Titles and meta — Vantage SEO docs

This page tells you how Vantage SEO builds the title and the meta description of each page, how to override them for one page, and how the search preview and the content analysis work.

How the plugin picks a title

At publish time, the plugin picks the title of each page in this order. It uses the first value that is set.

The SEO title of the page, from the editor panel. The plugin uses this text as the full title. Templates do not change it.
The per-table title template for the table the entry belongs to.
The site title template.
The title that Instatic writes. If no template is set, or a template renders empty text, the plugin keeps the Instatic title.

Title templates

You set the site title template on the Titles tab of SEO Settings, or in step 2 of the setup wizard. A preview under each field shows a sample title.

A per-table template applies to the entries of one table, for example posts. To add one, click the add button under Per-table title templates, then enter the table slug and the template.

Template variables

Title templates accept four variables. The plugin rejects any other variable when you save, so a typing error does not produce an empty title.

Variable	Value
`%title%`	The page title that Instatic writes. If that title is empty, the plugin uses the slug.
`%site%`	The Site name from the General tab.
`%sep%`	The Title separator from the General tab. The default is `-`.
`%slug%`	The slug of the page.

Example: with the site name Harbor & Pine Coffee and the separator |, the template %title% %sep% %site% renders Menu | Harbor & Pine Coffee for a page titled Menu.

To write a literal percent sign around a word, double it. %%title%% renders the text %title%.
A single percent sign in normal text, for example 100% arabica, stays as text.
If a variable is empty, the plugin removes the extra separator. For example, %title% %sep% %site% with no site name renders Menu, not Menu |.
A template can have up to 300 characters. A rendered title is cut at 512 characters.

Meta descriptions

The plugin picks the meta description in this order:

The Meta description of the page, from the editor panel.
The Default meta description from the General tab.

There are no description templates. A stored description can have up to 500 characters. The editor panel counts the characters and tells you that search results show about 160 characters on desktop and about 120 on mobile.

Override the title and description for one page

Open the page in the Instatic editor.
Open the SEO panel in the editor rail, or use the ⌘K command SEO: open panel.
Enter the SEO title, the Meta description and the Focus keyword.
Click Save.
Publish the page.

To remove the overrides, click Clear SEO fields, then Confirm clear. This removes the SEO title, the description and the focus keywords. It keeps other stored values, such as a canonical URL.

Per-page overrides apply to regular pages. Entries of other tables render through a template page, and the plugin skips per-page overrides on template pages. For those entries, use a per-table title template. The editor panel shows a warning when you open a template page.

Other per-page values

The plugin also stores a canonical URL, robots flags, Open Graph values, a Twitter card type and schema values for each page. The editor panel has no fields for these values. You set them with the MCP tools seo_set_entry_meta and seo_set_entry_schema Pro. See Social and schema.

Search preview

The SEO panel shows a preview of the Google search result for the page. Use the Desktop and Mobile buttons to change the preview width. The preview uses the same rules as the publish step, so it shows the title and description that the page will get. It updates while you type.

Content analysis

The SEO panel runs a content analysis on the draft in the editor. You do not need to publish first. The analysis updates while you type. It gives a score from 0 to 100:

80 or more: good.
50 to 79: needs work.
Less than 50: poor.

The analysis has 21 checks in five groups. Each check shows a result and a short explanation.

Group	Checks
Focus keyword	Keyword in the title (better in the first half), in the description, in the slug, in the first paragraph, in at least one h2 to h4 heading, and in at least one image alt text. Keyword density: 0.5% to 2.5% is good. More than 3% counts as keyword stuffing.
SEO title	A title is set. The length is 30 to 60 characters.
Meta description	A description is set. The length is 120 to 160 characters.
Content	At least 300 words. At least one h2 heading. At least one image. At least one internal link. At least one external link. No run of more than 300 words without a subheading.
Readability	Average sentence length of 20 words or less. No paragraph longer than 150 words. Passive sentences at 10% or less. Transition words in 30% or more of sentences.

The passive voice and transition word checks work for English text only. For other languages they show "not applicable".
Image alt text comes from the media library at publish time. The editor draft does not contain it, so the panel marks the alt text keyword check as not applicable. The plugin checks alt text on the published HTML instead.
Content inside visual components, loops or unsupported blocks is not analyzed. The panel tells you how many sections it skipped.

Image warnings

After a publish, the panel shows image warnings from the published HTML of the page. The plugin reports missing alt text, empty alt text, generic alt text, alt text that is too long, missing width and height, and very large inline images.

Focus keywords: free and Pro

	Free	Pro
Focus keywords scored per page	1	Up to 10
Check groups	All five groups	All five groups
Per-keyword breakdown	No	Yes. Each keyword gets its own list of keyword checks.

With more than one keyword, the keyword checks in the main score show the average over all keywords. In the free edition, the panel scores the first keyword only. It keeps extra stored keywords and shows them as read-only.

AI suggestions Pro

With Pro and a configured AI provider, the panel shows a suggest button under the SEO title and the meta description. It asks your AI provider for three suggestions. Select one to fill the field. The plugin does not save a suggestion until you click Save. See AI assistant.

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