Familiar with SEO? Skip ahead to the next section. Not familiar? No worries — here's what you need to know about Search Engine Optimization – aka SEO – to make the most of your OfferingTree website. SEO helps search engines like Google and Bing find your site and share it with the people who are most likely to be interested in what you offer. There are lots of technical details involving algorithms and web crawlers, and OfferingTree takes care of almost all of them for you.
This article covers the parts that are up to you: the words on your site, a handful of settings on your Website → SEO page, and a few habits that make a real difference.
Keywords
If you have ever searched for something using Google, you already know a couple of things about keywords. If you teach a ballet fusion class in St. Paul, Minnesota, including “ballet,” “dance,” and “St. Paul” on your home page, in your offering descriptions, and in your page descriptions (more on those below) will help search engines learn about what you do so that they can direct people to your site.
Think about what someone might type into a search engine if they are looking for the class or service you offer, and then make sure those words appear in the text of your site as you describe what you do.
Top 3 ways to get started with SEO
After you have decided what search requests you want your website to show up for in Google and other search engines, do these 3 things to get a great start on improving your SEO.
- Place a keyword or two in the main heading of your website. If you teach yoga and you want to show up for "Yoga in Bozeman Montana", you should put "yoga" in the main heading of your homepage. You should also put Bozeman Montana somewhere important on your homepage as well. It doesn't have to be in the main headline — consider putting it in the tagline or another elevated part of your homepage.
- Place your keywords in the page title and page description of your website. You can edit these when editing your homepage.
- Add your social media profiles to your website.
Keep reading this article for more ways to improve your SEO.
Your SEO settings in one place: Website → SEO
In your OfferingTree dashboard, open Website in the left menu and choose SEO. (You can also type “SEO” into the dashboard search box to jump straight there.) Everything on this page is optional — your site works fine if you never touch it — but a few minutes here goes a long way. Click Save when you are done.
Allow search engines to index this site
Leave this switch on. Turning it off asks every search engine not to list any page of your site, and empties your sitemap. It is handy while you are still building your site — just remember to turn it back on when you are ready to be found.
Meta description
This is the short blurb that appears under your site name in search results and link previews. You get up to 160 characters, and a counter shows how many you have used. Write one plain sentence about who you are, what you teach, and where — for example: “Beginner-friendly vinyasa and restorative yoga in Bozeman, Montana. Small classes, drop-ins welcome.”
Default share image
Pick an image from your media library. It is used as the preview picture when a page of your site is shared on social media or in a message and that page has no image of its own. If you leave it empty, your site logo is used instead. A landscape image works best — 1200 × 630 pixels is the size link previews are designed around. A tall or square photo often gets cropped in an unflattering way.
Search Console verification
This is where you prove to Google that the site is yours, so you can see your search traffic in Google Search Console. Paste whatever Google gives you — the bare token, the whole <meta name="google-site-verification" ... > tag, or the google-site-verification=XYZ string from the DNS instructions. We pull the token out of any of those. If what you pasted doesn't look like a verification token, you will see an error under the field. Full walkthrough: Verify your domain on the Google Search Console.
Google Business Profile link
Paste the Google Maps link for your business here. This tells Google that your website and your Maps listing are the same business, which helps you show up in local results and in the map pack. Only Google links are accepted — a maps.google.com address, a g.page short link, a Google share link, or your business.google.com listing.
Crawl files
These two links are read-only, with a copy button next to each — there is nothing to fill in. Your sitemap is the list of your pages that search engines read, and llms.txt is a plain-text summary of your site for AI assistants. Both are generated for you and refresh within a few minutes of publishing changes.
Two levels of description: each page, plus a site-wide fallback
Search results and link previews show a short description of the page being shown. OfferingTree looks for one in this order:
- The page's own description — the preview text on a page you built, a blog post's excerpt, or an offering's description. This always wins.
- Your site default — the Meta description from Website → SEO.
- Nothing — if neither exists, Google writes its own snippet from whatever text it finds.
So the site default never overrides a page you have written a description for. What it does do is fill in the gaps — pages like your Schedule, your blog index, and your store don't have descriptive text of their own, and this is what they use.
