SEO basics: global settings, titles, meta and social

Xagio’s SEO works on two levels. Xagio > SEO Settings sets the defaults for the whole site: how titles, canonicals and schema are output, title and description templates for each type of page, and default social cards. The On-Page SEO box in the editor overrides those defaults for one page.

These settings work without a Xagio account. Keyword groups, keyword data and suggestions in the On-Page SEO box need a connected account.

Global SEO settings

The first tab of SEO Settings, SEO, controls how Xagio outputs titles, canonicals and schema everywhere. The other tabs are Profiles (see Schema in WordPress), Open Graph, Taxonomies (both below), Scripts (see Scripts) and Robots.txt (see Sitemaps, robots.txt and AI crawlers).

In WordPress, go to Xagio > SEO Settings.
Stay on the SEO tab.

Each switch saves as soon as you change it. You see “Setting updated.”

General

Setting	What it does
Force enable Xagio SEO	Keeps the SEO section of the On-Page SEO box turned on for every page, so Xagio always outputs its title and description.
Disable HTML Footprint	Removes the HTML comments Xagio adds around its schema, SEO and robots output in your page source. Search engines ignore these comments; turn this on only if you want a cleaner source.
Disable WordPress Canonical URLs	Stops WordPress from printing its own canonical tags. Xagio outputs canonical URLs for your pages instead.
Don’t Index Sub-pages	Adds `noindex` to every page that has a parent page. Posts and top-level pages are not affected.

Xagio Shortcodes

Select View Shortcodes to see the variables you can use in titles, descriptions and schema properties, such as %%title%%, %%sitename%%, %%sep%%, %%category_primary%% and %%current_year%%. Copy one into any title or description template, and Xagio replaces it with the real value on each page.

Title Separator

Pick the character Xagio puts between parts of your titles: -, –, —, •, |, ~, «, », < or >. Use %%sep%% in a title template to insert it.

Schema

Setting	What it does
Force Homepage Schemas	Outputs your homepage schemas on every page. Google may flag this as spammy structured data, so leave it off unless you have a reason.
Render Pretty Schemas	Prints schemas in readable, indented form in your page source instead of minified. Useful while you set up schema. Turn it off afterward to save server resources.

Migration

The Migration panel copies SEO data from Yoast SEO, Rank Math or All in One SEO into Xagio. See Migrate from Yoast, Rank Math or All in One SEO.

Title and description templates (Taxonomies tab)

The Taxonomies tab sets default SEO titles and descriptions for every kind of page on your site, and lets you keep whole types out of search results. A page’s own SEO title and description, set in the On-Page SEO box, override these defaults.

In WordPress, go to Xagio > SEO Settings.
Open the Taxonomies tab.

Each type has its own section with Title, Description and Don’t Index & Follow. Changes save automatically.

The sections are:

Homepage: used when Settings > Reading in WordPress is set to show “Your latest posts”. When a static page is your homepage, that page’s own title and description are used instead.
Posts and Pages
One section for each custom post type on your site (for example products or portfolio items)
Search, Author, Archive, Archive post and Not found (the 404 page)
One section for each taxonomy (categories, tags and any custom taxonomies)

Write templates

Use shortcodes to build templates that fill in per page. For example:

Posts title: %%title%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%
Category title: %%term_title%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%
Search title: Results for %%search_query%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%

The full list is under View Shortcodes on the SEO tab.

Keep a type out of search results

Turn on Don’t Index & Follow for any type you don’t want indexed. Xagio adds noindex, follow to those pages: search engines skip them but still follow their links. Common choices are Search, Author and Archive pages, and tag archives on small sites.

The Robots tab of the On-Page SEO box shows a note when a page’s noindex comes from these settings, with a link back here.

When someone shares a link on Facebook, X (Twitter) or another network, the network reads your page’s Open Graph and Twitter Card tags to build the preview. The Open Graph tab sets the default tags for each type of page, so every share has a title, description and image even when you have not filled them in page by page.

In WordPress, go to Xagio > SEO Settings.
Open the Open Graph tab.
Open the section for the page type you want: Homepage, Posts, Pages, Search, Author, Archive, Archive Post, Not Found, plus one section per custom post type and taxonomy on your site.
Under Facebook Settings and Twitter Settings, fill in Title, Description and Image. Select Browse to pick an image from the Media Library.

Changes save automatically as you type. A preview of each card updates beside the fields.

