SEO stands for search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a web page, such as your campaign. Your campaign's SEO settings will appear when you share your campaign on social media or search for it using a search engine. These settings also make up your campaign's meta tags, which are pieces of information that provide data about your page to search engines and website visitors.

When searched for on a search engine, such as Google, the campaign's SEO Title (1) and SEO Description (2) will be used as your meta tags:

When shared on social media, such as Facebook, the campaign's SEO Title (1), SEO Description (2), and SEO Photo (3) will be used:

When configuring a Form, Page, or Event, we highly recommend setting up and customizing the SEO settings for your campaign. These details help your campaign look polished and compelling when shared and can even improve how often people click through to donate.

For best results, keep your SEO copy clear, specific, and donor-focused. Use language your supporters already recognize, especially the name you've been promoting in emails, social posts, or flyers.

Aim for 50–60 characters for best display in Google results. Include your organization name, the type of fundraiser, and your location if relevant. For annual events, include the year, but skip it for evergreen pages.

Aim for up to 150 characters. Clearly state what you're raising funds for, include a specific goal or impact, and write in sentence form rather than keywords. Givebutter will show a character count and alert you if your description is too long.

Use a high-quality, mission-focused image (at least 1200 × 630 pixels, under 300 KB, in JPG, PNG, or WebP format). Avoid text-heavy graphics as they may be cropped on some platforms. Fill in the "Describe image (Alt text)" field with a short, descriptive caption. This helps with accessibility and gives search engines more context about your campaign.

Givebutter automatically generates a URL slug based on your campaign title, but you can customize it for a cleaner link. Keep it short, lowercase, and hyphenated, focused on your organization name or cause.

Sometimes, if you've updated your SEO settings, your image or SEO data won't be reflected on social media right away. Social media platforms will cache (save) images when they are shared (by anyone), or even when the URL is just pasted into a draft.

To update the information, you need to debug the campaign URL. To debug, you need to enter the campaign's URL into a debugger page. Each social media platform has its own debugging page, except Instagram, which is owned by Facebook and therefore uses the same for both.

Then, you need to scrape the URL until the new information appears. You may need to debug/scrape a few times before it populates the latest update.

Follow the link for the platform you're trying to use right now:

Enter the campaign URL in the URL box on those pages, and click Debug/Preview. Continue to scrape/debug until your new information appears in the debugger.

Keep in mind that these websites will scrape for new updates every once in a while, so it's not a guarantee that you have to do this every time. However, when you are having an issue where the old information is populating, debugging is the way to go! This goes for any link you are sharing on social media, not just a Givebutter link.