Search Engine Optimisation

Analytics and Tracking Tags

The Search Engine Optimisation screen configures two specific things: a Google Analytics identifier and a Facebook and Instagram pixel.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → Configuration:

• Search Engine Optimisation — the analytics and pixel settings

Architect Panel → Security:

• Cookie Consent — categories, services, cookies, scans and records

What it is

• Google Analytics — an identifier and a switch. When enabled, the tag is included on your pages.
• Facebook/Instagram Pixel — an identifier and a switch, reporting actions taken on your site back for advertising attribution and audience building.

That is the whole screen. Being clear about that saves looking for things that are elsewhere.

What it is not

It does not manage page titles, meta descriptions or canonical addresses — those are per page. It does not generate a sitemap or manage robots rules. It is a tag configuration screen rather than an SEO console.

Both are consent-relevant

The important point. Analytics and advertising tags set cookies and send data about your visitors to third parties. In most jurisdictions they require consent before they load, not after.

So switching these on without wiring them into your consent manager is a compliance problem, and it is the commonest one on the whole site.

Register them as consent services

Both should be defined in the consent manager as services in an appropriate category — analytics, and marketing — so they are blocked until the visitor agrees and loaded when they do.

The consent manager exists precisely for this, and using it is less work than defending the alternative.

The pixel is the more sensitive of the two

It is advertising, it is a third party building audiences, and it is what regulators look at first. If you are unsure whether you need it, you probably do not.

Say what you use in your privacy notice

Naming the services, what they do and what data they receive. A privacy notice that does not mention your analytics is a privacy notice that is wrong.

Check what is actually loading

Tags accumulate — added for a campaign, never removed. Look at what your pages actually load, in a browser, and confirm every third party is one you meant and can justify.

Remove what you do not use

A pixel for a campaign that ended two years ago is still collecting and still your responsibility. If nobody is reading the data, switch it off.

Worked example

An organisation registered both tags as consent services in the analytics and marketing categories, so neither loads before agreement. A check of what pages actually load found a third tag added during a campaign and never removed, which was deleted.

Recommendations

• Wire both into the consent manager before enabling.
• Name them in your privacy notice.
• Check what your pages actually load.
• Remove tags nobody reads.

Titles, Descriptions and Canonicals

Three tags do most of the work in how a page is presented by search engines and social platforms. All three are set per page.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → Layout & Pages:

• Page Builder — the page, its title and its meta description

Architect Panel → Configuration:

• Search Engine Optimisation — the analytics and pixel settings

Where they come from

Each page carries a title and a meta description, and the platform resolves a canonical address for it. A page can also name a custom title function where the title needs to be built from the record being shown.

The title

The clickable headline in search results and the browser tab. Around fifty to sixty characters before truncation.

Put the distinctive part first: what this page is, then the site name. "Roof Repairs — Northfield Building" is read; "Northfield Building — Services — Roof Repairs" is truncated to the least useful half.

Every page needs its own

The commonest failure, and it is worse than a poor title. Twenty pages sharing one title are twenty pages a search engine cannot distinguish, and it will choose one to show.

The meta description

The grey text beneath the title. Around a hundred and fifty characters, and it is not a ranking factor — it is an advertisement.

Write it to make somebody click: what the page offers and why it answers their question. A description that is the first sentence of the page repeated is a wasted opportunity.

The canonical address

Tells a search engine which address is the real one when a page is reachable by several — with and without parameters, with and without a trailing slash, through a friendly URL and through the underlying address.

That last case is why it matters here: friendly URLs mean most of your pages have at least two addresses.

Point canonicals at the friendly address

That is the one you want indexed, shared and linked. Without a canonical, a search engine chooses, and it frequently chooses the parameterised address that looks like nothing.

Use the custom title function for record pages

A page showing a record should have a title naming that record, not a generic page title repeated across thousands of addresses. That is exactly what a custom title function is for.

Check what is actually rendered

Look at the page source, on a real page, for a real record. Configuration is not the same as output, and an empty description or a missing canonical is invisible until you look.

Worked example

A site set distinctive titles on every static page, a custom title function naming the record on its product pages, and canonicals pointing at the friendly addresses. Checking the rendered source found several hundred product pages sharing one meta description, which was made record-specific.

Recommendations

• A distinct title per page, distinctive part first.
• Write descriptions to be clicked, not to summarise.
• Canonicals pointing at the friendly address.
• Read the rendered source, not the configuration.