# SEO Check how your pages look in Google, keep your business facts right, set your site-wide search settings, and fix links that lead nowhere. Source: https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/plugins/seo/ Every website has this screen. SEO means search engine optimization. It is how your pages look to Google and other search engines. Go to **Plugins**, then **SEO**. It sits in the **Content Tools** group. The screen has four tabs. It opens on **Overview**. - **Overview**: every published page, with a quick check of its search settings. Checks for the whole site sit above the list. - **Broken links**: addresses that lead nowhere, and how to fix them. - **Business info**: your business name, address, hours, contact details, social links and credentials. - **Settings**: the choices that apply to your whole website. An Editor can see all four tabs. An Editor can also change **Business info** and edit many pages at once on **Overview**. Every other button that changes things is for an Admin only. **Important** Going to **Admin**, then **Settings**, then **SEO** opens this same screen, on its **Settings** tab. **Admin**, then **Settings**, then **Social** opens its **Business info** tab. There is one place for these choices, not two. ## Check your SEO Click the **Overview** tab. It lists every published page that has an address. It is a report. The only thing it changes is what you edit in [Edit many pages at once](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/plugins/seo/#edit-many-pages-at-once). For a short guide, click **How to use the SEO tools** at the top. It opens and closes. The line under it says which date of Google advice the checks use. These checks follow what Google tells the public. They are not Google's own view of your site. The next line says how many pages were checked. It also says how many have a problem, and how many need attention. Each row shows: - the page name. Click it, or anywhere else in the row, to open the page in the editor. - the kind of page, such as **Pages** or **Services**. - the page address. Click it to open the live page. - the title search engines see, under the address. - two links to Google's own tests. See [Test with Google](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/plugins/seo/#test-with-google). To narrow the list, pick a collection in the first box. In the second box, pick **All pages**, **Needs attention** or **Problems only**. ### Reading the SEO bar On the right of each row is the SEO bar. It has seven parts, each with a letter: | Letter | Part | What it checks | | --- | --- | --- | | **T** | **Title** | The blue line people click in a search result. | | **D** | **Description** | The short text under that line. | | **I** | **Indexing** | Whether search engines may list the page. | | **S** | **Social image** | The picture shown when the page is shared. | | **C** | **Canonical** | Which address is the main one for the page. | | **A** | **Image alt text** | Whether each picture on the page is described. | | **L** | **Links** | The links on the page, and the links to it. | Each part has a color and a mark, so you can read it without the color: - green with a check mark: good. - blue with an **i**: a note. Nothing is wrong. - amber with **!**: needs attention. - red with **✕**: a problem. - a dashed box with **-**: not checked. The page is hidden from search engines, so there is nothing to check. Hover over a part to see what it found. Click it to open the details under the row. The details link to the Google page the check is based on. They also show the date that advice was last checked. **Tip** An amber mark is advice, not a failure. For example, Google sets no length limit for titles. A long title may just get cut short on a small screen. ### The Image and Links checks **A** looks at the pictures on the page. Alt text is a short line that says what a picture shows. Google reads it, and so do screen readers for people who cannot see. A picture with none gets an amber mark. Big background photos in a hero are only there for looks, so they are not checked. [Media](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/content/media/) shows how to add alt text. **L** looks at the links in the page's text, and at the links to the page: - a red mark: a link leads to a page that does not exist. Point it at a real page, or take it out. - an amber mark: a link goes through a redirect. The details name the address to use instead. - an amber mark: a link address is typed wrong, such as `https:/` with one slash, or a space in it. - an amber mark that reads **No other page links here.** Google finds pages by following links. Add a link to this page from a menu, the footer, or another page. [Menus](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/manage/menus/) covers menus. A page listed on its own index page counts as linked. A service on your Services page is one. Your website checks links once an hour. Until it has read every page, a line above the list reads, for example, **Links checked on 40 of 52 pages.