Populating the SEO Tab

Our ProcessWire websites come with a handy set of tools to help you get to grips with your SEO and make sure its all set up to help improve your search ranking.

In this guide we will go over the basics of how the SEO tab works, however there are some SEO practices that are page specific (image alt tags for example) that will not be covered here.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a practice that helps your website appear higher in search engine results like Google. It involves optimizing your website's content, structure, and technical aspects to make it more visible to search engines and attract organic (non-paid) traffic.

By following SEO best practices, such as using relevant keywords, creating quality content, and improving website performance, you increase the chances of your website being discovered by users looking for information or products related to your site. SEO is an essential tool for improving online visibility and driving organic traffic to your website.

The objective of this article is to show you how to correctly populate the necessary fields in your website.

Once logged in to the admin section of your website, the SEO tab will be found at the top of a page (see image above). This tab covers the majority of your page's meta information as well as a few options for how the page is displayed when viewed by external sources (such as google).

This guide will go over every field in the tab, however some of these fields will not always be relevant and can often be left alone; in essence, as long as the Title, Description, Canonical Link, & any OG Variants are filled out, you will be covered for a basic SEO setup.

Title:

The 'Meta Title' field is used to define the title of a web page. This appears as the clickable headline in search engine results, conveying the web page's content and attracting user clicks, this is also often used as the title within the browsers tab alongside your favicon.

To fill it out, enter a concise and descriptive title that accurately represents the web page content and includes relevant keywords to improve search engine visibility. Keep it within 50-60 characters to ensure it displays properly in search engine results.

Description:

The 'Meta Description' field is used to provide a concise summary of the web page content, appearing below the title in search engine results, and helping users understand what the page is about and enticing them to click. This should be a concise and informative, aim for around 150-160 characters to ensure it is fully displayed in search engine results.

OG (Open Graph)Title & Description:

These are used in a similar way to their non-OG counterparts, these fields allow you to specify a title & description specifically for social media sharing, providing a compelling and engaging headline when the web page is shared on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

In most cases, these will be exactly the same as the existing title & description.

Image:

The image field enables you to upload a visually appealing image that represents the web page content when shared on social media platforms, enhancing the visual appeal and click-through rates of shared posts. These are optional, but encouraged as the search engines will choose an image from your site and it may not be the one that you would choose.

Robots: 

These check-boxes allow you to control how a search engine bots crawl and indexes the web page. You can choose options like "index" or "noindex" to determine whether the page should be indexed, and "follow" or "nofollow" to control whether search engine bots should follow the links on the page.
In most cases this should be left as it is when you created the page.

Custom Meta Tags:

The Custom Meta Tags field provides the ability to add additional meta tags, which are snippets of code that provide search engines with specific information about the web page, such as keywords, authorship, or specific instructions for search engines.
In most cases this should be left as it is when you created the page.

Custom End Head & Body:

These two fields are very similar, these allow you to add custom code or scripts that will be placed at the end of the <head> or <body> sections of the web page. The <head> offering the ability to include additional elements like tracking codes or specific meta tags, and the <body> section of the web page, providing the opportunity to include elements like analytics codes or other scripts that require placement before the closing </body> tag. 

In most cases this should be left as it is when you created the page.

Keywords:

This field should be left empty as most search engines will ignore it, tending rather to understand what your page is about by its content. It is widely believed that keyword metadata can actually be a negative indicator to the search engines that the site is outdated.