Evergreen

Evergreen’s SEO Insights section is like having an SEO auditor constantly reviewing your site. It identifies issues and opportunities to improve your site’s visibility and ranking on search engines. This covers on-page SEO factors, technical SEO basics, and overall site health from an SEO perspective.

What the SEO Insights Check:

Evergreen scans your pages for a variety of SEO best practices and potential problems. Some common things it will flag include:

Meta Title Tags: Checks if each page has a title tag, and if its length is within a good range (not too short or too long). If a page is missing a title or has a duplicate title that matches another page, that’s highlighted.
Meta Descriptions: Verifies if pages have meta description tags and if they are an appropriate length. Missing or duplicate meta descriptions will be listed. For example, you might see “10 pages have no meta description” – these are opportunities to add them for better snippet control in search results.
Header Tags (H1, H2, etc.): Ensures each page has an H1 heading, and ideally only one H1. If a page has no H1 or has multiple H1s (which can confuse search engines), that’s flagged. It might also look at header hierarchy (H2s, H3s) for best practices, though the primary concern is usually the H1.
Images Alt Text: Lists images that are missing alt attributes (alternative text). Alt text is important for accessibility (screen readers) and also gives search engines context about images. Evergreen will point out pages where <img> tags lack alt text, so you know where to add descriptions.
Broken Links: Crawls your site pages for any hyperlinks that lead to a dead end (HTTP 404 not found, etc.). Broken links hurt user experience and can waste crawl budget. SEO Insights will report any broken internal or external links found, often specifying which page contains the broken link and what the URL is.
Indexability and Meta Robots: Checks if pages have any meta tags or settings that would prevent indexing (like <meta name="robots" content="noindex">). If a page is flagged as non-indexable (and it shouldn’t be), you’ll want to fix that to ensure it can appear in search results. Conversely, if you intentionally noindex certain pages (like a thank-you page or admin page), Evergreen might list them but perhaps categorize as warnings rather than errors.
Canonical Tags: Verifies that pages have a canonical URL tag (to avoid duplicate content issues). If Evergreen finds pages with missing or multiple canonical tags, it will alert you.
Site Structure Issues: If your site has orphan pages (pages not linked from anywhere else on your site), it might mention those, as they can be hard for users and crawlers to find. Also, if there are very deep pages (several clicks from the homepage), it might note that from an SEO perspective (since a flat structure is generally better).
XML Sitemap & Robots.txt (possibly): Some SEO tools check if an XML sitemap is present and referenced, and if a robots.txt file exists and is not blocking important pages. Evergreen might surface a warning if no sitemap is found or if robots.txt is disallowing the crawler from pages it wanted to scan. This may be more of a one-time setup thing in project settings, but it’s related to SEO.
SEO Score or Grade: Evergreen could provide an overall SEO health score (out of 100 or as a letter grade) for each page or the site as a whole. This is usually based on how many issues are found and their severity. For instance, a page with critical issues (no title, no H1, etc.) might score low, while a well-optimized page scores high.

Viewing SEO Issues in Evergreen:

The SEO Insights interface likely lists categories of issues, often grouped by severity (Errors, Warnings, Notices) or by topic (Titles, Descriptions, Links, etc.). You can navigate through these to see specific instances:

There might be a summary like: “Errors: 5 (e.g., missing titles), Warnings: 12 (e.g., multiple H1 tags), Notices: 20 (less critical suggestions).” Clicking each category filters the list to those items.
Or a breakdown by page: Each page with issues might be listed along with counts of what’s wrong. E.g., “/about-us – 2 issues: Missing meta description; Image alt missing on 1 image.”
Many tools provide a clickable item that opens a detail pane. For example, clicking “Missing meta description” might show the list of pages missing them. Then you can drill into a specific page if needed.

Guidance and Fixes:

For each issue, Evergreen usually provides guidance on why it matters and how to fix it. For instance:

Issue:Missing meta description on 8 pages – Why: Meta descriptions can improve click-through rate from search results by providing a concise summary. How to Fix: Add a <meta name="description" content="..."> tag to each of these pages, with a brief summary (~150-160 characters) including relevant keywords. Evergreen would list the 8 affected pages so you know exactly where to act.
Issue:Duplicate title tags (two pages have the same title) – Why: Unique titles help search engines understand distinct content; duplicates can confuse them. Fix: Modify the title tags so each page has a distinct, descriptive title. It might show which two pages share the title.
Issue:Broken link – It will show the page where the broken link is and the broken URL. Fix: Update or remove the link. Perhaps the URL changed or had a typo. Ensure all links point to live, correct pages.
Issue:No H1 on page X – Why: The H1 is often the main heading that tells search engines the topic of the page. Fix: Edit the page content to include a single <h1> tag that contains a relevant heading/keyword for the page.
Issue:Image missing alt – Why: Alt text is needed for accessibility and helps image search. Fix: Add a descriptive alt attribute to the image tag, e.g., alt="Product XYZ in use".
If integrated with GSC, Evergreen might also highlight coverage issues or mobile usability issues if Google reports them (like pages with mobile viewport problems). It depends on if they pull that data. If so, they may appear in SEO insights or a separate sub-section.

Workflow for Resolving SEO Issues:

Review the list regularly: Especially after you’ve added a lot of content or launched a new site section, check SEO Insights to catch any new issues (like someone forgot to add meta tags on new pages, etc.).
Prioritize critical issues: Not all SEO issues are equal. Prioritize fixing errors (red/high severity) first – things like missing titles or major problems that could significantly hurt rankings. Warnings (yellow) are next; they might not be urgent but still valuable to fix (like slightly long titles or multiple H1s). Notices (blue or info-level) could be minor suggestions (like “Title might be a bit long” which is not as harmful).
Make the fixes in your CMS or code: Remember that Evergreen is an analysis tool – fixing the issues typically happens outside Evergreen, in your website’s content management system (CMS) or codebase. Use the Evergreen report as a to-do list: go into your site’s backend, update those meta tags, fix those links, etc.
Track fixes and mark off: You might use Evergreen’s interface to mark issues as “fixed” or just rerun the scan after you believe you fixed them. If Evergreen allows, perhaps there’s a “Re-check page” button to validate if the issue is resolved. Otherwise, plan to run a full scan after a batch of fixes to see if your changes were successful.
Leverage team roles: If you have different people responsible (like a copywriter to write meta descriptions, a developer to fix broken links), you can export or share the specific issues with them. Evergreen might let you export an SEO audit report PDF or CSV. Alternatively, you can simply relay the needed changes.
Use recommendations: In some cases, ask Ask Eve for help directly – for example, if you’re not sure how to craft a good meta description for a page, you could ask Eve, “Suggest a meta description for my About Us page, focusing on our mission and keywords X, Y.” It might give you a draft you can refine and use.

Maintaining Good SEO Health:

SEO is not a one-time task. As you add content or make site changes, keep using Evergreen’s SEO Insights to maintain high standards. Over time, if you consistently see few issues, it means your content creation process has incorporated those SEO best practices (great job!). Still, periodic audits catch things that might slip through.

Also, consider the SEO Insights section as an educational tool. If you’re not an SEO expert, the explanations provided with each issue in Evergreen will help you learn the ropes. Over weeks and months, you’ll get a sense for what common pitfalls to avoid (like always writing unique titles, always adding alt text when uploading images, etc.), making future content creation smoother.

In summary, SEO Insights ensures your site content is search-engine-friendly. By following its guidance, you boost your chances of ranking higher and getting more organic traffic, all while providing a better experience to your site visitors.