# SEO settings

Set the title, description, social image, canonical address and search visibility of each page, and learn what your published site outputs for search engines.

Each page of your site has its own search and sharing settings. You edit them in the **SEO** tab of the Inspector. A published site also has an **SEO** page in the dashboard for the homepage and for redirects.

> **Two places, two timings:** SEO changes made in the editor reach the live site only after you press **Publish** or **Update**. The editor says so itself: "SEO changes appear on Google and social shares only after you re-publish the site." Homepage values saved on the dashboard SEO page apply to the live site when you save.

## The SEO tab fields

The tab works with nothing selected: it edits the page that is open. It also shows a **Google search result** preview and a **Social share card** preview that update as you type. Each field saves when you leave it, and a change can be undone with `Cmd+Z`.

| Field | What it does | Guide |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Page title | The title search engines and browser tabs show. | A soft warning appears past 60 characters. |
| Meta description | The summary under the title in results. | A soft warning appears past 160 characters. |
| Social share image | The picture shown when the page is shared. Paste a web address or pick from the media library. | 1200 x 630 is recommended. The address must start with https:// (or be a data: image), otherwise the editor says "OG image URL must start with https:// (or be a data: image)." |
| Canonical URL | The address you want search engines to treat as the main one for this page. | Must be a valid https:// address, otherwise the editor says "Canonical URL must be a valid https:// URL." Leave it empty to use the published address. |
| Hide from search engines | Adds a robots meta tag of `noindex, nofollow` to this page. | A switch. |

The Pages panel also shows **Meta Title** and **Meta Description** for the open page (see [Pages and navigation](https://www.uova.com/help/build/pages)).

## Where the live title and description come from

When a field is empty, UOVA falls back in the order shown. The homepage and the other pages follow different rules.

| Item | Homepage | Other pages |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Title | **Page title** of the first page, then the title you gave at publish step 3, then the **Site name** from Site Styles, then the project name. | The page's **Page title**, or its page name when empty, with your site's brand name added after a dash, as in `Pricing — Your Brand`. |
| Description | **Meta description**, then the description from publish step 3, then a sentence UOVA builds from the homepage's own text with your brand name in front. | **Meta description**, then text taken from the page's own content, then the page name with the brand name. |
| Share image | **Social share image**, then the share card from publish step 3, then a card UOVA generates from your site's brand. | The page's own **Social share image**, used only when it starts with https://. |
| Canonical | **Canonical URL**, otherwise the site address. | **Canonical URL** when it is an https address, otherwise the page's own address. |

## At first publish

Step 3 of the first-publish wizard, **Website info**, asks for **Icon & title** (up to 60 characters), **Description** (up to 160) and a **Share card**. The share card is generated for you from your site's brand (**Auto · from your brand**) unless you choose **Upload custom**; **Use generated** switches back. The wizard stops you typing past 60 and 160 characters.

## What your published site outputs

- Pages are indexable by default (`index, follow`).
- A page is marked noindex when the site is a draft, when you switch on **Hide from search engines** for it, when the site is locked behind a password, and for "Page not found" and "Site not found" pages.
- Each site has its own `robots.txt` and `sitemap.xml`. A live site's `robots.txt` allows everything and points to the sitemap; a draft's disallows everything. The sitemap lists the home page, subpages and store products, and leaves out legal pages you have not filled in. A draft site's sitemap returns a 404. Both files are cached for about an hour.
- The sitemap builder does not read the **Hide from search engines** switch. A hidden page is kept out of search by the noindex tag on the page itself.
- When a verified custom domain is primary, the sitemap and robots file use that domain.
- If you upload no share card or favicon, UOVA generates them for the site. UOVA never adds "| UOVA" to a title.

In the editor, Project settings > **Pages & SEO** shows the sitemap as **Auto-generated** once the site is published, with a **Search indexing** status.

## Favicon and site name

Open **Site Styles** in the editor rail. The top row has the favicon thumbnail (click it to upload or replace) and a **Site name** field. A favicon address must be https:// or a data: image. Both appear on the published site after you re-publish.

## Dashboard SEO page

A published site has an **SEO** page in the dashboard. It shows a health check list with a **Fix** link for each problem, a search preview and a share preview of your homepage, and a **Search appearance** section.

- **Page title**: counter at 60, up to 70 characters accepted. **Meta description**: counter at 160, up to 200 accepted.
- **Title pattern**: up to 80 characters, with `%page` for the page title and `%site` for your brand. The placeholder is `%page · %site`. UOVA applies it to the homepage title only. Other pages always use their own title followed by your brand name. Leave it blank to keep titles as they are.
- **Share image**, **Canonical URL** and **Hide from search engines** mean the same as in the editor. **Business info** is a collapsed section for business type, name, logo, phone, public email, address and profile links.

**Save** writes to the live site at once and shows "Saved. <your address> is updated." Only the homepage is covered here. A later **Update** from the editor keeps these values unless you set the same field in the editor yourself. Take offline deletes the published copy that holds them, so enter them again after you publish again.

If you see **Suggest with AI**, marked **Uses credits**, it fills the form with three title and description pairs and costs 32 credits per use (see [What actions cost](https://www.uova.com/help/billing/costs)). If the suggestions fail, the credits are returned.

The **Redirects** section has **From**, **To** and **Code** (301 or 302) fields and an **Add redirect** button. **To** can be a path or a full web address. UOVA adds the leading slash for you. The same path twice replaces the earlier rule, **From** cannot be `/`, and a rule from a path to itself is refused. Redirects run in the visitor's browser through the site's JavaScript. They are not server redirects, and the 301 or 302 is only a label.

## Verify your site with a search engine

Paste a verification meta tag in the dashboard under Site settings > **Code**. UOVA accepts verification tags for Google, Bing (msvalidate.01), Facebook, Pinterest, Yandex, ahrefs, Norton Safe Web, Naver and Baidu, up to 8,000 characters and 20 tags. A paste with nothing usable is refused with "Nothing in that snippet can run on a published site." Details are in [Custom CSS, HTML blocks and head code](https://www.uova.com/help/build/editor/custom-code).

## Limits

- UOVA does not ping search engines when you publish. The weekly search-engine ping UOVA runs covers its own marketing pages, not customer sites.
- Connecting your own Google Analytics property from the editor's Analytics tab is marked Coming soon. Paste a GA4 tag in Site settings > **Code** instead.
- There is no sitemap editor.

**I changed my title and Google still shows the old one.**

First confirm you pressed **Update**: the live site serves the last published snapshot. After that, search engines decide when to re-read a page; UOVA does not ping them.

Source: https://www.uova.com/help/build/seo