Here is a quick tip on how meta tags – title, keywords and description work on Magento.
Meta information are not visible directly to end users but they are read by search engine spiders (bots). Meta tags are very important parameters for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
In Magento, you can keep meta tags for Category, Pages and Products. I will be dealing with the meta title, meta keywords and meta description tags for Products.
When you add/edit any product from backend (Catalog -> Manage Products), you can put meta title, meta keywords and meta description from ‘Meta Information‘ tab in product edit page.
In Meta Information tab, you can see three fields: Meta Title, Meta Keywords & Meta Description.
Meta Title – This gives each page a unique title which is displayed at the top bar of a browser. It is also used as the title on a search engine results page.
Meta Keywords – Meta keywords are words and phrases relevant to the product or page.
Meta Description – Meta description is a short description of the product or page.
Useful Tips
– If Meta Title, Meta Keywords and Meta Description fields are empty for any product, then in frontend, the product’s name is displayed as Meta Title & Meta Keywords, and product’s decription is displayed as Meta Description for the product.
– The Default Page title, description and keywords can also be set from:
System -> Configuration -> Design -> HTML Head
Default Title = Magento Commerce
Default Description = Default Description
Default Keywords = Magento, Varien, E-commerce
This is very useful. You might have often seen page title as ‘Magento Commerce’ even if your site has a different title and name. For example, in logout page. This is because the ‘Default Title’ from above settings is set as ‘Magento Commerce’. You can change it to your site’s name.
In summary, you don’t need to worry if you have not set any value for Meta title, description and keywords for any product. Magento will automatically assign them appropriately.
Hope it helps.