avoid SEO duplicate content issues.  

DNN caching for better performances

The site speed is one of the factors that search engines take into consideration when ranking content. The EasyDNNnews module leverages DNN cache to load articles faster. DNN cache can be enabled and adjusted in DNN > Host > Host settings > Performance.

Client Resource Management in DNN

One more method that improves page loading performance is combining more different CSS and JS files into one file. In DNN, the Client resource management takes care about it (Host > Host settings > Advanced settings > Client resource management). All out-of-box themes in the EasyDNNnews module support this functionality.

Open Graph meta tags and Twitter cards

When an article is shared by a site visitor the Open Graph meta tags help social networks to take the right image, title and description. Open Graph is a Facebook's standard which is also adopted by other social networking websites. Although the direct impact of Open Graph meta tags on SEO is questionable, Open Graph definitely helps to better promote your articles across social networking websites. Twitter cards are the Twitter version of the Open Graph protocol. In the EasyDNNnews templates both Open Graph tags and Twitter cards are implemented.

Engaging multimedia

EasyDNNnews has a built-in gallery management so it is easy to enrich articles with images and videos. Interesting images and videos will keep your site visitors longer on your web pages before they click on the back button. The more time they spend on your website, the better for your SEO.

Alt tags for images in articles

Using Alt tags reportedly has a positive impact on Google rankings. Alt tags or alternative text tell search engines what is the image about. If you add titles to images added in articles, then titles will be used as alt tags.

EasyDNNnews can be purchased on the DNN store separately or in EDS Theme & Module Collection.

Free trial version can be downloaded from our site.