What This Page Does

The SEO Manager helps you control how your site appears in Google search results and on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. You can customize titles, descriptions, and images that show up when people search for your content or share your links. You can also set up clean, professional-looking URLs and add tracking codes to see how visitors find and use your site.

[Screenshot: page-overview]

How to Get Here

Navigate to Admin Panel > Settings > SEO Manager

Understanding the Page

When you open the SEO Manager, you'll see a page with seven tabs at the top. Each tab controls a different aspect of how search engines and social media platforms see your site. The tabs are organized so you can work through them left to right to get a complete SEO setup.

The Seven Tabs

• Meta Templates - Set up the titles and descriptions that appear in search results
• Open Graph - Control how your links look on Facebook and LinkedIn
• Twitter Cards - Control how your links look on Twitter
• Schema.org - Help Google show rich information about your site
• Robots.txt - Tell search engines which pages they can access
• Analytics - Add tracking codes to measure your site traffic
• URL Structure - Create clean, professional URLs

Click any tab to see its settings. Your changes are saved separately for each tab using the Save button at the bottom of each section.

Common Tasks

How to Set Up Basic Search Engine Optimization

This is what you should do first when setting up SEO for your site.

1. Click the Meta Templates tab.
2. Fill in the Site Name field with your website's name.
3. Add a Tagline - a short phrase describing what your site offers.
4. Write a Site Description between 150-160 characters. This will appear in Google search results.
5. Enter the web address of an image to use when sharing links (1200x630 pixels works best).
6. Click Save Global Settings at the bottom of that section.

You'll see a green notification in the top-right corner when it saves successfully.

[Screenshot: global-site-settings]

How to Customize Page Titles and Descriptions

After setting up your global settings, customize how different types of pages appear in search results.

1. Scroll down to the Meta Tag Templates section in the Meta Templates tab.
2. You'll see cards for different page types: Homepage, Video Pages, Gallery Pages, and more.
3. For each page type, click in the Title Pattern field.
4. Type your title and click on the variable tags to insert them. For example, click {videotitle} to show the actual video title in the search result.
5. Do the same for the Description Pattern field.
6. Click the Preview button to see how it will look in Google search results.
7. When you're happy with all your templates, scroll to the bottom and click Save Meta Templates.

[Screenshot: meta-templates-example]

How to Set Up Social Media Sharing

Make your links look great when shared on Facebook and Twitter.

1. Click the Open Graph tab.
2. Check the box next to Enable Open Graph Tags.
3. Fill in your Site Name (usually the same as your main site name).
4. Set Default Type to "Website" for most sites.
5. Enter a Default Image URL - this image appears when someone shares a page that doesn't have its own image.
6. Click Save Open Graph Settings.
7. Click the Twitter Cards tab.
8. Check the box next to Enable Twitter Cards.
9. Set Card Type to "Summary with Large Image" for the best visibility.
10. Enter your Twitter username (including the @ symbol) in Site Handle.
11. Click Save Twitter Card Settings.

Your links will now display with images and descriptions when shared on social media.

[Screenshot: social-media-settings]

How to Create Clean URLs

Change URLs from videoplayer.php?id=123 to /video/123/video-title for better SEO.

1. Click the URL Structure tab.
2. Check the box next to Enable SEO-Friendly URLs at the top.
3. In the Slug Settings section, select Hyphen (-) as your word separator.
4. Check the boxes for Force Lowercase and Remove Stop Words.
5. Set Max Slug Length to 100 characters.
6. Review the URL patterns below. The defaults work well for most sites, but you can customize them if needed.
7. Click Save URL Settings at the bottom.
8. Click the Preview .htaccess Rules button to see what will be created.
9. Click Generate & Save .htaccess to activate the new URLs.
10. Click Yes when asked to confirm.

Test your site by visiting a few pages to make sure the new URLs work correctly.

[Screenshot: url-structure-settings]

How to Add Google Analytics

Track your site visitors with Google Analytics.

1. Click the Analytics tab.
2. Enter your Google Analytics ID in the first field. It looks like G-XXXXXXXXXX or UA-XXXXXXXX-X.
3. If you use Google Tag Manager, enter that ID in the second field. It looks like GTM-XXXXXXX.
4. Click Save Analytics Settings.

Google Analytics will now track all visitors to your site. You can view reports in your Google Analytics dashboard.

[Screenshot: analytics-settings]

How to Edit Your Robots.txt File

Control which pages search engines can access.

1. Click the Robots.txt tab.
2. The current contents of your robots.txt file will load automatically.
3. Use the Quick Add buttons to add common rules, or type directly in the editor.
4. Click Validate to check your syntax for errors.
5. Click Save robots.txt to apply your changes.

The system automatically creates a backup before saving in case you need to undo changes.

[Screenshot: robots-txt-editor]

Understanding the Color-Coded Length Indicators

As you type in title and description fields, you'll see a number next to each field that changes color. This tells you if your text is the right length for search engines.

