Skip to aside Skip to content Skip to footer

Search Engine Optimization

Metadata in head

Multiple metadata fields are filled in to improve SEO:

  • title and og:title: The index page gets the site title from _config.yml. Other pages use the pattern page.type: page.title | site.title when the attributes are present.
  • description and og:description: The index page gets the site description from _config.yml. Other pages look for a description in this order: page.description, page.summary, Markdown content. In all three scenarios, the first 30 words are used.
  • keywords: Created from page_id values in page.related_pages and the corresponding page.title values.
  • og:image and og:logo: The image file available in /assets/img/apple-touch-icon.png. Replace this file if you want your brand logo to appear as a thumbnail when links are shared in chats.

These fields also influence how the website is previewed when the URL is shared on social media or in chats. See Page mechanics and Configuring the theme for how to set these attributes.

Schema.org attributes

We use schema.org attributes and some bioschemas.org extensions to describe certain objects on the website in more 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 engines to detect the site structure and which pages are available for indexing.

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

plugins:
  - jekyll-sitemap