When editing pages in the Ricochet Web Store, there is a small "Page Settings" section at the bottom of each page. Here you can control a few of the technical and SEO components of your website's primary pages.

We're going to go over each element, what it does, and the best practice we recommend for effective page building.

The title is quite exactly what it says. This is the title of the page. This appears in a few places throughout your website. The title is also what will be displayed on your website's navigation (if you choose to show this page in the nav). Lastly, it is the Title Tag when sharing the post on social media or searching on Google.
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A title tag, as said above, is what you see in social media posts and Google searches. For example, with Ricochet, our title tag is "Ricochet | Consignment Software | Consignment POS by Ricochet"
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This is quite long. For eCommerce stores we recommend just sticking to one or two words. For example, if you're building a page about furniture styles, it would probably be best to title the page "Furniture Styles" or "Styles."

Keeping it short will be the best bet for your customers.

The handle is the part of the URL that we are assigning to this page. Your URL always has the same root, and your pages are the handles that come afterwards. This is also referred to as "slug."

For example, with Ricochet's Features page (www.ricoconsign.com/features), the handle is "features."

This is what comes directly after the base URL. If this page is attached to a parent page, the handle will come directly after the previous page. As in https://www.ricoconsign.com/store-types/consignment-stores.

"store-types" is the parent page handle, and "consignment-stores" is the secondary page handle.

With website handles, always user lowercase characters. This makes handles and URLs easier to read.

Don't use periods or slashes.
Both of those icons actually have rules in web development and if you use a period or slash in your handle, it will break it and the page will not be viewable.

Keep it to as few words as possible. It's ok to cut unnecessary words out of a website handle. For example, maybe you build a page titled "Understanding Kids and Youth Sizes." The handle for this page doesn't need to be that long. Keep it short and concise.

"youth-sizing" is probably a good solution here.

If you are using multiple words in a handle, always use a dash between them. A space will not work, and an underscore is not recommended. A simple dash is what you need.

The parent page is simply what page this new page belongs under. In most cases with online retail, all of your customer pages will have the Home page as it's parent.

Where you might change this is if you have a specific page within another custom page. For example, you could have a page about Paint Types and their different uses, and then you could have individual pages underneath that about Acrylic Paints and Enamel Paints.

When you select a parent, that page's handle will follow afterwards in the URL.
Such as example.com/paint-types/acrylic

This toggle does exactly what it says. If this is on, there will be a link to this page in the primary navigation of your website.

In most cases, leaving it on is what you need.

If you are building a page that has a parent page other than the home page, you may not need it in the primary nav. If you do leave it on, however, AND that parent page is in the nav, the page your editing will appear in a dropdown when hovering the parent page in the navigation.

For you marketing campaigns, it is a good practice to link your ads to a landing page. If you are hosting a summer sale, it would be an excellent idea to build a unique landing page with stunning photos, promotion details, and other relevant information. Then you would link your digital ads directly to this landing page.

You never want landing pages to be found from a normal user. So you always turn this off. That way you can track visits and know that every single person that visited that page is a click from a current ad.

If you've done research on SEO, you've probably seen the term "meta description" tossed around a lot. With Ricochet, your products automatically have a meta description based on the product descriptions.

Your custom pages, however, need to have a meta description written.

Simply put, it is the preview text when searching on Google or sharing a post online. It also is really important to building good SEO. Google puts a fairly large emphasis on meta descriptions, so it's a good idea to write good ones for each page.

You can see in the example below, where a meta description appears on Google.

There fortunately isn't much to it. The major point is to be very clear and concise about the page you are building. If you're building an About page, write one sentence about where you are located and when you were founded. That's it.

The point isn't to give the full story, but just enough information that a user sees the page, and understands the content within it. This will help them decide if it's the right page they are looking for.

Limit your text to 160 characters. While there is no technical limit, Google typically cuts off the description at 160 characters. It can vary because it's not the literal number of characters you use but rather the space taken. 160 characters or less is just what most people recommend.