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Search Engine Optimization

Metadata in head

Multiple metadata fields are filled in to increase SEO including:

  • title and og:title: The index page of the website gets the site title (from _config.yml). Other pages will have following pattern: page.type: page.title | site.title if attributes are present.
  • description and og:description: The index page of the website gets the site description (from _config.yml). Other pages will look for a description in following places and order: page.description > page.summary > markdown content. In all three scenarios the first 30 words are used.
  • keywords: created based on the page.page_id’s in page.related_pages and the respective page.title’s of those listed pages.
  • og:image and og:logo: the image file available in /assets/img/apple-touch-icon.png. Please replace this file if you want your brand logo to appear as a thumbnail when links are are shared in chats.

These fields will also help in how the website gets previewed when the url is used on social media or chats. See Page mechanics and Configuring the theme on how to set these attributes.

Schema.org attributes

We use schema.org attributes and some bioschema.org extensions to describe certain objects on the website more in detail. This includes contributors and their affiliations.

For example:

{
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@type": "WebSite",
    "name": "RDMkit",
    "url": "https://rdmkit.elixir-europe.org",
    "about": "Best practices and guidelines you can use for FAIR management of your research data.",
    "author": [
        {
            "@type": "Person",
            "@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0522-5674",
            "mainEntityOfPage": "https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0522-5674",
            "affiliation": {
                "@type": "Organization",
                "name": "VIB Data Core / ELIXIR-BE"
            },
            "email": "bert.droesbeke@vib.be",
            "url": "https://github.com/bedroesb",
            "image": "https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/bedroesb",
            "jobTitle": "editor",
            "name": "Bert Droesbeke"
        }
    ]
}

Sitemap.xml

A sitemap is automatically generated using the jekyll-sitemap gem. This allows search engine to detect the site structure and which pages are available for harvesting.

Make sure the gem is enabled in the _config.yml file in the root of your project like this:

plugins:
  - jekyll-sitemap