Page SEO

Updated

Page editor sidebar SEO box with title and description fields
SEO box in the page editor sidebar.

Overview

Posts, pages, and other public content get an SEO box in the editor sidebar. Use it to set how each page appears in search results and social shares. The Search Engine Preview at the top of the box updates as you type.

Where to find it

  1. Edit a post, page, or any other public item
  2. Open the sidebar and find the SEO panel

The same box appears on the posts page, the front page, and WooCommerce shop or product pages. Those pages use the SEO fields saved on that WordPress page.

Fields

  • SEO Title — use the Title, separator, and Site pills, or type a custom title. Empty titles fall back to the page name, the Customizer separator, and the site name. A static homepage falls back to the site name alone. When the homepage lists your latest posts, it shows the site name, separator and tagline from Settings → General (or Home, the separator and the site name when there's no tagline), and the tagline is its description.
  • SEO Description — the meta description shown in search results and social shares. If you leave it blank, Dirigible SEO uses the excerpt, or the first 320 characters of the content.
  • Private Page (Do Not Index) — asks search engines to leave this page out of their results, and leaves it out of the sitemap
  • Override canonical URL — turn this on only when this page is a duplicate. Then enter the original URL. The page then drops out of the sitemap, since search engines should index the original. Leave it off to use this page’s own permalink.
  • Enable Custom JSON-LD — replace the theme’s default structured data for this page
  • Custom JSON-LD — paste your structured data without <script> tags. It only takes effect when Enable Custom JSON-LD is on and the field is not empty

Pills in the title field:

  • Title — the WordPress title (or term name on archives)
  • The separator pill — the Customizer Title Separator
  • Site — the site name from Settings → General

You can also type {year} for the current year, for example in "Best Gift Ideas {year}".

Share image

There is no image picker. On save, Dirigible SEO stores a share image from:

  1. The featured image (large size), or
  2. The first block background image, or
  3. The first Image block

SVG images are skipped, since Facebook, LinkedIn and X don't show them. A page with a share image gets a large image card when shared on X.

Tips

  • Write the description for people, not for keywords. Check it in the preview.
  • Date archives (such as /2024/) are always kept out of search results, since they repeat posts listed elsewhere.
  • Use Private Page for test pages and anything else that should stay out of Google. With Dirigible theme 5.31.101 or newer, the theme already hides the 404 page, and thank-you pages that a Gravity Forms confirmation sends visitors to when the page address says thank you or confirmation.
  • Do not override the canonical unless two public URLs show the same content.
  • If Yoast is still active, you can fill these fields, but live tags stay off until Yoast is deactivated.