Controlling your Social and SEO Appearance
Search engines and social sites like Facebook and Twitter use specific metadata to understand what information each website wants displayed on their platform.
For social platforms, when you share a link to an article or website, the social card that appears with text and images summarizing the post is pulled directly from the link’s metadata, word for word.
For search engines, when you see a search result, the title and subtitle that appear are a combination of the metadata supplied by the link and the search engine’s own collected information on the site. Think of the site’s metadata as a strong suggestion in this case.
Lunteer gives you full control over these metadata fields so you can relay the information you want to your users on these platforms.
Critical Data
Search engines and social sites display three main data points to users: title, description, and image. Posts and pages can include many images. But to set an image that will appear in search results or on social sites, set a Featured Image. This image does not have to be the first image in your content and does not even have to appear in the content of that page or post at all!
Adding and Editing Meta Title
- Open a post or page
- Click the first field box, which is for your meta title
- Enter the text you wish to appear as your meta title.
Note: This text does not display within the contents of the page itself. To add a title that appears in the page itself, add a section with text. See our editor guide for more details. - Click save to send your meta title to search engines and social sites
Adding and Editing Meta Description
- Open a post or page
- Scroll past the editor to locate the excerpt field
- In the excerpt field, enter the text you wish to display as your meta description.
Note: There is no character limit for this field. Each platform has its own character limits, after which they truncate (shorten the description and an ellipsis “…”.) This length changes based on device. We recommend limiting the description to 150 – 200 characters. - Click save to send your meta description to search engines and social sites
Adding a Featured Image
- Open a post or page
- Scroll to the Featured Image box – on desktop, it is in the right-hand menu, on tablet it is before the editor
- Click Set featured image
NOTE: If the image is already in your media library, select it and click add. If not, follow the process to add your image, see our tutorial on adding images.
Testing
There are several social sites that allow you to preview how your site’s meta information will display. Here is a list of links to testing tools from various social sites. Sign in might be required.
Conclusion
The information that displays when your site appears as a search result or on social sites may be the first impression a user has of your brand. That’s why it’s so important to get it right! With the Lunteer platform you have complete control over your first impression and every one after that with carefully planned meta information.