SEO for Each Page: Titles, Descriptions & Share Images
Search engines like Google decide how your pages show up in their results, and StoutStack gives you simple control over exactly what people see: the clickable title, the short description underneath it, and the picture that appears when someone shares your page. Every page and every blog post on your site has its own SEO tab where you set these three things. The best part is that you don't have to fill in any of them. If you leave them blank, StoutStack fills them in for you automatically. This article walks through each setting, what to type, and how the automatic fallbacks work.
What "SEO" means here (in plain terms)
SEO stands for "search engine optimization," but you don't need the jargon. On a per-page level it really comes down to one question: when this page shows up in a Google search or gets shared in a text message, what should it look like? That's what the SEO tab controls. It doesn't change the content of your page. It controls the little preview card people see before they click through.
Where to find the SEO settings
Open any page or post in your admin. Along the top you'll see tabs for the different parts of that page. Look for the one labeled SEO and click it. Everything in this article lives on that one tab. Each page and post has its own, so you can tailor the wording for every page individually.
You can set these at any time, before you publish or long after. Changes take effect the next time search engines re-check your page.
Meta Title: your headline in search results
The Meta Title is the big, clickable blue line Google shows for your page. It's the single most important thing a searcher reads when deciding whether to click, so make it clear and inviting.
Your business name is added to the end for you. Whatever you type is published as "Your title | Your Business Name". So don't type your business name into the field yourself, or it appears twice.
That shortens the space you have. Google shows roughly 60 characters of a title before cutting the rest off with "…", and the added name plus the "|" separator comes out of that same 60. The sum is 60, minus the length of your business name, minus 3. A business with a 16-character name has about 41 characters to play with; a five-letter name leaves about 52. Go over, and the part Google trims off the end is your business name.
The length indicator by the field doesn't know about any of this. It measures only the words you typed, so it will show a cheerful green "good" on a title that ships too long. Treat its 50 to 60 range as the budget before your business name is added, and do the subtraction yourself.
If you'd rather not write one from scratch, use the one-click auto-generate button next to the field. It fills the Meta Title in from your page's title so you have a solid starting point, which you can then tweak. It doesn't account for the added business name either, so check the length after you use it.
Tips for a good Meta Title
- Lead with what matters. Put your most important words near the front. For example, "Workflow Automation for Support Teams" reads better than "Welcome to Our Website: Software Services and More."
- Say what you specialize in, and leave the business name off. "Brand Design for Software Teams" is the whole title you need to write, because your business name is added on the end automatically.
- Write it for a person, not a robot. Don't stuff it full of repeated keywords; write the way you'd describe the page to a customer.
- Make each page's title different. Your Home page, About page, and Contact page should each have their own clear title.
Meta Description: the summary under your title
The Meta Description is the short paragraph of text Google shows beneath the title. Think of it as your free advertisement: a couple of sentences that tell someone what they'll find and why they should click.
Aim for about 100–150 characters, roughly one or two short sentences. Like the title, this field has a length indicator and its own auto-generate button if you want a quick starting point.
One honest note: the description itself doesn't directly change where you rank in Google. What it does is earn clicks. A warm, specific description ("Organic cotton basics, made to last and shipped free worldwide. New arrivals every month.") will pull in more visitors than a vague one, and more clicks is what you're after.
Tips for a good Meta Description
- Say what the page offers and include a gentle nudge to act: "Start a free trial," "See our menu," "Read customer reviews."
- Use natural language a customer would actually type or say.
- Don't repeat the title word-for-word. Add something new.
Meta Image: the picture shown when your page is shared
The Meta Image is the picture that appears when someone shares or pastes a link to your page: on Facebook, LinkedIn, or in a text message, WhatsApp, or iMessage. Instead of a plain link, the recipient sees an attractive preview card with your image, title, and description. (You may hear this called an "Open Graph image," same thing.)
To set one, just choose or upload an image in the Meta Image field. A few pointers:
- Use a wide, landscape image. Roughly 1200 by 630 pixels displays cleanly across the different apps and sites. A tall or square image may get awkwardly cropped.