** The **I** part also warns about a page you hid from search engines that robots.txt blocks as well. Google then never sees that it is hidden. See [Control which bots read your site](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/plugins/seo/#control-which-bots-read-your-site). ### Site checks Above the list is a box headed **Site checks**. It checks things about the whole site, not one page: - your favicon, the small icon on a browser tab - the logo search engines show for your business - your business name and address - your opening hours - your site name - the links in your menus, footer and [Utility Bar](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/plugins/utility-bar/) - pages that nothing else links to - that each of your [branches](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/content/branches/) has a page with words of its own, if you have branches The worst ones come first. Each line has a mark, what it found, and a link to the Google advice behind it. Some lines end in **Edit:** and the names of the entries to fix. Click a name to open it. Most of these are fixed on the [Business info](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/plugins/seo/#business-info) tab. The favicon, the site logo and the site name are set under **Admin**, then **Settings**, then **General**. [Settings](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/admin/settings/) covers that screen. A logo picked under **Identity** on this page's **Settings** tab wins over the site logo. ### Fixing a page To fix one page: 1. Click the page's row. The page opens in the editor. 2. Change its **SEO** panel on the right, or its **Search & social** section. See [Pages](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/content/pages/#what-google-shows) and [One page's search and social settings](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/plugins/seo/#one-pages-search-and-social-settings). 3. Click **Save**. Then click **Publish changes**, then **Publish changes now**. The public sees the change right away. Search engines see it the next time they visit the page. ### Edit many pages at once You can change the search title, the description and the hide setting of up to 50 pages in one go. **Warning** These changes go live the moment you click **Save changes**. There is no **Publish** step. Check each box before you save. 1. Check the box at the start of each row you want. The box in the heading checks every row shown. 2. A bar shows how many pages you picked. Click **Edit SEO**. 3. A form opens, headed **Edit SEO for** and the number of pages. Each page has three boxes: **SEO title**, **Meta description** and **Hide from search engines**. 4. Change what you need. 5. Click **Save changes**. The list checks the pages again. A box you left empty uses the page's own title or summary. If a page could not be saved, a line says how many were, and the problem shows under that page. The others are saved. **Cancel** closes the form without saving. **Clear selection** unchecks every row. **Warning** **Hide from search engines** asks Google to drop the page from its results. Only check it for a page you truly want hidden. ### Test with Google Under each row are two links. They open in a new tab. - **Rich Results Test** opens Google's test for that page. It shows what Google can read from it, such as your business details. - **Search Console** opens Google Search Console, Google's own report on your site. It also copies the page address for you. Paste it into the search bar at the top, with **Cmd+V** on a Mac or **Ctrl+V** on Windows. You need a Search Console account for your site. The links only show once your site has its real web address. Until then, a line says they appear once the Site URL is a public https address. ### Tell search engines when you publish At the bottom of the Overview tab is a checkbox: **Notify search engines when you publish**. Only an Admin sees it. It starts on. When it is on, your website tells Bing, Yandex and a few others each time a page is published, changed or removed. They come and look sooner. Google does not take part, so this does not change anything at Google. ## Business info The **Business info** tab holds the facts about your business. Your website shows them to visitors, and search engines read them. Editors and Admins can use it. It has four cards: - **Business profile**: your business type, address, map position, price range, opening hours and special hours. See [Business Profile](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/content/business-profile/). - **Contact methods**: the ways customers can reach you, shown beside the form on your Contact page. See [Contact Methods](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/content/contact-methods/). - **Social links**: your profiles on Facebook, Instagram, Google Business Profile and others, shown in your footer. See [Social Links](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/content/social-links/). - **Credentials**: your licenses, registrations and trust badges, shown in your footer. See [Credentials](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/content/credentials/). Those pages explain each box. **Warning** **Save** on a card puts your changes on your live website right away. There is no separate **Publish** step. To change a card: 1. Change the boxes you need. The card says **Unsaved changes**. 2. Click **Save** on that card. You see a message such as **Business profile saved and published.** Each card saves on its own, so save one before you move to the next. **Discard changes** throws away what you have not saved. Sometimes a card holds changes saved earlier that are not live yet. The card then says so. **Save** keeps everything as a draft, and a **Publish** button puts it all on your website. Each card also shows the [site checks](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/plugins/seo/#site-checks) that belong to it. They check again after every save. If you have [branches](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/content/branches/), your address and hours come from your main branch. The **Business profile** card says which branch that is. On a site with a shop, Commerce uses the address on the **Business profile** card too. It goes on invoices and on emails to shoppers who leave a cart, unless you type a different **Address** under **Invoices** in [Commerce settings](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/commerce/settings/#invoices). ## Settings for your whole website Click the **Settings** tab. It has one **Save** button at the bottom. Nothing changes until you click it. Then you see **SEO settings saved**, and the change is live on your website right away. Only an Admin can save. An Editor sees the settings and a note that says **Only an Admin can save these settings.