Manage Meta tags

Meta tags are snippets of text in the HTML code of a webpage that provide information about the page's content to search engines and website visitors. They typically include a page's title and description.

Properly managing meta tags can help improve a website's visibility in search results, as well as enhance the user's experience by providing clear and concise information about the content of the page on the Google search results page. By optimizing meta tags, website owners can attract more traffic to their site and ensure that visitors are finding the most relevant content.

With Smart SEO, you can easily manage the meta tags for your Products, Collections, Articles, etc.

In this article:

You can manage the meta tags in your store under the Meta Tags page in the Smart SEO menu:

When you access the Meta tags page for the first time, if you are on the Business or Premium plan, an audit of your meta tags starts automatically and runs in the background:

Once the audit is complete, the Seo Score filter will be available.

For each of your products, you will see the product name, the Focus Keyword for the given product, an edit button that will allow you to edit the meta tags for the product, as well as an SEO score.

At the top of the Products list, there is a filter bar that allows you to show only Ative, Draft, Archived or All products:

And on the right, you can change the order of the products (by Title name, Date created, Date updated, Inventory, Oldest newest) and you can also click the Search Icon to show the filters:

The filters allow you to filter products by:

To edit the meta tags for a single product, click on the Edit button next to the product in question:

You will see the following screen on the next page:

There are two important things on this page:

The focus keyword is a word/phrase that you wish this product to rank for. Let's say that in this example, I choose my focus keyword for be "Snowboard Collection":

The SEO score is calculated based on several factors, which can be seen on the right:

Each of those have different weight on the overall SEO score.

Once you add your meta title and descriptions, you need to click the Save button for the changes to be saved.

Now that the meta tags for this product are saved, at the bottom of the page we can see how would the product in question appear in the search results page:

Setting meta tags for your secondary languages (if you use the Shopify multi-language feature) is straightforward.

Once you click the Edit button near a given product, and you are on the page that lets you edit the meta tags, select the language from the available languages in your store from the dropdown at the top left:

One of the main advantages of managing your meta tags with Smart SEO is the bulk edit feature, which allows you to create templates that would be used for all your existing products.

To bulk edit the meta tags for multiple products, you can either click the checkbox next to the products you wish to edit or you may simply click the checkbox above all products to select all 10 products on the page:

If you wish to edit the meta tags for all the products in your store and not only the first 10 products you see in the list, you can click the Select all 10+ products in your store button that will appear next to the checkbox.

Finally, once you have selected your products, click the Edit products button that appears at the top right:

You will see a very similar screen to when you edit the meta tags for a single product. However, here, above the meta title text area, you will see a list of the products you have selected and on the right, instead of SEO score, you will see a list of the available Smart Tokens you can use.

The Smart Tokens are what makes the bulk edit such a great feature, as it allows you to create complex templates that would be used for each of your products' meta tags.

Let's say that we want all our products' meta titles to be set to Buy PRODUCT_NAME now!, where PRODUCT_NAME is the name for each product. Instead of going through all the products one by one, we can simply use the bulk edit feature and set the Meta Title for all the products to:

Buy ${title} now!

And for the given example, we will use the smart token ${description} for the Meta Description for all products, which outputs the first 300 characters of the product's description, then click Save:

Once the bulk edit task is started, it runs in the background, so you don't have to stay on the same page.

After the task is complete, the changes to the meta tags are immediately affecting the meta title and description in your product's pages code and if we go to the previous page and click on Edit next to any product, we can see that the Smart Tokens have been replaced accordingly.

With the AI Meta Tags Generation feature, you can generate the text for your meta title and description through AI.

To generate meta tags for a single product, go to Meta Tags -> Click the Edit button near the product in question, then click the Generate button:

This will open a pop-up where you can provide some keywords that you wish the AI to use when it generates the meta title/description:

You can also select a Tone of voice and optionally, Special instructions for the AI to use. Once you are done, click the Generate button.

The AI will provide a result and you will have the option to use the meta title, the meta description or to use both:

Don't forget to Save the changes.

To generate product meta tags in bulk, select the products that you wish to generate meta tags for (or if you want to generate meta tags for all the products, select all on the page and click "Select all 10+ products in your store" button), then click the AI generation button:

You will see the following bulk AI generation screen:

Again, you can provide specific keywords that you wish the AI to use, set a tone of voice and optionally, provide special instructions.

Also, if you have already generated some meta tags for some products and you wish to run the task for the rest of the products, make sure the Overwrite existing meta tags checkbox is disabled.

Then finally, click the Generate button and the task will start.

Smart SEO allows you to connect your Open AI API key and use it for an unlimited amount of AI meta tag generations. To add your API key, click on the link near this message:

Or, go to Settings -> AI Settings directly:

Add your Open AI API key in the following field and save the changes:

You can get your OpenAI API key from here.

Under the Tasks page, you can find a history of all the bulk tasks that you have run for the meta tags and revert the changes if needed:

Special pages are the All Products and All Collections pages that every store has by default.

