SEO optimizing your flipbooks

How to optimize your catalogs for search engines.

There are many ways for people to discover your publications. One of the most common ways is through a simple search engine search result. So with that in mind, this article is designed to help you better your catalog's ranking odds by implementing some simple SEO tips.

SEO stands for search engine optimization. In simple words in means optimizing your content and strategies for a better search result ranking. In this article we'll only talk about how that applies to your page flip catalog.

Basically, when search engine bots crawl and index your flipbook, they will not be able to understand and index the text that is on the pages of your catalogs. Flipsnack does not use text extraction, so other things are going to be more important. Let's see exactly what you should do if you want to have your catalog indexed and ranking for a relevant keyword.

Set flipbooks to public

We definitely need to start with this point, because if you don’t set your catalogs to public, it really doesn’t matter what sort of SEO techniques you use. Setting it to Public allows Google to index it, and it means that Google (or whatever search engine you’re using) will identify it and then rank it.

Unlisted or private catalogs published on Flipsnack use a noindex tag, which basically tells Google bot to not include the catalog in its index. This is great if you want to keep a catalog private, but if you want it to rank in Google, you need to make sure that your catalog is published as Public. You can edit the visibility status of a catalog form unlisted to public, but not the other way around.

Keywords

Keywords are a very important part of on-page SEO. The keyword that you pick will be what drives the search engines to find your flipbook, and ultimately the viewer. We should mention, however, that it’s not easy. SEO ranking is highly competitive. If you want to stand a chance, you should pick a keyword that is unique, relevant and very specific.

For example, ranking for a keyword as simple as “magazine" will prove to be close to impossible, as there are a lot of other really big websites, with a lot more content, out there trying to do the same. Instead, you should aim for a very relevant keyword, which is more specific like, “Esquire January Edition", "JohnDoe catalog January 2020" or "Nichita annual report 2019".

In most cases you could pick a relevant keyword, by simply combining together the following:

the brand name of your organization
the type of publication you created (catalog, report, portfolio, magazine, brochure etc)
a distinctive element which makes the catalog unique (for example, it could be the year, month, or something else that would help you identity that specific catalog if it's a part of a series)

Now that you know what would be the best main keyword for your catalog, it's important to know how to use it.

Title

Right before you publish a flipbook, you'll need to set a name or title. That title will be used as meta title for your publication, so it will appear in search engines results pages. Here's where it is really important to use the main keyword as the title, or as part or the title. It really matters, and it will help your catalog rank for the keyword that you decided to target

The same title is also used in the catalog URL, which is also a ranking factor. All the more reason to use your main keyword in the title.

No need to add any extra words other than your main keyword, because our system also add your name as author in the meta title, and the entire meta title should be shorter than 60 characters.

Description

The description you write for your catalog when you publish it is also important. The first part of it will be used in the meta description.

it needs to be unique
it should contain a short overview or summary of what your catalog is
use your keyword in the description
keep the most important information and keywords at the beginning of the description
(optional) end with an invitation for people to read your catalog

Here are some examples of good descriptions:

The 2020 XYZ Student Guide is the official resource for student-athletes from USA interested in playing school sports. Start reading

A guide to booking your newborn sessions and baby photoshoots, with PhotoBrands - New Jersey Newborn, Maternity and Family Photographer

Meta title and meta description

As part of our premium plan, for more control, you can also customize your publication's meta title and meta description. These are different than the previously mentioned title and description, and when these fields are completed, they will show up in search results. Otherwise, the search engines will index the publication's title and the first part of the description, as mentioned.

To edit the meta title and meta description, after you have published your article, on the details page, click on the SEO button.

Backlinks

In this case, a backlink is simply a link from one website to your flipbook. If you have a website, it would be great to include a link to your flipbook, or to embed it.
Adding links from your site or blog to your catalog has some major benefits:

it will help Google bots crawl and index your page faster
it can greatly help your catalog's ranking odds. Bonus points if you place the link on an anchor text that contains your keyword
SEO aside, it will also help drive traffic to your catalog. It’s another way to promote your hard work.

Embedding your catalog on your site does provide similar benefits.

Sharing your catalog

If you want to get more traffic to your catalog, you should also consider exploring other promo ideas, besides SEO. One of the best ways to promote your flipbook is with good old fashioned sharing.

In fact, one of the most widely used marketing techniques used is sharing through social media. With Flipsnack, you can share your flipbooks via email, chat, or any other online distribution methods. Basically anywhere you can share a link, you can share a catalog. Find out more about all sharing options.

Custom domains

The domain name is also a ranking factor, if you're using parts of the keyword in the domain name. With a Flipsnack Business plus plan or Enterprise, you can use your own domain for all your catalogs.

We generally advise the use of a custom domain or subdomain from your site for branding purposes and not for SEO. That being said, it's important to know that if you set a subdomain such as: magazines.condenast.es it will help your chances to rank in Google for "condenast magazines"

You can replace condenast with your own website/ brand name and magazines with any word that you target as keyword (catalogs, issues, reports, communication, documents etc), and you get a custom subdomain which you could use with Flipsnack.