Big Idea or Enduring Question:

• How can we ensure that Salesforce Experience Cloud sites provide search engines with the most up-to-date content snapshots for optimal SEO performance?

Objectives:

After reading this blog, you’ll be able to:

1. Understand the role of fresh content in Experience Cloud SEO.
2. Identify challenges in indexing dynamic content.
3. Refresh content snapshots for Experience Cloud sites.
4. Monitor and optimize indexation via Google Search Console.
5. And much more!

👉 Previously, I’ve shared several posts on effectively implementing key branding and SEO features for Experience Cloud sites. Why not check them out while you’re here?

1. Step-by-Step Guide to Enabling User Self-Deactivation in Experience Cloud Sites
2. Step-by-Step Guide to Generate a Sitemap in Salesforce Experience Cloud
3. Step-by-Step Guide to Hiding Experience Cloud Public Pages from Search Engine Indexing
4. Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Custom Robots.txt for Experience Cloud Sites

Business Use case

Olivia Bennett, a Junior Developer at Gurukul on Cloud (GoC), is part of a team working on building an Experience Cloud site for the company’s help portal. The portal is branded with the URL: https://help.gurukuloncloud.com/

She has already:

1. Branded the portal URL as described in this post.
2. Configured Google Analytics™ for Experience Cloud Sites.
3. Learned and implemented Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions to improve SEO.
4. Created a custom robots.txt file and modified the page meta tag/description.

Recently, Olivia launched a new homepage designed to attract more customers. She learned that search engines and content-sharing platforms use the Content Snapshot service in Experience Builder to generate SEO-friendly HTML. This service automatically updates snapshots when public content changes. However, for critical pages like the homepage, relying on automatic updates might not be enough. She discovered that a manual snapshot refresh can be triggered every 24 hours to ensure search engines reflect the most recent content. She wanted to learn how to do this.

Understanding the Content Snapshot Service in Experience Cloud

Experience Builder sites in production orgs use the Content Snapshot service to generate SEO-optimized HTML for web crawlers such as Googlebot and content-sharing platforms like Facebook. This service follows the dynamic rendering concept common to single-page application frameworks.

How Content Snapshots Work:

The Content Snapshot service in Salesforce Experience Cloud automates the process of generating SEO-friendly HTML for web crawlers like Googlebot and social media platforms such as Facebook. This ensures that dynamically rendered pages are indexed efficiently, improving their visibility in search results.

Key Features:

1. Automated Snapshots: Whenever you update publicly accessible content on your Experience Builder site, Salesforce automatically generates a new snapshot, keeping search engines informed of the latest changes.
2. Manual Refresh Option: For time-sensitive updates—such as flash sales or critical announcements—you can manually trigger a snapshot refresh once every 24 hours, ensuring that search engines promptly reflect the most current information.
3. Comprehensive Coverage: Snapshots are created for all routes included in your site’s standard sitemap and support multiple languages, ensuring a broad reach for your content.

Why Manual Snapshots Matter

For time-sensitive changes, such as flash sale price updates or breaking news, waiting for an automatic snapshot might not be ideal. A manual snapshot ensures that updated content is indexed quickly by search engines.

Automation Champion Approach (I-do):

To address Olivia’s need to promptly update the Home page content on the Experience Cloud site, it’s essential to manually refresh the content snapshot. This action ensures that search engines index the most recent version of the page, which is crucial for attracting customers and maintaining SEO performance.

Steps to Manually Refresh the Content Snapshot

To ensure that search engines receive the most current version of your Home page, follow these steps to manually refresh the content snapshot:

1. Open Experience Builder.
2. Click on the Settings → SEO, then navigate to Content Snapshot section. 
3. In the Published Page dropdown, choose the Home page that was updated.
4. Click on Refresh Snapshot to generate a new content snapshot for the Home page. This action can be performed once every 24 hours.

By following these steps, Olivia can ensure that the Home page displays the most current content to users and search engine. Providing search engines with fresh content snapshots for your Salesforce Experience Cloud site requires leveraging the Content Snapshot service, optimizing structured data, and ensuring site accessibility. By using manual snapshot refreshes, dynamic rendering, and SEO best practices, you can ensure search engines always reflect the most up-to-date content.

Stay proactive with Google Search Console, monitor your indexing performance, and optimize your Experience Cloud site for long-term SEO success.

Things to Remember 

1. Manual snapshot refreshes can be performed once every 24 hours to ensure timely indexing of critical updates.
2. Ensure your site is publicly accessible and has a preferred domain set to enable the Content Snapshot feature.
3. Snapshots are generated for routes included in your standard sitemap; regularly update your sitemap to reflect any changes.
4. Avoid creating different content based on custom query string parameters, as snapshots don’t support variations based on these parameters.
5. After refreshing snapshots, monitor indexing using tools like Google Search Console to ensure updated content appears in search results.

Formative Assessment:

I want to hear from you!

What is one thing you learned from this post? How do you envision applying this new knowledge in the real world? Feel free to share in the comments below.