How to manage your Meta Tags
Meta tags are snippets of text in the HTML code of a webpage that provide information about the page's content to search engines and website visitors. They typically include a page's title and description.
Properly managing meta tags can help improve a website's visibility in search results, as well as enhance the user's experience by providing clear and concise information about the content of the page on the Google search results page. By optimizing meta tags, website owners can attract more traffic to their site and ensure that visitors are finding the most relevant content.
With Smart SEO, you can easily manage the meta tags for your Products, Collections, Articles, etc.
In this article:
Edit a single product meta tags
Bulk edit meta tags
FAQ
The examples in this article are related to the Products meta tags. However, the processs of changing the meta tags for the Collections, Blogs, Articles, Pages, etc., is the same.
To edit your meta tags, go to the Meta Tags page in the Smart SEO menu:
For each of your products, you will see the product name, an edit button that will allow you to edit the meta tags for the product, as well as an SEO score.
Above the Products list, there is a search bar that allows you to search for a specific product's name:
And right next to it, there are filters, which allow you to filter the list of products by Tag, Vendor or Collection:
To edit the meta tags for a single product, click on the Edit button next to the product in question:
You will see the following screen on the next page:
The first text area is for the Meta Title and the one below it, for the Meta Description.
The meta tags are not displayed as an actual content that is printed on the page, but rather as snippets of text, added to the source code of the page, which are used to describe the content of the page to search engines. Search engines also use them to display the given page in their Search Engine Result Pages (SERP).
On the right, you will see an SEO score and some recommendations on how to improve it, depending on the search engines preferences. Search engines recommend lenght for the meta titles between 30 and 60 characters and for the meta descriptions - between 80 and 160 characters.
Once you add your meta title and descriptions, you need to click the Save button for the changes to be saved. If our app is integrated, those meta title and descriptions will be displayed for your store.
Now that the meta tags for this product are saved, at the bottom of the page we can see how would the product in question appear in the search results page:
Bear in mind that even though the meta tags change is immediate, it might take some time for Google to re-index your store and to display the new meta tags information on their search results page.
Setting meta tags for your secondary languages (if you use the Shopify multi-language feature) is straight-forward. All you have to do is to select the lagnuage from the available languages in your store from the dropdown at the top left:
With the AI Meta Tags Generation feature, you can generate the text for your meta title and description through AI. To do that, click the Generate button:
This will open a popup where you can provide some keywords that you wish the AI to use when it generates the meta title/description:
You can also select a Tone of voice and optionally, Special instructions for the AI to use. Once you are done, click the Generate button.
The AI will provide a result and you would have the option to use the meta title, the meta description or to use both:
Don't forget to Save the changes.
One of the main advantages of managing your meta tags with Smart SEO is the bulk edit feature, which allows you to create templates that would be used for all your current and future products added to your store.
To bulk edit the meta tags for multiple products, you can either click the checkbox next to the products you wish to edit or you may simply click the checkbox above all products, to select all 10 products on the page:
If you wish to edit the meta tags for all the products in your store and not only the first 10 products you see in the list, you can click the Select all 10+ products in your store button that will appear next to the checkbox.
Finally, click the Edit products button that appeared at the bottom of the page:
You will see a very similar screen to when you edit the meta tags for a single product. However, here, above the meta title text area, you will see a list of the products you have selected and on the right, instead of SEO score, you will see a list of the available Smart Tokens you can use.
The Smart Tokens are what makes the bulk edit such a great feature, as it allows you to create complex templates that would be used for each of your product's meta tags. Let's say that we want all our product's meta titles to be set to Buy PRODUCT_NAME now!, where PRODUCT_NAME is the name for each product. Instead of going through all the products one by one, we can simply use the bulk edit feature and set the Meta Title for all the products to:
Buy ${title} now!
And for the given example, we will use the smart token ${description} for the Meta Description for all products, which outputs the first 300 characters of the product's description, then click Save:
The changes are immediately affecting the meta title and description in your product's pages and if we go to the previous page and click on Edit next to any product, we can see that the Smart Tokens have been replaced accordingly:
At the bottom of the page, below the Search engine listing preview we can see the meta tags template that was used:
Just like with the single product meta tags change, it might take some time for Google to re-index your store and to display the new meta tags information on their search results page.
Question: I do not see the meta tags in the Shopify admin/backend?
Answer: You might be using the old version of Smart SEO (if you have installed Smart SEO before the 4th of April 2024). Please note that the old version of Smart SEO does not change the meta title and meta description in the Shopify backend, but it used to store the meta tags you save in our app as metafields. You can still check the actual meta tags that are visible on your pages by following this article.
Question: The meta tags I saved in Smart SEO do not appear on the Google Search Results Page
Answer: Even though the meta tags change should appear immediately in the HTML of your store, it might take some time for Google to re-index your store and to display the new meta tags information on their search results page. You can check the actual meta tags on your pages by following this article and contact us if those are not the same as the ones you saved in Smart SEO.
Question: I have duplicated meta tags on my pages
Answer: When this happens, our system notifies us and we contact you to inform you of this and to offer our help in resolving this, so check your email or simply contact us via the chat button in Smart SEO.
Question: How to change the meta tags of the homepage?
Answer: Shopify does not allow the changing of the homepage meta tags through the Shopify API and therefore you can only change these through the Shopify admin. Open the Shopify admin/backend and go to Online Store -> Preferences. There you have the homepage title and the homepage meta description.
