Setting up SEO.

Findable or not

The “Search engines” tab starts with the most important question: “Findable by search engines”. “Switch on” invites search engines to include your site. “Hide” asks them not to, and checks with “Really hide” first. It is a request, not a lock: reputable search engines respect it, but the site stays reachable for anyone who knows its address.

While a site is hidden, it also provides no sitemap for search engines. Nothing in this tab uses AI credit.

Title, tagline and description

Under “This is how the site appears in search” you see what a search result for your site would look like. Below it are “Site title”, “Tagline” and “Description”. For the title, the field counts how much of it Google roughly shows; for the description, it says which length is good. If the description stays empty, the tagline is used.

“Apply” writes everything to your WordPress site. Site title and tagline are the same as in the Console. If another SEO plugin runs on your site, the tab holds back so that there are never two descriptions in your page’s head: you keep setting title, tagline and visibility here, and the other plugin provides description and preview image.

1. 1Open the “Search engines” tab.
2. 2Under “Description”, write two sentences about your business.
3. 3Click “Apply”.

What a shared link looks like

When someone shares your site in a messenger or on a social network, a card appears with image, title and description; “This is what the shared link looks like” shows it to you. Under “Address of the preview image” you enter the address of an image, for example one from your media library. Without an image, messengers and networks show text only. If a single page has a featured image, that one applies there; the image here is the fallback for all the others.

A description for each page

The description above applies to your whole site. Under “Description of a single page” you give a page or post its own — the contact page needs a different sentence from the home page. If the field stays empty, the general description applies again.

1. 1Under “Choose page”, choose the “Catering” page.
2. 2Under “Description of this page”, write a sentence about the catering.
3. 3Click “Apply to this page”.

The checklist

The “Checklist” looks at your real site to see whether the essentials are right: whether it is visible to search engines, whether title and tagline are set, whether the description has a suitable length, whether a sitemap is delivered and whether the site runs over a secure connection. Each row shows “met” or “open”, with a sentence on what to do. Anything that could not be checked shows as “not checked” — never as a tick.

Where and how often your site appears on Google is deliberately not shown here: only Google knows that, and you need your own Google account for it. If your installation is not on the latest version, the tab says so; the next worry-free update catches up.