For Title Fields

For Description Fields

Google cuts off titles and descriptions that are too long, so staying in the green range helps your listings look better in search results.

Using Template Variables

Template variables are placeholders that get replaced with real information when someone visits a page. For example, {videotitle} becomes the actual title of the video.

Available Variables by Page Type

Homepage:

• {sitename} - Your site's name
• {tagline} - Your site's tagline
• {sitedescription} - Your site's description

Video Pages:

• {videotitle} - The video's title
• {videodescription} - The video's description
• {videotags} - Tags associated with the video
• {sitename} - Your site's name

Gallery Pages:

• {gallerytitle} - The gallery's title
• {gallerydescription} - The gallery's description
• {gallerytags} - Tags associated with the gallery
• {sitename} - Your site's name

Model Pages:

• {modelname} - The model's name
• {modelbio} - The model's biography
• {modeltags} - Tags associated with the model
• {sitename} - Your site's name

Category and Tag Pages:

• {categoryname} - The category name
• {categorydescription} - The category description
• {tagname} - The tag name
• {sitename} - Your site's name

How to Use Variables

1. Click in any title or description field.
2. Position your cursor where you want to insert a variable.
3. Click on one of the variable tags below the field.
4. The variable gets inserted at your cursor position.

The Truncate Modifier

If you want to limit how long a description can be, add |truncate:N after a variable:

{videodescription|truncate:155}

This cuts the description off at 155 characters, which ensures it fits in search results.

Testing Your Changes

Preview Search Results

Before saving your templates, you can see how they'll look in Google.

1. Fill in a title pattern and description pattern.
2. Click the Preview button.
3. A box appears showing how your page will look in Google search results.
4. Check that the title and description make sense and are the right length.
5. Adjust your patterns if needed and preview again.

[Screenshot: google-preview]

Test URL Slugs

See how titles convert to URL-friendly text.

1. Go to the URL Structure tab.
2. Scroll down to the Slug Tester section.
3. Type a sample title in the Test Title field.
4. Click Generate Slug.
5. The result shows what will appear in your URLs.

For example, typing "My Amazing Video Tutorial!" might produce my-amazing-video-tutorial as the slug.

Settings and Options

Slug Settings (URL Structure Tab)

These settings control how page titles are converted into URL-friendly text.

Open Graph Settings

Twitter Card Settings

Tips for New Users

Troubleshooting

My changes aren't saving

What you see: You click Save but get an error message, or nothing happens.

How to fix it:

1. Refresh the page and try again. Sometimes sessions expire.
2. Check that your character counts are in the green or yellow range. Red (too short or too long) may prevent saving.
3. If you see "Demo Mode" at the top of the page with an orange warning banner, the site is in read-only mode and you can't save changes. Contact your site administrator.

The Preview button shows strange text

What you see: The preview has text like {videotitle} instead of an actual title.

How to fix it: This is normal. The preview uses sample data because you're not looking at a real page. The actual pages on your site will show real titles, not the placeholder text.

SEO-friendly URLs aren't working (404 errors)

What you see: After enabling SEO-friendly URLs, your pages show "Not Found" errors.

How to fix it:

1. Make sure you clicked Generate & Save .htaccess after enabling SEO-friendly URLs.
2. Contact your hosting provider or server administrator to verify that "mod_rewrite" is enabled on your server.
3. Check that the .htaccess file was created in your site's main folder.
4. If problems persist, you can restore the backup file (.htaccess.backup.*) to undo the changes.

Analytics tracking isn't showing data

What you see: No visitors appear in your Google Analytics dashboard.

How to fix it:

1. Verify your Google Analytics ID is correct. GA4 IDs start with G- and older Universal Analytics IDs start with UA-.
2. Wait 24-48 hours. Google Analytics can take time to start showing data.
3. Visit your own site and check if you appear as a visitor in the "Realtime" report in Google Analytics.
4. Check your browser's ad blocker. Some ad blockers prevent analytics from loading.

The robots.txt editor is empty

What you see: The Robots.txt tab loads but the editor shows nothing.

How to fix it: This is normal if you've never created a robots.txt file before. Click Save robots.txt to create the file with the default content. The system will automatically add a basic robots.txt that allows all search engines.

All Save buttons are grayed out

What you see: Every Save and Generate button is disabled and you can't click them.

How to fix it: The site is in Demo Mode, which prevents changes. You'll see an orange warning banner at the top of the page. Demo Mode must be disabled by editing the page's code file, so contact your site administrator or developer.

Character counter shows red but my text looks fine

What you see: The character count is in the red zone but your title or description seems like a reasonable length.

How to fix it: Red means your text is outside the optimal range for search engines. Google may cut it off in search results. Try shortening your text to get it into the yellow or green range. The color is a guide, not a hard requirement - you can save with red counters, but your search results may not look as good.

Related Pages

Understanding How SEO Settings Affect Your Site

Changes you make in the SEO Manager immediately change how your site appears to visitors and search engines. Here's what happens when you save each tab: