Pages: Meta-data and SEO Settings

Every page has settings that you can use to optimise the page for accessibility, search engine results, and indexing on your website. These settings should be reviewed every time you update the page to make sure they remain properly configured. These optimisations are largely configured on a page-by-page basis. To optimise a page, visit the editor for that page in the WordPress dashboard.

Page Meta-Data

Excerpt

An excerpt is a summary of the page that is displayed in some blocks and some archives. Writing an excerpt is an opportunity to craft a useful summary of the page content. They should still be enticing, but it’s more important to cover as many of the main points as possible so that visitors feel informed about the content they are about to access.

A good excerpt is short, punchy and descriptive of the page. As with all writing for the internet: keep it concise and don’t bury your lede—say the most important and interesting information first. Less than 40 words is ideal and can be guaranteed to display properly. The excerpt maximum length is 55 words, so you can exceed forty words if necessary (but the full display of the excerpt cannot be guaranteed).

The excerpt field is accessed in the Settings panel to the right of the editor, under the page tab, within the Excerpt accordion.

If left empty the excerpt may be drawn automatically from the first few lines of the page.

Theme SEO Settings

All Theme SEO Settings fields are available in the Theme SEO Settings accordion in the bottom panel of the page editor.

Only the canonical URL is essential in some circumstances. All SEO (search engine optimisation) configurations should be sincere, specific and succinct.

Document title

A document title appears as the title of the page in search engine results, and in the tab in your browser. If left blank, the document title will automatically draw from your Page Title (at the top of the page). Add a document title only if your page title is too long (more than 65 characters long), not meaningful or appropriate for a search engine result, or in instances where the context of your page, among other pages, might be necessary to understand the page title.

Meta-Description

The meta-description is a short page description featured under its title in search engine results. They do not affect search engine rankings. But as they can entice people to visit, they can be a useful tool for marketing content. Meta-descriptions differ from excerpts in that they will not display within the website, and they are not summaries of content—they are inviting descriptions of the content. You may not need to cover all of the main points like a summary would, but it should be informative for potential visitors.

Meta-descriptions are best when brief, enticing and incorporate relevant, unique keywords. Less than 40 words is advised; less than 20 words preferable. Search engines do not guarantee the display of a particular length (Google will typically allocate about 20 words, but it varies widely). As with all writing for the internet: keep it concise and don’t bury your lede—say the most important and interesting information first.

Avoid double-quotation marks. These indicate truncated descriptions and will automatically remove any text that follows. If double-quotation marks are important to communicate meaning you can replace them with the HTML entity instead: "

Meta-descriptions are optional. If left blank, the meta description will automatically draw from the excerpt (if it exists) or the first few lines of the page.

Meta-Keywords

This field assigns meta-keywords to the page. Meta-keywords aren’t consistently used by search engines so are not of great value. That said, future website indexing on University sites may draw on these keywords to weigh internal search results and improve the filtering of our content. If you would like to add meta-keywords, make sure they are highly unique and relevant to the page, and accurately reflect the page’s content.

Canonical URL

A canonical URL tells search engines that the content on the page has been copied from another “canonical” page on the internet. Adding this URL lets the search engine know which is the original and that it should be preferenced in its rankings. You should add canonical URLs to your page whenever you are copying content from the Divinity.edu.au site.

A canonical URL does not suffice for permission—if you want to post content made by another author, you still need to ask.