Properly managing meta tags can help improve a website's visibility in search results, as well as enhance the user's experience by providing clear and concise information about the content of the page on the Google search results page. By optimizing meta tags, website owners can attract more traffic to their site and ensure that visitors are finding the most relevant content.
With Smart SEO, you can easily manage the meta tags for your Products, Collections, Articles, etc.
In this article:
Edit a single product meta tags
Bulk edit meta tags
FAQ
The examples in this article are related to the Products meta tags. However, the processs of changing the meta tags for the Collections, Blogs, Articles, Pages, etc., is the same.
To edit your meta tags, go to the Meta Tags page in the Smart SEO menu:
For each of your products, you will see the product name, an edit button that will allow you to edit the meta tags for the product, as well as an SEO score.
Above the Products list, there is a search bar that allows you to search for a specific product's name:
And right next to it, there are filters, which allow you to filter the list of products by Tag, Vendor or Collection:
Edit a single product meta tags
To edit the meta tags for a single product, click on the Edit button next to the product in question:
You will see the following screen on the next page:
The first text area is for the Meta Title and the one below it, for the Meta Description.
The meta tags are not displayed as an actual content that is printed on the page, but rather as snippets of text, added to the source code of the page, which are used to describe the content of the page to search engines. Search engines also use them to display the given page in their Search Engine Result Pages (SERP).
On the right, you will see an SEO score and some recommendations on how to improve it, depending on the search engines preferences. Search engines recommend lenght for the meta titles between 30 and 60 characters and for the meta descriptions - between 80 and 160 characters.
Once you add your meta title and descriptions, you need to click the Save button for the changes to be saved. If our app is integrated, those meta title and descriptions will be displayed for your store.
Now that the meta tags for this product are saved, at the bottom of the page we can see how would the product in question appear in the search results page:
Bear in mind that even though the meta tags change is immediate, it might take some time for Google to re-index your store and to display the new meta tags information on their search results page.
Setting meta tags for different languges
Setting meta tags for your secondary languages (if you use the Shopify multi-language feature) is straight-forward. All you have to do is to select the lagnuage from the available languages in your store from the dropdown at the top left:
AI Meta Tags Generation
With the AI Meta Tags Generation feature, you can generate the text for your meta title and description through AI. To do that, click the Generate button:
This will open a popup where you can provide some keywords that you wish the AI to use when it generates the meta title/description:
You can also select a Tone of voice and optionally, Special instructions for the AI to use. Once you are done, click the Generate button.
The AI will provide a result and you would have the option to use the meta title, the meta description or to use both:
Don't forget to Save the changes.
Bulk edit meta tags
One of the main advantages of managing your meta tags with Smart SEO is the bulk edit feature, which allows you to create templates that would be used for all your current and future products added to your store.
To bulk edit the meta tags for multiple products, you can either click the checkbox next to the products you wish to edit or you may simply click the checkbox above all products, to select all 10 products on the page:
If you wish to edit the meta tags for all the products in your store and not only the first 10 products you see in the list, you can click the Select all 10+ products in your store button that will appear next to the checkbox.
Finally, click the Edit products button that appeared at the bottom of the page:
You will see a very similar screen to when you edit the meta tags for a single product. However, here, above the meta title text area, you will see a list of the products you have selected and on the right, instead of SEO score, you will see a list of the available Smart Tokens you can use.
The Smart Tokens are what makes the bulk edit such a great feature, as it allows you to create complex templates that would be used for each of your product's meta tags. Let's say that we want all our product's meta titles to be set to Buy PRODUCT_NAME now!, where PRODUCT_NAME is the name for each product. Instead of going through all the products one by one, we can simply use the bulk edit feature and set the Meta Title for all the products to:
Buy ${title} now!
And for the given example, we will use the smart token ${description} for the Meta Description for all products, which outputs the first 300 characters of the product's description, then click Save:
The changes are immediately affecting the meta title and description in your product's pages and if we go to the previous page and click on Edit next to any product, we can see that the Smart Tokens have been replaced accordingly:
At the bottom of the page, below the Search engine listing preview we can see the meta tags template that was used:
Just like with the single product meta tags change, it might take some time for Google to re-index your store and to display the new meta tags information on their search results page.
FAQ on the Meta Tags feature
Question: I do not see the meta tags in the Shopify admin/backend?
Answer: You might be using the old version of Smart SEO (if you have installed Smart SEO before the 4th of April 2024). Please note that the old version of Smart SEO does not change the meta title and meta description in the Shopify backend, but it used to store the meta tags you save in our app as metafields. You can still check the actual meta tags that are visible on your pages by following this article.
Question: The meta tags I saved in Smart SEO do not appear on the Google Search Results Page
Answer: Even though the meta tags change should appear immediately in the HTML of your store, it might take some time for Google to re-index your store and to display the new meta tags information on their search results page. You can check the actual meta tags on your pages by following this article and contact us if those are not the same as the ones you saved in Smart SEO.
Question: I have duplicated meta tags on my pages
Answer: When this happens, our system notifies us and we contact you to inform you of this and to offer our help in resolving this, so check your email or simply contact us via the chat button in Smart SEO.
Question: How to change the meta tags of the homepage?
Answer: Shopify does not allow the changing of the homepage meta tags through the Shopify API and therefore you can only change these through the Shopify admin. Open the Shopify admin/backend and go to Online Store -> Preferences. There you have the homepage title and the homepage meta description.
Updated on: 11/04/2024
Thank you!