Help & Support Tutorials

This section allows you to setup how your homepage title and meta will appear in Google Search.

Search engines read the title and description for each element of your site. So it’s important to take the time to configure these settings.

You can override the global meta you set here for individual posts/pages (more on this under In-Post Analysis), and fine-tune them but first, let’s take a look at what you can do with your global settings.

At the top of this module, you can see how will your site be presented in the search results and this will change as you modify the settings (so you can see the preview).

Note that this is all related to your HomePage and that you can modify settings for each page separately (see In-Post Analysis).

Title

This is where you can enter exactly what you want search engines to prominently display on results pages. This is what identifies your site in the results. You can insert one of the available macros (by clicking on the Insert Dynamic macro button) or you can just type in your desired description.

Description

This is probably the most important setting here, as it is the most likely to be indexed by search engines. As described above, you can use one of the available macros or you can type in your custom description.

OpenGraph

OpenGraph allows you to enhance how your site will be presented when making a post on Facebook and linking your page (Home Page).

When you setup your desired layout and Save the Settings, you can see how it will look at https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/. This enables you troubleshoot any problems before linking your site (like if the image is too small or too big).

Note that if you embed several images Facebook will allow you to choose which one to present as your post image so you can give each post a fresh look.

Using WooCommerce?

Please see the note below in the Post Types chapter if WooCommerce is active on your site, and you want all available OpenGraph tags to be automatically added to your individual product pages.

Twitter

This option enables you to enhance how your site will be presented when linking your page (Home Page) on Twitter.

As explained before, you can use available macros or you can insert custom text. This module also allows you to setup a Featured image/images (these images will be available to use if the post or page being shared doesn’t contain any images).

When you setup your desired layout and click Save Settings you can see how your Twitter card will look at https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator. This will also help you troubleshoot any potential problems before linking your site (like if the image is too small or too big).

Note that if you upload a new image, Twitter will override all the previous posts with the latest image.

Indexing

Indexing enables you to configure how you want your website to appear in search results.

The available features are as follows:

• Index this website – This is particularly useful to prevent indexing duplicate content on your website (which highly impacts your website ratings).
• Follow this website – By default, search engine crawlers follow each link on your site until the site is crawled. When disabled, this can be used to stop them from following dynamic URLs that lead to the same/similar content on your site, or if you do not wish to share your link to external URLs.
• Apply to all pages except the first – Enable this option to exclude applying the indexing settings to the first page, but apply them to all subsequent pages. This setting is available for the homepage, taxonomies, and archives as those types can be paginated, but not individual post types.

Just make sure to click Save Settings when you’re done. 🙂

The Post Types section allows you to setup the search result appearance of your Posts, Pages, Media and custom post types.

Each post type on your site will be listed alphabetically. Just click on the ones you want to edit their title & meta

For more info on how to set up Post types, refer to the Home Page section as it follows the same rules and principles.

See the Video Schema chapter below for additional guidance on ensuring your embedded videos have all the needed schema to pass Google’s Rich Results Test.

Note that if WooCommerce is active on your site, and you want all available og: tags automatically added to your individual product pages, you’ll want to enable OpenGraph here for the Product post type. Then go to WooCommerce SEO and toggle on the Enable Product Open Graph option.

Taxonomies section will allow you to set up the search result appearance for your post categories, tags and custom taxonomies. For more info, refer to the Home Page section as it follows the same rules and principles.

The Archives section allows you to setup the search result appearance for your Archive pages. For more info refer to the Home Page section as it follows the same rules and principles.

Author Archive: If you are the only author of the content of your website, Google may see your author archives as duplicate content to your Blog Homepage. If this is the case we recommend disabling author archives.

Note: The default meta description for the Author Archive is the Author bio but this can easily be edited at any point.

Date Archive: Google may see your date archives as duplicate content to your Blog Homepage. For this reason, we recommend disabling date archives.

Separator

The separator refers to the break between variables which you can use by referencing the %%sep%% tag. You can choose a preset or make your own.

For example, this is your default appearance:

But if you like to stand out from the crowd and use something like ~ for your separator your appearance will look something like:

Character Lengths

By default we recommend best practice characters lengths for your meta titles and descriptions. However, you can adjust these settings to suit your own requirements.

The character lengths that are set here affect the SEO recommendations for individual posts & pages. For more info, see the In-Post Analysis section.

Deactivate

Click the Deactivate button if you don’t need the Title & Meta features on your site.