All Products - ending in /collections/all

All Collections - ending in /collections

The Shopify platform itself has default meta tags for them and they don't allow you to modify them. However, you can achieve this with Smart SEO.

To manage your special pages' meta tags:

#1. Go to Meta tags -> Special Pages and click on Enable:

#2. Then, follow the instructions below (or ask our support agents to do it for you):

Essentially, you need to locate your theme's meta tags code. Most of the Shopify themes have it in their theme.liquid file. Usually, it looks like this:

<title>
{{ page_title }}
{%- if current_tags %} &ndash; tagged "{{ current_tags | join: ', ' }}"{% endif -%}
{%- if current_page != 1 %} &ndash; Page {{ current_page }}{% endif -%}
{%- unless page_title contains shop.name %} &ndash; {{ shop.name }}{% endunless -%}
</title>
{% if page_description %}
<meta name="description" content="{{ page_description | escape }}">
{% endif %}

And then, you have to surround it with the following code snippets:

{%- assign path_parts = request.path | split: '/' -%}

{%- assign base_path = path_parts | last -%}

{%- unless request.page_type == 'list-collections' or request.page_type == 'collection' and base_path == 'all' -%}

YOUR META TAGS CODE HERE

{%- endunless -%}

Finally, once that's done, on the same page, you can manage your All products and All collections pages meta tags by clicking the edit button near them:

On the No Index Settings page, you can set a noindex tag for global tagged pages that Google normally would consider as duplicates of another page in your store:

As a rule of thumb, unless you have SEO knowledge or an expert working on your store, and you need those pages to be indexed, we would recommend keeping all those enabled:

Question: Why I do not see the meta tags I set in Smart SEO in the Shopify admin/backend?

Answer: You might be using the old version of Smart SEO (if you have installed Smart SEO before the 4th of April 2024). Please note that the old version of Smart SEO does not change the meta title and meta description in the Shopify backend, but it used to store the meta tags you save in our app as metafields. You can still check the actual meta tags that are visible on your pages by following this article.

Question: The meta tags I saved in Smart SEO do not appear on the Google Search Results Page. Why?

Answer: Even though the meta tags change should appear immediately in the HTML of your store, it might take some time for Google to re-index your store and to display the new meta tags information on their search results page. You can check the actual meta tags on your pages by following this article and contact us if those are not the same as the ones you saved in Smart SEO.

Question: Why do I have duplicated meta tags on my pages?

Answer: When this happens, our system notifies us and we contact you to inform you of this and to offer our help in resolving this, so check your email or simply contact us via the chat button in Smart SEO.

Question: How to change the meta tags of the homepage?

Answer: Shopify does not allow the changing of the homepage meta tags through the Shopify API and therefore, you can only change these through the Shopify admin. Open the Shopify admin/backend and go to Online Store -> Preferences. There you have the homepage title and the homepage meta description.

Question: When does the AI meta tags generation quota reset?

Answer: The monthly AI generations quota resets on the first day of every month. Even if you subscribe on the 25th day of a given month, on the 1st of the next month, the quota will be refilled.

Question: Why don't I see my quota after subscribing?

Answer: The full quota of the paid plans is locked while you are on the 7-day free trial. You can, however, skip the 7-day free trial by directly subscribing to the selected plan. Go to the Plans page, and click Subscribe under the plan you have selected for the free trial. Once you confirm your subscription, the full quota will be released.

(Note that this does not count as double payment)

Question: Why can't I bulk edit the focus keywords?

Answer: Smart SEO is built to follow SEO best practices - and setting focus keywords manually is one of them.

Choosing the right keyword isn’t something that should be automated at scale. It's a strategic decision meant for manually fine-tuning the SEO performance of specific products, especially your bestsellers or most competitive listings.

While we offer AI suggestions to make this easier on a per-product basis, setting a focus keyword is meant to be a deliberate, manual action - helping you take control of what each product ranks for in Google. This ensures accuracy, avoids duplicate targeting, and supports better long-term results.

Question: What are the available smart tokens for the bulk edit feature?

Answer: The smart tokens for the meta tags bulk edit are different for the different entities. Here is a list of available tokens for Products, Collections, Blogs, Articles and Pages

Products meta tags smart tokens

${title}

${description}

${sku}

${barcode}

${category}

${price}

${min-price}

${max-price}

${tags}

${product-type}

${vendor}

${compare-at-price}

${min-compare-at-price}

${max-compare-at-price}

${option1}

${option2}

${option3}

${default-meta-title}

${default-meta-description}

${shop-name}

Collections meta tags smart tokens

${title}

${description}

${n-product-titles}

${n-product-tags}

${n-product-types}

${n-vendors}

${n-product-titles-with-vendor-names}

${default-meta-title}

${default-meta-description}

${shop-name}

Blogs meta tags smart tokens

${title}

${tags}

${default-meta-title}

${default-meta-description}

${shop-name}

Articles meta tags smart tokens

${title}

${content}

${summary}

${tags}

${author}

${default-meta-title}

${default-meta-description}

${shop-name}

Page meta tags smart tokens

${default-meta-title}

${default-meta-description}

${shop-name}