SEO Best Practices & Strategies Followed by ITI Digital DXP Modules

1. Unique Content Customization: ITI Digital allows you to enrich the aggregated data with unique content specific to your destination. While the foundational data may come from shared sources, adding local insights, personal stories, and unique calls to action can differentiate your website. This tailored content strategy is crucial in distinguishing your pages from others using the same data set.
2. Real-Time Updates and Dynamic Content: Google rewards sites that provide timely, dynamic content. By utilizing ITI Digital’s automated feeds for events, business listings, and hours of operation, your site remains constantly up-to-date, which Google values highly for user experience and relevance. This real-time aspect can give your site an edge over static content on other websites.
3. Structured Data and Schema Markup: Our software leverages structured data and schema markup, which helps search engines better understand the context of your content. This can improve your chances of getting featured in rich snippets, local search results, and other valuable SEO real estate.
4. Avoiding Duplicate Content Penalties: While the same base data might be shared across multiple websites, Google’s duplicate content penalties are primarily triggered by sites that provide identical experiences. By working with you to ensure unique elements such as custom descriptions, region-specific events, and personalized imagery are included, we can minimize any potential SEO impact.
5. Content Strategy and SEO Consultation: Beyond the technology, we offer ongoing consultation to optimize your content strategy. We can help identify areas where you can add unique value to your website, ensuring you stand out in competitive searches, especially when multiple DMOs use similar databases.

Search Engine Optimization Strategies Included in DXP Modules (Events & Places) | Technical Details

Following these best practices allows for a higher chance of link indexing and crawling by Googlebot and the consequential appearance on search results. These best practices do not act alone. Customer site-wide SEO efforts are highly recommended as they impact the overall domain authority and site appearance in organic search results.

• (New) Sitemap Generations for Events & Places URLs. ITI Digital provides a dynamic sitemap file for import and submission to Search Engines, including all approved Events and Places. The client will complete This submission step on the website server and corresponding Google Search Console account. It can significantly improve the chances of indexing for event details or place detail URLs.
• Seamless integration with website and unique URLs. ITI Digital’s event module is integrated into the website within the client domain URL (not a third-party URL), and each event’s single detail page also includes unique URL appendix parameters for proper Google Analytics tracking.
• Events & Places Contain Structure Data. ITI Digital single event and business listings detail pages include Google’s Experience Experience structure data. 
  • Structured data is a standardized HTML format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content. This element allows Search Engines to identify and read web pages.
  • Our DXP modules automatically create Rich Results structure data for all approved events, meeting Google’s best practices and SEO standards. Google Rich Results example: Rich Results Test - Google Search Console.
• Emphasis on Page Experience. Google’s Algorithm Prioritizes User Experience. Google aims to deliver the best possible results to its users. To achieve this, it prioritizes websites that offer a positive user experience. High user engagement signals indicate that visitors find your content valuable and relevant, which aligns with Google’s goals.
• Meta Descriptions & Title Included. The information about the Event will be injected into the host page's meta tag, making it easier for search engines to understand the page content and key information. This information can also be used in search results for the information display section.
• Relevant Content. ITI provides relevant and informative content to host websites to increase user views and stay time.
• Image Optimization. ITI uses reasonably compressed .webp format to create smaller, richer images that make the web faster
• Semantic links. The link to Event/Place contains semantic information, which helps search engines understand and disseminate the link's content.
• Semantic HTML Tags to help search engines understand page structure and content.
• Fallback Image and Alt Tags. We use fallback images and alternative text to avoid displaying unusable images to search engines.
• <noindex> strategy applied to past due events to avoid 404 errors that are undesired by search engines. 
• We don’t need user permission to display our pages. Requesting user permissions to view content is typically declined by Googlebot and can prevent indexing. 
• Absolute URLs. We don't use fragment URLs, which are seen as less desired by Googlebot. 
• We don't store view-related data in cookies or local storage. This is so we don't rely on data persistence to serve content. 
• Use content fingerprinting to avoid caching issues with Googlebot: To prevent the caching issue, we have a fingerprint of the content part of the filename, like main.2bb85551.js.
• Ensure our content works with HTTP connections: We only use HTTP to retrieve content in front-end widgets embedded in client websites; we don’t use other techniques like WebSockets or WebRTC.
• Ensure our web components render as expected: We don’t use web components, but overall content rendering can be validated via the Rich Results Test: Rich Results Test - Google Search Console.

OTHER PAGE PERFORMANCE/LOADING BEST PRACTICES FOLLOWED BY ITI DIGITAL DXP MODULES

The following technical and performance improvements were added to Version 3.0 Events & Places (released March 2023) and are active on all current customers:

• Faster performance. Built on Angular's latest version. It has improved functionality, security, performance, and other deployment aspects compared to the previous Angular architecture versions.
• Improved lazy loading technology fundamentally improves the program loading speed. With other optimization methods, the module and widget loading speed increased by about 200%.
• Introduced the use of state management development procedures. These procedures make the information flow between the dashboard and frontend widgets more concise and efficient.
• TailwindCSS is introduced to improve the consistency of style and make it easier to control responsiveness on multiple screens and devices. 
• Content compression: All transmitted scripts and style files are compressed to improve transmission efficiency.
• Only prioritize rendering the content in the screen's visible area, and more content will be loaded as the visible area scrolls to improve the loading performance and the user experience.
• Delay script loading Delay loading third-party scripts to improve the rendering speed of primary content.
• Tree Shaking Remove useless code and components when packaging code to reduce volume.
• Skeleton Screen: Use a skeleton screen to improve FCP and UX.