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.