SEO Meta & Open Graph - CitedPro Docs

Meta titles, descriptions, canonical URLs, open graph, Twitter cards, and per-page controls in the post editor.

Overview

CitedPro includes a complete SEO meta system that controls how your pages appear in search results, social media shares, and AI-powered search engines. Each post and page gets its own metabox in the WordPress editor where you can customize titles, descriptions, and social media previews.

Per-post SEO metabox

When editing any post or page, you will find the CitedPro SEO metabox below the content editor. It contains the following fields:

Field	Description
SEO Title	The title tag for search results. If left empty, CitedPro uses the title template.
Meta Description	The description shown in search result snippets. Should be 120 to 155 characters.
Canonical URL	Override the canonical URL if needed. Auto-detected by default.
Focus Keyword	The primary keyword for this content. Used by the Content Analyzer for scoring.
Noindex	Prevent search engines from indexing this page.
Nofollow	Tell search engines not to follow links on this page.
OG Image	Custom image for social media sharing. Falls back to the featured image if not set.

Character counters

The SEO title and meta description fields include live character counters that update as you type. The counters change color to indicate whether your text is within the recommended length:

Green: Within the ideal range
Orange: Getting close to the limit
Red: Too long; may be truncated in search results

Recommended lengths: titles under 60 characters, descriptions between 120 and 155 characters.

Title templates

CitedPro uses title templates to automatically generate SEO titles when you have not set a custom one. Templates support the following variables:

Variable	Output
`{title}`	The post or page title
`{site}`	Your site name (from WordPress Settings → General)
`{sep}`	The title separator character
`{tagline}`	Your site tagline (from WordPress Settings → General)

The default template is {title} {sep} {site}, which produces titles like "My Blog Post | My Site Name".

Title separator

The separator character defaults to | (pipe). You can change it in CitedPro → Settings to any character you prefer (common alternatives: -, :, ·).

Homepage title and description

The homepage uses its own title and description settings, separate from the post-level metabox. Configure these in CitedPro → Settings under the SEO section. If you leave them empty, CitedPro falls back to your WordPress site title and tagline.

Open Graph output

CitedPro outputs Open Graph meta tags so your pages look good when shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social platforms. The following tags are generated automatically:

og:title — Uses the SEO title or title template
og:description — Uses the meta description
og:image — Uses the OG image, or falls back to the featured image
og:type — Set to article for posts and website for pages
og:url — The canonical URL of the page
og:site_name — Your WordPress site name

Twitter card output

Twitter/X card tags are also generated automatically:

twitter:card — Set to summary_large_image for visual impact
twitter:title — Uses the SEO title
twitter:description — Uses the meta description
twitter:image — Uses the OG image or featured image

Canonical URLs

CitedPro automatically detects and outputs the canonical URL for each page. This tells search engines which version of a page is the primary one, preventing duplicate content issues.

The canonical URL is auto-detected from the permalink, but you can override it per-post in the SEO metabox. This is useful when you have content that exists at multiple URLs (for example, a product page accessible via both a category URL and a direct URL).

Noindex and nofollow

When you enable noindex or nofollow on a post or page, CitedPro outputs the directive in two places for maximum compatibility:

Meta robots tag:<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow"> in the HTML head
X-Robots-Tag header: An HTTP header with the same directive, which is processed even when the HTML is not parsed

This dual approach ensures that search engines respect your directive regardless of how they process the page.

SEO conflict detection

CitedPro automatically detects when another SEO plugin is active and disables its own SEO meta output to prevent conflicts. The following plugins are detected:

Yoast SEO
Rank Math
All in One SEO (AIOSEO)
SEOPress
The SEO Framework (TSF)
Slim SEO

When a conflicting SEO plugin is detected, CitedPro disables its title tags, meta descriptions, canonical URLs, Open Graph output, Twitter cards, and the SEO metabox. All AI-specific features (discovery files, bot tracking, AIPREF directives, schema injection) continue to run normally.

Tip

You can use CitedPro alongside any SEO plugin. The AI-focused features work independently from the SEO meta features. If you already have an SEO plugin you are happy with, CitedPro simply skips the overlapping functionality.

Global settings

Configure site-wide SEO meta settings in CitedPro → Settings:

Title separator: Character used between title elements (default: |)
Homepage title: Custom title for your homepage
Homepage description: Custom meta description for your homepage
Default OG image: Fallback image used when no featured image or OG image is set

Smart Generate for SEO

CitedPro's Smart Generate feature can help you write SEO titles, meta descriptions, and focus keywords. In the post editor metabox, click the Smart Generate button next to any field to get an AI-generated suggestion based on your post content.

Smart Generate analyzes your post content, considers your business context (from the Setup tab), and produces optimized suggestions that balance keyword relevance with readability. You can accept, edit, or discard each suggestion.