** **Warning** These settings change every page at once. A wrong choice here can drop pages out of search results, and nothing will tell you. Change one thing at a time, and write down what it was before. ## Change how titles look The title is the blue line people click in a search result. It is also the name on the browser tab. Your website builds it from a pattern. The patterns sit under the **Titles** heading. Each one uses tokens. A token is a word in curly brackets that your website fills in: | Token | What it turns into | | --- | --- | | `{title}` | The page's title. | | `{sep}` | The separator, such as a bar (\|). | | `{site}` | Your site's name. | | `{tagline}` | Your tagline. | | `{collection}` | The kind of page, such as Services. | The boxes are: - **Separator**: the mark between the parts of a title. It starts as a bar (|). Under the box is a list of good choices, with how to type each one. Click one to use it. Only an Admin can change it. - **Default title**: the pattern most pages use. It starts as `{title} {sep} {site}`. - **Home page title**: the pattern for your home page. The home page has no title of its own, so this mostly shows your site's name. - One box per kind of page, such as **Services title**. Leave it empty to use the default. To change a pattern: 1. Click in the box. 2. Type, or click a token under the box to add it to the end. 3. Read the **Example** line under the box. It shows what a title will look like. 4. Click **Save**. A page can also have its own pattern. See [One page's search and social settings](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/plugins/seo/#one-pages-search-and-social-settings). ## Descriptions, share pictures and who you are **Descriptions.** A description is the short text under the title in a search result. When **Write a description automatically when a page has none** is checked, a page with no description uses its own opening text instead. Leave it checked. **Social.** The **Default share image** is the picture shown when someone shares a page on Facebook or in a text message. A page with its own share picture uses that one instead. Click **Choose image** to pick one, then describe it in the box under it. Only an Admin can change it. **Share these as articles** tells social apps that a page is an article, with a date. Leave it on **Posts**. **Identity** tells search engines who the website belongs to: - **This site represents**: **An organization** for a business, or **A person**. - **Name**: leave it empty to use your site's name. - **Website**: leave it empty to use this website. - **Logo** (or **Photo** for a person): a square picture works best. ## Verify your site with Google and others Google, Bing and some other services ask you to prove the site is yours. Each one gives you a short code to put on your site. The boxes for them sit under **Verification**. The services are **Google Search Console**, **Bing Webmaster Tools**, **Pinterest**, **Yandex**, **Baidu**, **Facebook (domain verification)** and **Ahrefs**. 1. In the other service, pick the option to verify with a meta tag. Copy the tag it gives you. 2. Paste it in the box for that service. You can paste the whole tag, or only the code inside it. Either way, the box keeps just the code. 3. Click **Save**. 4. Go back to the other service and click its button to verify. Only an Admin can change the Google and Bing boxes. A site with a shop uses the same boxes for its product listings. When **Google Merchant Center** asks for an HTML tag, paste Google's code in **Google Search Console**. When **Meta** asks for a meta tag, paste its code in **Facebook (domain verification)**. The **Sales channels** part of Commerce settings shows whether each code is set. See [Commerce settings](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/commerce/settings/#site-verification). ## Control which bots read your site A bot is a program that reads websites by itself. Search engines use bots. So do AI companies and marketing tools. The **Crawlers** heading lets you choose which kinds of bots may read your site. There are four groups: - **AI training**: bots that copy pages to teach AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. These are blocked from the start. - **AI search and assistants**: bots that read a page when someone asks an AI tool a question, so it can answer and link to you. Blocking them can keep your business out of those answers. - **SEO tools**: bots from marketing tools that map websites for their customers, which may include your competitors. - **Other crawlers**: any other bots you name, one per line. Each group has three choices: - **Allowed**: the bots may read every page. - **Blocked everywhere**: the bots are asked to stay off the whole site. - **Blocked on these paths**: the bots are asked to stay off some parts. Type one path per line, such as `/private/`. **Important** Blocking a bot is a polite request, not a lock. Well-behaved bots follow it. A badly behaved bot can still read your public pages. Blocking **AI training** does not change how you rank in Google. Google search uses its own bot, and that one is not in this group. The **robots.txt preview** box shows the file your choices make. Robots.txt is the file bots read first, to learn the rules. The preview changes as you choose. Click **Save** to make it live. **Warning** Do not block **AI search and assistants** unless you mean it. It can take your business out of answers that send you customers. On a site with a shop, it can also take your products out of ChatGPT shopping results. **Extra robots.txt lines** adds rules of your own to the end of the file. Leave it empty unless someone you trust with your site tells you what to type. An amber note shows under any line Google ignores. ### Keep documents out of search results Under the preview is a checkbox: **Keep PDFs and other documents out of search results**. It starts unchecked. Check it, then click **Save**, to ask search engines not to list the PDFs, Word files, spreadsheets and other documents in your media library. Your pictures are not affected. They can still show up in search. Google has to read a document to see this request. So do not also block those files for bots under **Crawlers**. ## Mark links to other websites The **Link rules** heading marks every link to a website you name, so you do not have to mark them page by page. Google asks for this on some links: - **Sponsored**: links you were paid for, and affiliate links. - **User-generated (ugc)**: links that visitors wrote, such as in comments. - **Nofollow**: links you do not want to vouch for. To add a rule: 1. Click **Add a rule**. 2. Type the website in the first box, such as `example.com`. A rule covers the whole website, so `shop.example.com` is marked too. 3. Pick the kind in the second box. 4. Click **Save** at the bottom of the tab. The rule covers links in your page content: text links, linked pictures and buttons. Links in your header, footer and menus are left alone. Links to your own website are never changed. **Remove** takes a rule away when you next save. Nothing on the page looks different. The mark is only for search engines. ### Advanced Under **Advanced** is **Custom robots.txt (replaces everything above)**. Only an Admin can change it. **Warning** Anything typed in this box throws out every choice under **Crawlers**. One wrong line can hide your whole site from Google. Leave it empty. If you think you need it, ask us first. ## Moving from WordPress This part is only for a website that came from WordPress. Most sites never need it, and we usually do it for you when we build your site. Only an Admin sees it. It sits at the bottom of the **Settings** tab, headed **Moving from WordPress**. It reads the export file from your old WordPress site. Then it does three things: - It sends visitors from each old WordPress address to the same page here, with a redirect. Old links such as `/?p=123` keep working too. - It copies each page's search title, description and hide setting from Yoast, Rank Math or All in One SEO. It only fills boxes that are empty. - If you check **Also redirect old category, tag, author and date archive pages to the blog**, it sends those old list pages to your blog. **Warning** **Apply** makes real redirects on your live website, right away. Read the preview first. If you are not sure what you are looking at, contact us before you click it. 1. Pick the file in **WordPress export file (.xml)**. Use the same file the import used. 2. Under **Collections**, check each kind of WordPress post goes to the right place here. Pick **Skip** to leave one alone. 3. If your old site used All in One SEO, you can also pick its own export file in **All in One SEO export (optional)**. The **?** next to it says how to get the file. 4. Click **Preview**. A list counts what will happen. **Show every row** lists each page. 5. Click **Apply**. A line then says how many redirects and pages it changed. Running it again changes nothing. **Start over** clears the form. It cannot redirect old addresses that end in `.html`. It also only works if your website keeps the same domain name as the old one. ## One page's search and social settings Every page, post, service and other entry has a **Search & social** section in its editor. Scroll down past the content fields to find it. These settings are for that one page only. At the top are two previews: - **Search result preview**: how the page may look in Google. - **Social card preview**: how it may look when someone shares it. Both change as you type. The boxes are: - **Social title**: the headline when the page is shared. Leave it empty to use the page title. - **Social description**: the text under that headline. Leave it empty to use the page description. - **Title format for this page**: a title pattern for this page only. It uses the same tokens as the **Titles** settings. Leave it empty to use the site-wide pattern. The count under a box is only advice. Google sets no limit. Long text may just get cut short. Under **Search engine requests** are a few more choices. Leave them alone unless you have a reason: - **Ask search engines not to follow the links on this page**: search engines will not use this page's links to find other pages. - **Ask search engines not to show a text snippet**: results show the title with no text under it. It also keeps this page's text out of Google's AI Overviews. - **Image preview size**: how big a picture from this page may show in results. Leave it on **Site default (large)**. - **Ask other search engines (such as Bing) not to show a cached copy**: a cached copy is a saved copy of the page. Google ignores this one. These changes are not live until you publish. Click **Save**. Then click **Publish now**, then **Publish now** again in the box that opens. On a page that is already live, click **Publish changes**, then **Publish changes** again in the box that opens. The public sees the change right away. ## Broken links A broken link is an address that leads to a page that does not exist. Maybe