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Indexing & Sitemaps · Guide #10

Search Appearance

Control how your pages appear in Google — title tag templates, meta descriptions, separator style, Open Graph tags, Twitter Cards, Knowledge Graph, and robots directives, all from one powerful tab.

⏱ 8 min read 👤 Intermediate 📦 v7.0+

Where to Find This Tab

Go to SEO Rank Genius → Indexing & Sitemaps → Search Appearance (first tab under the “Content” group). Marked with a NEW badge.

Feature Toggles

The top card lets you enable or disable each meta output the plugin generates. This is critical if you’re running SEO Rank Genius alongside another SEO plugin — turn off features that overlap.

✓
Title Tags
Output <title> on all pages
✓
Meta Descriptions
Output <meta description>
✓
Canonical URLs
Prevent duplicate content
✓
Open Graph
Facebook & LinkedIn previews
✓
Twitter Cards
Twitter / X rich previews
✓
Robots Meta
noindex / nofollow directives
⚠️
Using Yoast or Rank Math too? Disable Title Tags, Meta Descriptions, Canonical URLs, and Open Graph here to avoid duplicate meta tags in your HTML source.

Title Separator

The separator appears between your post title and site name in the <title> tag. For example: My Blog Post — My Site

— – | · » / : •
My Blog Post — My Site Name

Title & Description Templates

Set default templates for each content type. Use template variables (like %%title%%) that get replaced dynamically.

Per-Content Type Settings

Each post type (Posts, Pages, Products, etc.) has its own collapsible row where you can set:

  • Title template — e.g., %%title%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%
  • Description template — e.g., %%excerpt%%
  • Default robots — index/noindex per type
Post Types
📝
Posts
post
▼
📄
Pages
page
▼
🛒
Products
product
▼
💡
Tip: Click on any content type row to expand it and customize its title/description template. A live SERP preview updates as you type.

Special Pages

Customize titles and descriptions for pages that aren’t standard posts:

PageDefault Title Template
Homepage%%sitename%% %%sep%% %%tagline%%
Author Archives%%author%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%
Date Archives%%date%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%
Search ResultsSearch: %%search_query%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%
404 PagePage Not Found %%sep%% %%sitename%%

Social & Open Graph

Configure default social sharing settings:

  • Default OG Image — Fallback image when a post has no featured image. Recommended: 1200×630px.
  • Twitter Card Type — summary_large_image (large preview) or summary (small thumbnail).
  • Facebook App ID — Optional. Enables Facebook Insights for your domain.
  • Twitter Username — Your @handle for Twitter Card attribution.

Knowledge Graph

The Knowledge Graph card outputs JSON-LD structured data that helps Google understand your brand:

  • Entity Type — Organization or Person
  • Name — Your business or personal name
  • Logo URL — Square logo, minimum 112×112px
  • Social URLs — Links to your official social profiles (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)
💡
Why this matters: Knowledge Graph data can trigger a branded Knowledge Panel in Google search results, showing your logo, description, and social links directly in the SERP.

Robots Defaults

Set default robots meta directives for each content type:

DirectiveEffect
index (default)Allow search engines to index this content type
noindexPrevent indexing — use for thin content, utility pages, or internal post types
nofollowPrevent search engines from following links on the page
⚠️
Careful: Setting a post type to noindex removes ALL posts of that type from search results. This cannot be overridden per-post unless you use the post editor’s SEO metabox.

Template Variables

Use these placeholders in your title and description templates:

VariableReplaced With
%%title%%The post/page title
%%sitename%%Your site name from WordPress Settings
%%sep%%The selected title separator
%%excerpt%%The post excerpt (or auto-generated from content)
%%tagline%%Your site tagline from WordPress Settings
%%author%%The post author’s display name
%%date%%The post publish date
%%category%%The primary category name
%%search_query%%The search term (search results page only)

Troubleshooting

Title Tag Not Changing

  • Clear your page cache.
  • Check if another SEO plugin is overriding the title — disable the Title Tags feature in the conflicting plugin.
  • Per-post overrides in the SEO metabox take priority over templates.

Duplicate Meta Descriptions in Source

  • You likely have two SEO plugins outputting descriptions. Disable Meta Descriptions in one plugin.
  • Some themes also output meta descriptions — check your theme’s SEO settings.