You can use shortcodes such as %%title%% and %%sitename%% in the title and description. See View Shortcodes on the SEO tab.

Which value wins

For each page, Xagio picks the social title, description and image in this order:

The value set on the page itself, in the Social tab of the On-Page SEO box.
The default for that page type on this tab.
For the title and description: the page’s SEO title and description. For the image: the page’s featured image.

If Use Title from SEO, Use Description from SEO or Use Featured Image is ticked on the page, that wins over everything else.

Xagio also outputs og:locale, og:type (article for posts and pages, website for the homepage and other pages), og:url and og:site_name. The Twitter card is summary_large_image when there is an image and summary when there isn’t.

If social output is turned off on a page (the Social section switched off in the On-Page SEO box), no Open Graph tags are output for that page.

Check your previews

After you save, test a URL with Facebook’s Sharing Debugger or a Twitter card preview tool. Both are linked at the top of each section. Facebook caches previews, so use Scrape Again in the Sharing Debugger after a change.

The On-Page SEO box

Every page, post and enabled custom post type gets a Xagio On-Page SEO box in the editor. It sets that page’s search snippet, social cards, robots directives and scripts, and overrides the site-wide defaults from SEO Settings. The Schema tab is covered in Schema in WordPress and AI Content in AI content and the AI Assistant.

Edit any page or post in WordPress.
Scroll below the content to the Xagio box.

Most sections have their own on/off switch. When the Social section is off, Xagio outputs no Open Graph or Twitter tags for this page. If the whole box shows SEO Has been disabled, turn SEO back on for this page, or turn on Force enable Xagio SEO (see General).

Changes save when you save or update the page.

SEO tab

Meta SEO Snippet: type the SEO title and description. A Google-style preview and character counters update as you type. Select Shortcodes to insert variables such as %%sitename%% or %%sep%%. Empty fields fall back to the defaults in SEO Settings > Taxonomies.
Keyword Group: start typing to search your Project Planner groups, then pick one to attach it to this page. The table shows each keyword’s Volume, CPC, inTitle, inURL, ratios and rank. No group has been attached to this page. shows until you attach one.
Keyword Cloud: the words that appear most in the attached group’s keywords.
Keyword Suggestions: type your target keyword to see related keywords with Volume and CPC. Turn on Lock Suggestions to keep the current list when you change the target keyword.

Set the Facebook and Twitter cards for this page:

Title, Description and Image, or tick Use Title from SEO, Use Description from SEO and Use Featured Image to reuse them.
A preview of each card, with Refresh On Facebook and Refresh On Twitter links to the platforms’ preview tools.
App ID for Facebook, if you use a Facebook app.

Empty fields fall back to your Open Graph and social defaults.

Robots tab

Index Behavior: From SEO Settings, Index or Do not Index.
Follow Behavior: From SEO Settings, Follow or Do not Follow.
Optional Settings: these switches are on by default. Switch one off to add the matching directive: Index images on this page (noimageindex), Show a cached link in search results (noarchive), Show a text snippet in search results (nosnippet), Offer translation of this page in search results (notranslate).
Canonical URL: set when this page’s content lives at another URL. Leave empty to use the page’s own URL.

Preview shows the exact <meta name="robots"> tag. If a noindex,follow comes from your post type settings, a note says so and links to SEO Settings.

Scripts tab

Code added to this page only, and switches to turn global scripts off for this page. See Scripts.

Notes tab

Personal Notes is a private text box for you and other admins. It is never shown on the site. When you create a page from a keyword group, the group’s notes are copied here.

Other editor additions

An SEO column in the Pages and Posts lists.
Classic editor buttons for project keywords, Xagio shortcodes, Pixabay images and YouTube search.

Duplicate a page or post

Go to Pages or Posts in WordPress.
Hover over the item and select Duplicate.

Xagio creates a draft named “<original title> (Copy)” with the same content, parent, excerpt, categories, tags and custom fields, including the Xagio SEO settings. You return to the list, where the copy appears.

Convert images to JPEG

Go to Media > Library and switch to list view.
Tick the PNG and GIF images to convert.
In Bulk actions, choose Convert to JPEG and select Apply.

Each image gets a new JPEG copy, added to the Media Library as a separate file. The original stays in place, and posts that use it are not changed. Other file types are skipped. Transparent areas in PNGs do not carry over to JPEG.