The best result comes from doing both: write a specific description for your important pages, and set a good site default for everything else.
Keeping an offering out of search results
Sometimes you don't want an offering to be findable. A private one-on-one, a corporate workshop for one company, a test class you set up while learning the system — none of those need to be in Google.
When you edit an offering, scroll to the Search engines section and turn off Allow search engines to index this offering. It is on by default. With it off, we stop pointing search engines at the offering: it is dropped from your sitemap, and its classes are no longer described to Google as events. The page itself stays reachable by link, so you can still send it to the people who need it — and if a search engine has already found the page, it can take a while to drop out of results. For something that must never show up in search, put it behind a members-only page instead.
How your pages look when shared
When you or a student pastes one of your links into Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, or a text message, that app builds a little preview card from your page's title, description, and image. You control all three:
- Title and description come from the page itself, falling back to your site default description as described above.
- Image comes from the page's own image, then your Default share image, then your site logo.
If a link of yours is showing a preview you don't like, the fix is usually to set an image on that specific page, or to set a better site-wide default share image.
One thing to know: some apps hold on to an old preview for a while after you make a change. That is caching on their side, not something wrong with your site.
Blogging is good for SEO
A blog gives search engines fresh pages to read, and gives you a natural place to use the words your future students are typing into Google. Your post title is automatically used as the main heading of the post's page, and we publish the author and the publish and update dates in a form Google can read — so you can just focus on writing.
A few things that help:
- One topic per post. A post about “yoga for lower back pain” will do better than one post covering back pain, sleep, and stress together.
- Open with a two-sentence summary. Say what the post is about right at the top. It helps readers decide to keep reading, and it is often what search engines quote.
- End with a few real questions and answers. Use the questions students actually ask you, in their words. These match the way people search.
- Link related posts to each other. If you write a second post on a related topic, link the two together. It helps readers and it helps search engines understand your site.
Links
When you set up your OfferingTree, we recommended that you share your new site with family, friends, students, and clients. That's one way to let the people who already know you find you. Adding your OfferingTree website address to your Facebook page (personal or professional), LinkedIn, Instagram, and your profiles on any professional associations you belong to will increase your SEO, which means people will find you more easily.
Taking it up a level: your Google Business Profile
Keywords and linking are the basics. If you have a physical location, set up a Google Business Profile (this used to be called Google My Business). It is what puts you on Google Maps and in the local results box. Businesses without a physical location can also use this service, but it is a little trickier.
Once you have one, paste its link into the Google Business Profile link field on Website → SEO. That connects your website and your Maps listing so Google knows they are the same business.
Help Google match your business details
Google compares the details on your website with the details on your Business Profile, so it helps when they agree:
- Your address. Keep the address in Settings → Business Information accurate and matching your Google Business Profile exactly. That address is what we publish in a machine-readable form for local results.
- Your phone number. Put a plain phone number in your site footer. A WhatsApp link is great for your students, but it is not readable as a phone number — so if WhatsApp is your main contact method, add the plain number as well.
Optional: Google Search Console
Search Console is a free tool from Google that shows you which searches you are appearing in, how many people clicked, and whether Google has indexed your pages. It is not required — your site is found without it — but it is the only way to actually see how you are doing in Google search. Verifying takes about five minutes: copy a tag from Google, paste it into Website → SEO, and click Verify. Step by step: Verify your domain on the Google Search Console.
Behind the scenes
Think of us as your digital stage crew. OfferingTree handles technical details like metadata, tags, and sitemaps automatically so you don't have to. We generate and update your sitemap for you within minutes of you publishing changes, and your site's robots.txt tells search engines where to find it — so there is no need to manually submit anything. We take care of the heavy lifting so you can stay focused on your students!
If you ever need your specific sitemap URL, you can copy it from Website → SEO under Crawl files, or find it by adding /sitemap.xml.gz to the end of your website address (e.g., yourname.offeringtree.com/sitemap.xml.gz).
We wrote a blog article on this topic that you can check out here: SEO Basics for Small Businesses
Have more questions about SEO? Click on "help" within your OfferingTree dashboard to send us a help message.
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