If you have BuddyPress enabled on your site, you will see an additional section where you can customize the title & meta for BuddyPress profiles. For more info, refer to the Home Page section as it follows the same rules and principles.

There are numerous macros available to use in the title & meta of your various post_types. To view them all in your admin, click the Browse Macros button at the top of the Title & Meta screen.

For your convenience, here’s the full list of available macros with their descriptions:

General macros

• %%sep%% – Separator
• %%sitename%% – Site’s name
• %%sitedesc%% – Site’s tagline / description
• %%page%% – Current page number (i.e. page 2 of 4)
• %%pagetotal%% – Current page total
• %%pagenumber%% – Current page number
• %%spell_pagenumber%% – Current page number, spelled out as numeral in English
• %%spell_pagetotal%% – Current page total, spelled out as numeral in English
• %%spell_page%% – Current page number, spelled out as numeral in English
• %%currenttime%% – Current time
• %%currentdate%% – Current date
• %%currentmonth%% – Current month
• %%currentyear%% – Current year

Post macros

• %%id%% – Post/page ID
• %%title%% – Title of the post/page
• %%excerpt%% – Post/page excerpt (or auto-generated if it does not exist)
• %%excerpt_only%% – Post/page excerpt (without auto-generation)
• %%modified%% – Post/page modified time
• %%date%% – Date of the post/page
• %%name%% – Post/page author’s ‘nicename’
• %%userid%% – Post/page author’s userid
• %%caption%% – Attachment caption
• %%category%% – Post categories (comma separated)
• %%tag%% – Current tag/tags

Taxonomy archives macros

• %%id%% – Term ID
• %%term_title%% – Term name
• %%term_description%% – Term description
• %%category%% – Category name
• %%category_description%% – Category description
• %%tag%% – Tag name
• %%tag_description%% – Tag description

Author archives macros

• %%name%% – Author’s ‘nicename’
• %%userid%% – Author’s userid

Date archives macros

• %%date%% – Date of the archive

Custom post type archives macros

• %%pt_plural%% – Post type label plural
• %%pt_single%% – Post type label singular

Search macros

• %%searchphrase%% – Current search phrase

BuddyPress profiles macros

• %%bp_user_username%% – BuddyPress username
• %%bp_user_full_name%% – BuddyPress user’s full name

BuddyPress groups macros

• %%bp_group_name%% – BuddyPress group name
• %%bp_group_description%% – BuddyPress group description

Breadcrumbs macros

• %%id%% – Post/page ID
• %%title%% – Post/page title
• %%modified%% – Post/page modified time
• %%date%% – Post/page date
• %%name%% – Post/page author’s ‘nicename’
• %%userid%% – Post/page author’s userid
• %%category%% – Post categories
• %%tag%% – Post tag
• %%sep%% – Separator
• %%sitename%% – Site name
• %%sitedesc%% – Site description or tagline
• %%currenttime%% – Current time
• %%currentdate%% – Current date
• %%currentmonth%% – Current month
• %%currentyear%% – Current year
• %%page%% – Displays page number in the format (Page ’current page no’ of ‘total’)
• %%pagetotal%% – Current page total
• %%pagenumber%% – Current page number
• %%spell_pagenumber%% – Displays page number in the format (Page ’current page no in words’ of ‘total page number in words’)
• %%spell_pagetotal%% – Current page total in words
• %%spell_page%% – Current page number in words
• %%searchphrase%% – Search keyword

Dynamic macros

In addition to all the above, the following dynamic macros can be used for cases where none of the above are a good fit. Note these ones do not appear in the list when you click the Browse Macros button.

• %%ct_TAXONOMY%% – Replace TAXONOMY with the term you need.
• %%ct_desc_TAXONOMY%% – Replace TAXONOMY with the term you need.
• %%cf_META_KEY%% – Replace META_KEY with the post meta value you need.

On a singular post, the TAXONOMY macros are replaced by the title/desc of the first taxonomy term associated with the post. On the taxonomy archive they are replaced by the title/desc of the current term.

For example, dynamic macros can be used to get a WooCommerce product category to appear in the SEO Title (and browser tab) of corresponding single product pages. In this case, you’d want to use the %%ct_TAXONOMY%% macro, and replace TAXONOMY with product_cat so the macro becomes %%ct_product_cat%%.

Note that if you have multiple categories assigned to a product, only the first one will be fetched and displayed.