you renamed a page. Maybe another website still has an old link to you. Either way, the visitor lands on a "page not found" screen. Your website writes down every time that happens. Click the **Broken links** tab to see the list, so you can fix the ones that matter. When you rename a published page, or move it under another page, your website makes a redirect from the old address for you. Visitors who use the old address land on the new page. ### Reading the list The line at the top counts the list. It says how many broken links there are, how many are **linked from your own pages**, and how many probes are hidden. Probes are explained further down. Each row is one address. The columns are: - **Path**: the address people asked for. It is the part after your website's name, such as `/old-prices`. - **Hits**: how many times someone asked for it. - **Last seen**: when someone last asked for it. - **Linked from**: the page that sent the last visitor there, if their browser said. A dash means it did not say. - **Actions**: the buttons that fix the row. Type in **Search paths** to find an address. To change the order, click a column name: **Path**, **Hits**, **Last seen** or **Linked from**. Click it again to flip the order. You can also pick an order in the box next to the search. Some rows carry a label: - **On your site**: the bad link is on one of your own pages. Fix these first, because your own visitors click them. - **Probe**: a robot, not a person. See the next part. - **Redirected** or **Gone (410)**: this address is already fixed. The row is left over from before. You can dismiss it. - **Contains [brackets]**: see [Addresses with brackets](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/plugins/seo/#addresses-with-brackets). ### Probes A probe is a robot that tries hundreds of addresses. It is looking for weak spots in software your website does not use, such as WordPress. It is not a customer, and it is not a real broken link. Probes are hidden at first. Check **Show probes** to see them. They are safe to ignore. To clear them out, click **Dismiss all probes**, then click **OK**. A robot that comes back shows up again. ### Sending visitors to the right page This makes a redirect: a signpost at the old address that sends visitors to a page that works. [Redirects](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/manage/redirects/) explains them in full. **Warning** A redirect goes live on your website right away. Everyone who asks for the old address lands on the new page instead. Type the new address into your browser first, and make sure the right page opens. 1. Find the row, and click **Redirect…** in it. 2. In **Send visitors to**, type the address of the page they should see. Start it with a slash, such as `/services`. The box starts with the closest match it could find. Up to two other close matches show below it. 3. Leave **Kind** on **301 (Permanent)**. Pick **302 (Temporary)** only if the old page is coming back. 4. Click **Save**. You see a note that the address **now redirects to** the new one. The row leaves the list. The redirect also shows on the [Redirects](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/manage/redirects/) screen. Go there to change it or take it down. ### Marking a page as gone The **410** button tells search engines, such as Google, that a page is gone for good. They stop sending people to it. **Warning** This goes live right away. Anyone who asks for that address gets a blank page, not your "page not found" screen. Most of the time a redirect is the better fix. Leave **410** alone unless the page is gone for good and nothing else fits. 1. Find the row, and click **410** in it. 2. Your browser asks if the page is gone for good. Click **OK**. You see a note that the address **now answers 410 Gone**. The row leaves the list. ### Removing rows **Dismiss** takes one row off the list. Nothing changes on your website. If someone asks for that address again, the row comes back. **Warning** **Clear all** takes every row off the list, probes too. You cannot undo it. Redirects you already made stay as they are. To empty the list, click **Clear all**, then click **OK**. ### Addresses with brackets Some addresses have square brackets in them, such as `/services/[slug]`. Your website reads brackets in a redirect as a pattern. One pattern can catch many pages at once, even ones that work. So this screen will not redirect them, or mark them gone. Those rows show **Contains [brackets]** and a **Dismiss** button only. ## Alerts When one of your own pages links to a page that does not exist, your website sends a **Broken link found** alert. It sends at most one an hour, and never twice for the same address. The alert names the missing address. It tells you to open **SEO > Broken links**. Go to **Plugins**, then **SEO**, then the **Broken links** tab. There you can see which page has the bad link. Fix that page, or add a redirect. Choose where the alert goes on the [Notifications](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/plugins/notifications/) page. It is in the **Site** group. ## When something goes wrong **Contact support** Contact us if: - your pages have dropped out of Google, or show the wrong words or picture - a page of yours has stopped opening since you made a redirect - you need to redirect an address with brackets in it - the list keeps filling with addresses you recognize - you think you need the **Custom robots.txt** box - your site came from WordPress and old links lead nowhere Tell us the pages or addresses involved. Email [support@lookoutridgeit.com](mailto:support@lookoutridgeit.com). [Getting support](https://docs.lookoutridgeit.com/help/getting-support/) says what to put in the message.