First you should know we do our best for your platform to be ranked as well as possible. We have set default settings that should work well. There are a lot of factors taken into account by the search engines for ranking. Here we will only cover meta tags and natural referencing.
Meta tags
These tags are the way we describe the platform to Google Search. The words used as tags are very important to determine the search keywords that will lead to your platform.
Meta title
This title is displayed on search engine results pages as the clickable headline for your platform. This is also the title that will be used when sharing your platform's landing page on social media (social sharing on Facebook, Twitter, etc.), and the title displayed in your citizens web browser when they are on the homepage.
The default setting for your platform is: Citizen engagement platform of {your organization name} | CitizenLab.
Meta description
A short text displayed on search engines right under the clickable title.
The default setting for your platform is: "Welcome to the online citizen engagement platform of {your organization name}. Explore local projects and vote on your favourite ideas. Come participate in the discussions!"
Make sure your new title and description describe the platform well, and contain the keywords you wish it to be found at. You can contact us at any time to request a change to these default settings. Make sure to reach out to support@citizenlab.co.
Good to know: this title and description will change when you navigate the platform to describe the content of certain pages more accurately, like the idea or projects pages: this is really useful for search engines, so this behaviour can not be changed.
Popularity
Make sure to publish some relevant content on your platform on a regular basis, it will improve both your ranking and so also citizen engagement.
Share content on a regular basis (for example on social media), but don't spam.
As the platform gains popularity and there are links pointing to your platform from more reliable sources, it will naturally gain visibility in search engines too.
Don't underestimate the power of SEO!