SEO plugins and meta tags

Last updated Oct 3, 20266 min read

Every generated page prints its own search-engine data. You set it per task in the step Search engines and, for single pages, in the page editor.

What a page prints

On a site without an SEO plugin a generated page (/wpmcf-doc-a10/lyon/ in the test) has:

html

<title>Best of Lyon – My Site</title>
<meta name="robots" content="max-image-preview:large" />
<meta name="description" content="Guide Lyon: Food capital." />
<meta property="og:type" content="website" />
<meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" />
<meta property="og:site_name" content="My Site" />
<meta property="og:title" content="Best of Lyon" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Guide Lyon: Food capital." />
<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/wpmcf-doc-a10/lyon/" />
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image" />
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/wpmcf-doc-a10/lyon/" />

plus og:image (with width, height and alt when known), article:modified_time (the page's last change), the structured data of Structured data, hreflang links on multilingual tasks, and the HTTP header Last-Modified.

Item	Source
Title (`<title>`)	The SEO title, wrapped by your site's title format (below)
Description	Meta description, or the start of the page content when empty
Canonical	The page's own URL, or the template's URL (setting below)
Robots	`noindex` and/or `nofollow` from the task, the quality rules and hand edits; otherwise WordPress's default (`max-image-preview:large`)
Open Graph / Twitter	The SEO title, description, URL and the share image
`Last-Modified`	The date of the page's last real change; a run without data changes does not move it

Each value is resolved in this order: set for this page by hand (or by AI, while the task asks AI for it) → the task's template → the template post itself.

Settings in the step Search engines

Search results

"What Google shows for each page. Yoast SEO, Rank Math and All in One SEO print these values too."

Setting	Notes
SEO title	"Leave empty to use the page title. Keep it under about 60 characters." Accepts variables, for example `Best hotels in {{ pseo.src.cities.name }} ({{ fn.now() \| date("Y") }})` (functions need the `fn.` prefix).
Title format	Like the rest of the site (adds the site name and separator of your SEO settings) (default) or Use the SEO title exactly as written.
Let AI write the SEO title of each page	"Used instead of the template above; written from the page’s data and your AI brief. Edit or regenerate single pages from the page list." See AI briefs and runs.
Meta description	"Leave empty to use the start of the page content. About 150 characters work best." Accepts variables.
Let AI write the meta description of each page	As for the title.
Share image › Image	"The picture shown when a page is shared on social networks and in messengers." A column holding an image URL or a media library ID; empty uses the template's featured image.

Indexing

Setting	Notes
Show pages in search results	"Turn off while you are still testing the pages." Off writes `noindex` on every page and keeps them out of the sitemap.
Let search engines follow links on the pages	Off adds `nofollow`.
Quality rules	"Thin pages hurt the whole site. Keep rows with missing data out of search results, or create no page for them."

A quality rule reads: When column condition value, Then keep the page out of search results or create no page. Conditions: is empty, is not empty, is, is not, contains, less than, greater than, has fewer characters than, has fewer words than. Up to 20 rules; the column belongs to one of the task's sources. Text comparisons ignore case, numeric ones need numbers, an empty value counts as empty after trimming. Examples:

When summary is empty Then keep the page out of search results: the page exists (and is reachable) but carries noindex and is left out of the sitemap. In the test the row São Paulo with an empty summary got <meta name="robots" content="noindex">.
When price is empty Then create no page: no URL is created for that row.
When description has fewer words than 30 Then keep the page out of search results.

Rules and the index/follow toggles are stored with the page when it is generated, so they apply at the next run.

Sitemap

List pages in the sitemap ("The sitemap of WordPress, Yoast SEO or Rank Math, with the date each page’s data last changed.") and Add each page’s share image to the sitemap ("Helps the images appear in image search (Yoast SEO and Rank Math sitemaps)."). See Sitemaps.

Canonical and removed pages

Canonical URL: Each page is its own canonical (recommended), or Point every page to the template page (pages are then not indexed). The second option makes search engines index the template instead of your pages; the SEO health warns about it.
When a row is deleted from the data: 410 or redirect, see Serving pages.

SEO plugins

The plugin detects the SEO plugin that prints the head of the page and hands the generated page's values over, so you do not get the template's values on every page:

SEO plugin	What is handled
Yoast SEO	Title (with Yoast's title format), description, canonical, robots, Open Graph and Twitter tags including the image, breadcrumbs, schema graph, a `pseo-sitemap.xml` with `lastmod` and images; the template is kept out of its sitemap; SEO values are written to the posts on conversion
Rank Math	The same, with a Rank Math sitemap provider
All in One SEO	Title (its format), description, canonical, robots, Open Graph/Twitter, breadcrumbs, schema graph; the template is kept out of its sitemap. Generated pages are listed by the WordPress core sitemap (`wp-sitemap-pseo-1.xml`), not by AIOSEO's own sitemap
Another SEO plugin (SEOPress, The SEO Framework, Slim SEO)	Not supported for generated pages: it prints the template's title, description and social tags on every page, and the task's SEO health warns "Your SEO plugin is not supported for generated pages (supported: Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO)…". Disable its output for these pages or use a supported plugin.
None	The plugin prints description, Open Graph and Twitter tags itself (above)

With Title format set to "Like the rest of the site", the SEO title takes the place of the title variable in the SEO plugin's title template for the post type of your pages (the setting you maintain under the plugin's search appearance or titles settings). If that template cannot be read, or without an SEO plugin, the title becomes SEO title – Site name using WordPress's title separator (a filter document_title_separator can change it).

For more help, see Troubleshooting.

Pages kept out by the plugins

The plugin marks the template noindex, nofollow in core, Yoast, Rank Math and All in One SEO, and removes it from their sitemaps.

Per-page overrides

In the page editor you can set a Page title, URL, Show this page in search results, SEO title, Meta description and Share image for one page. These survive runs. A hand-set SEO title is used even when the task writes SEO titles with AI.

Breadcrumbs

Pages carry a BreadcrumbList (in JSON-LD) built from the URL: Home, every parent path that is a page (generated or a real WordPress page), then the page itself. Parent segments that are not pages are left out instead of linking to a 404. With Yoast SEO, Rank Math and All in One SEO the plugin's own breadcrumb output is filled with the same trail. Breadcrumb data can be switched off in the Structured data step.

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