Another part of SEO that many people place importance on is the ability to have appropriately populated meta tags.  Using ExpressionEngine, it is extremely easy to have page-relevant meta tags by making use of the ability to set up your own custom fields, categories, and even tags.

Onwards!

Thanks for the mention Lisa!

I guess I am lucky I just released version 1.4.0 yesterday

Cheers Leevi

Good timing. =)

Especially when people either blog a lot or very seldom, the filling out of a description-field for every single entry can be (or feel) tiresome.

To make sure every page always has meta-description and -keywords, we embed some default metas. Every time the author does not fill out the extra field, they get inserted automatically:

Melody - 25 January 2008 12:08 PM

Especially when people either blog a lot or very seldom, the filling out of a description-field for every single entry can be (or feel) tiresome.

To make sure every page always has meta-description and -keywords, we embed some default metas. Every time the author does not fill out the extra field, they get inserted automatically:

<meta name=“description” content=”{exp:weblog:entries weblog=”{my_weblog}” rdf=“off”}{if meta-description}{meta-description}{/if}{if meta-description==”“}{embed=”{my_template_group}/default-description”}{/if}{/exp:weblog:entries}” />

Lg Better Meta has site wide default values for most SEO meta tags

Leevi Graham - 25 January 2008 01:20 PM

Lg Better Meta has site wide default values for most SEO meta tags

My hint was for those, who also prefer solutions without Add-ons

Melody - 25 January 2008 01:28 PM

Leevi Graham - 25 January 2008 01:20 PM

Lg Better Meta has site wide default values for most SEO meta tags

My hint was for those, who also prefer solutions without Add-ons

Of course

That’s a great tip, Melody!  You could also just use the word limit plugin to show only the first x words of the entry if no meta description is entered. =)

Lisa Wess - 25 January 2008 07:01 PM

You could also just use the word limit plugin to show only the first x words of the entry if no meta description is entered. =)

You may also find the “strip_p” plugin useful, if your entry fields come with surrounding paragraph tags.

I have been using the “replace” plugin, with some code given to me on the forums, to get rid of hard returns, non-breaking spaces and other artifacts:

Great tip, Quena!  TruncHTML can also help with stripping typography for dual use custom fields. =)

Lg Better Meta has site wide default values for most SEO meta tags

I’m just trying to figure out if there is an option to have default keywords & description per weblog instead of site wide.
Any idea?

Lisa Wess - 28 January 2008 05:09 AM

TruncHTML can also help with stripping typography for dual use custom fields. =)

While I appreciate the usage of my plugin, in this case it won’t help, I think
It doesn’t strip anything, it just shortens text/html without leaving any html-tags open.

But to prevent things like this to happen:

I’d recommend using {exp:xml_encode}{/exp:xml_encode} before shortening the text since you don’t want to have any quotation marks from the text messing up your markup.

Ah, ok.  HTML Strip would be a better choice then.  Thanks, silenz. =)  And the extra tips!

I just installed the plugin and there is something missing that would be very helpful.  My EE site is primarily a blog.  I’d like to see the default system work a little differently regarding Title, Description and Keywords.  For these Meta tags, I’d like the defaults to be not the site defaults as they don’t make sense on individual posts, but instead the post title for Meta Title, post summary (or first X words of the Body) for Meta Description, and post categories + post tags for Meta Tags.  Then, when I write a post I would normally not have to plug anything in the Meta fields unless I wanted to change it from what is already in the post. As it is not, I have to write up the title, description and keywords for every new posts.  This proposed setup is much better for posts than having generic site defaults for individual and unique posts.

I’m just getting started with LG Better Meta and am having trouble getting the settings from the Better Meta TAB on the PUBLISH page to override the Extension Settings in ADMIN.

As per the USAGE setup instructions, after I:

- Created a new entry in one of the weblogs listed in the Weblog IDs extension setting;
- Entered entry specific values;
- Added {exp:lg_better_meta} to the <head> of my Permalink template;

I’m not able to override the default extension settings for an individual entry: as indicated on this page.

Any suggestions as to what I need to do to be able to override the extension settings via the Better Meta tab on the Publish page?

Thanks.

ramonekalsaw - 27 March 2008 11:10 PM

I’m just getting started with LG Better Meta and am having trouble getting the settings from the Better Meta TAB on the PUBLISH page to override the Extension Settings in ADMIN.

As per the USAGE setup instructions, after I:

- Created a new entry in one of the weblogs listed in the Weblog IDs extension setting;
- Entered entry specific values;
- Added {exp:lg_better_meta} to the <head> of my Permalink template;

I’m not able to override the default extension settings for an individual entry: as indicated on this page.

Any suggestions as to what I need to do to be able to override the extension settings via the Better Meta tab on the Publish page?

Thanks.

To display entry specific meta you must either use the entry_id or url_title paramater. http://leevigraham.com/cms-customisation/expressionengine/lg-better-meta/#lg-better-meta