- Keep it simple and readable. A clear product photo, a clean shot of your workspace, or your logo on a solid background all work well. If there's text in the image, keep it large and centered so it survives cropping.
- Pick something that represents the page. A blog post about a project looks best with a photo from that project.
The Google-style preview
As you type, a Google-style preview right there on the SEO tab shows the title, the web address, and the description, arranged just like a real Google listing. It's a handy way to read your wording back to yourself and to check the address the page will live at.
Two things it does not do, so don't lean on it for either. It shows your title exactly as you typed it, without the "| Your Business Name" that gets added when the page goes live. And it never cuts anything off, so an over-long title still looks perfectly fine sitting in the preview. Use the preview to judge how your wording reads, and the arithmetic above to judge length.
You don't have to fill in everything: automatic fallbacks
This is the part that takes the pressure off. Your SEO is never blank, even if you skip the SEO tab entirely. When a field is empty, StoutStack automatically falls back to the next best thing:
| If you leave this empty… | …StoutStack uses this instead |
|---|---|
| Meta Title | The page's or post's own title |
| Meta Description | On a blog post or content item, its excerpt (short summary). A plain Page has no excerpt, so it falls straight through to your site-wide default. |
| Meta Image | On a blog post or content item, its featured image. A plain Page has no featured image, so it falls straight through to your site-wide default. |
| Anything still empty after that | Your site-wide defaults |
In other words, there's a safety net beneath a safety net. So a brand-new blog post you publish in a hurry will still show up in search with a sensible title, description, and image pulled from the content you already added. A plain Page falls back to its own name for the title and to your site-wide defaults for the description and image, so it's never left blank either. When you have a spare minute, it's still worth writing your own (a hand-crafted title and description almost always read better than the automatic version), but you'll never end up with an embarrassing blank listing.
Where the site-wide defaults are set
Those defaults aren't a hidden setting: you write them yourself, once. Go to Site Settings and open the SEO tab. Three fields live there:
- Default Title: used when a page has no Meta Title of its own and nothing else to fall back on.
- Default Description: used for any page with no Meta Description and no excerpt.
- Og Image: the default picture shown when a link to your site is shared. ("OG" is short for Open Graph, the technical name for those preview cards.)
Fill in all three once and every page you never got around to is quietly covered. Two things are worth knowing while you're in there:
- Your homepage is the exception to the table above. Every other page with a blank Meta Title falls back to its own name; the homepage falls through to the Default Title instead. Nothing is added to the end of the Default Title, either, so write it as a complete search result with your business name in it.
- The default share image doubles as the photo Google is handed for your business listing. Make it a real photo of your business, your team, or your work, not a placeholder.
One important thing to know: you can't hide a single published page from Google
There is no per-page "hide from Google" checkbox (sometimes called "noindex"). The SEO tab controls how a page appears in search, not whether it appears at all.
Here's what that means in practice:
- Draft or unpublished pages are not shown to search engines. If a page isn't published, it simply isn't listed, so the way to keep something out of Google is to leave it unpublished.
- A published page can't be individually excluded from search here. Once it's live, it's discoverable. If you truly don't want a particular page found in search, the answer is to keep it unpublished (or take it down) rather than publish it and try to hide it.
For most business sites this is exactly what you want. You're trying to be found, not hidden. Just keep it in mind for any "internal only" page: don't publish it if it shouldn't turn up in a Google search.
A quick per-page checklist
- Open the page or post and click the SEO tab.
- Write a clear Meta Title, leaving your business name out because it's added for you, and keeping to roughly 60 characters minus that name and 3. Or click auto-generate and tidy it up.
- Write an inviting Meta Description (~100–150 characters), or auto-generate and adjust.
- Choose a wide Meta Image so shared links look great.
- Glance at the Google-style preview to read your wording back, remembering it won't show the added business name.
- Save. If the page should be findable, make sure it's published.
Do this for your most important pages first (Home, your main service or product pages, and Contact), and you'll have covered the pages that matter most.