WordPress Metadata Optimization

Metadata is the basis of your SEO. You are responsible for the view in the Google search results. With our SEO plugin you define rules for automatic optimization and thanks to Google Auto Suggest, you can better focus on the right keywords in the manual optimization of titles and descriptions.

Basic Rules

The metadata is usually invisible in your website, but it’s displayed in Google and Bing search results:

Screenshot from Google

Meta Title

Above is the blue meta title by including your main search term and possibly more keywords. The meta title is i.d.R. the first and most important thing users see in the search results. The earlier a term appears in the meta title, the more important it is from an SEO perspective. Since you have your company name i.d.R. already in the URL, you build it at the maximum of the end of the meta-title in the shortest possible form (ie without a GmbH in it). Special characters have lost nothing in the meta titles. Better use classic separators like “|” or “-” or “:”. The meta title should be at least 30 and may be up to 70 characters long.

Meta Description

Gray between the rating stars and the sitelinks is the meta description it gives you space for further search terms. The meta description is only indirectly relevant to your ranking. It serves to optimize the click rate. The meta description should be at least 110 characters long. About 150 characters are ideal. But it may also be more characters – then picks out Google the part that fits best for the search.

Optimization

We recommend that you prioritize the optimization of your metadata and texts as follows:

  • As a blogger and online store, these are first your categories and then individual posts and products.
  • If you offer services or products, you should first optimize your pages before going on categories and posts.

You see in the content overviews of WordPress in the column SEO as well as in the header during content editing now the button Meta, if the module is active:

  • If the Meta button is yellow, the metadata has been optimized only from the predefined rules in the settings: The title is then composed of the content and the website title. So that the description is not empty, our SEO Plugin automatically pulls the extract of your contents, which WordPress automatically generates. It is limited to 50 words.
  • If the button is green, then you have manually optimized the metadata.
  1. First enter keywords that you want to associate with your content. The search terms should consist of at least 2 words. Best follow the suggestions provided by our tool. They come directly from Google.
  2. The green outlined search term is then your focus keyword, which you ideally focus on in the meta title and later also in text optimization. If you want to define a different focus search term or remove a search term, just click on the keyword and then select the desired option in the selection menu.
  3. Then you define the metadata as described at the beginning. The focus search term ideally comes first in the title, then more terms in the title or description. In the description, you can also try up to 3 special characters. The following unicode characters are supported by all browsers and our SEO plugin: ★ ♥ ✓ ☚ ☛ ➤

Settings

  1. First define the order of the title composition. We recommend that you have the website title – the company name – arranged according to the title of your content (field “Homepage title” or “Placeholder for content”). As described above: The earlier a term appears in the title, the more important it is for Google SEO. For example, you could start the homepage title with your industry keyword and location (for example, Werbeagentur München). We were a bit more creative on our homepage and focused on “successful search engine optimization” because the keyword is the strategic most important thing for us. The meta title that you define here applies only to the homepage that you have defined in the WordPress Theme Settings – all other meta titles are from the content title (eg the individual post title or page title) and the page title according to the compilation rule defined here.
  2. You can also adjust the titles and their composition for different archives in the advanced settings. Of course, these settings are also multilingual customizable.
  3. If your content titles are longer and the combination of your website title would break the character limit of 70, our plugin can automatically remove the website title and delimiter. We recommend this option. You do not need them unless you want to let Google cut the titles themselves.
  4. After you have defined the title composition and thus the title for the start page, please check, if they are taken over correctly by your theme. The easiest way to do this is with the SERP snippet generator from SISTRIX, where you enter the URL of your homepage to check the preview. Is it equal to your settings, everything fits. If not, test the “Alternate Title” at step 8. If that does not work, please follow our instruction to change the meta title in your theme or consult our support.
  5. Now define the meta-description of your homepage. It’s best to use whole sentences and write them as interesting as possible. Teaser your offers or write about your industry and location.
  6. Then we strongly recommend that you confirm your website ownership in Google Search Console. Because in the Google Search Console (formerly called Webmaster Tools) you can monitor your rankings, indexing and errors best. Instructions for SEO performance measurement and the Search Console basic setup can be found here. Other tools like the Bing Webmaster Tools are also recommended if you are active in those channels.
  7. The indexing setting sets rules for indexing pages, categories, and taxonomies in Google. It’s best to let all contents “index” and “follow” the contents linked to them. But if you do not want to use content and index it, change the options.
  8. The canonical tag should be activated if your site is reachable via several domains (for example www.delucks.com and www.delucks.de). Our SEO plugin then communicates to Google that it should use the domain from your WordPress settings as the main domain, and not others. Please check first if your website does not already have a canonical tag – because some plugins such as. WPML itself already insert such a tag and can generate errors by duplication. The other options ensure that no metadata is used by other sources. You only need these options if an SEO expert finds deviations.
  9. If you also want to use your meta descriptions in the visible area of ​​your WordPress project, you can use them with the help of the shortcode in the content or with PHP codes in your theme. You can find the codes directly in our SEO plugin or in our GitHub code collection. For example, we use the meta descriptions as introductions to our blog posts.

Depending on how often you have optimized your page in the past, it will take a few days to months for Google to present the new metadata. You can check this by searching your URL in Google with the query “url:”. So for example url:https://delucks.com/en/seo/wordpress-plugin/metadata/.

Next to the Sitemap module