SEO for Solos
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Chapter 02Paid

Metadata

Titles, descriptions, canonicals, robots directives and social cards. The cheapest wins available and the most commonly half-finished layer on an otherwise well-built site.

7 min read · updated 2026-07-26· last reviewed 2026-07-26

The first 60 or so characters of a title carry nearly all its weight, both for matching and for the click. Spending the first 15 of them on a brand name nobody searched for is the most common self-inflicted wound in this layer.

Use a template with the brand as a suffix, and give the home page a keyword-led default rather than a brand-led one. The exception is a brand strong enough that the name is itself the query, which is a smaller set of companies than the ones that behave as though they are in it.

The rest of "Metadata"

1,346 words covering 7 sections, with the implementation code for 11 checks. The table of contents below is the full outline, so you can see exactly what is behind this.

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What this chapter covers

  • Titles lead with the term, not the brand
    • The principle
    • The implementation
  • Every indexable URL has a unique title and description
    • The principle
    • The implementation
  • Descriptions contain a number and an offer
    • The principle
    • The implementation
  • Canonicals are absolute and self-referencing
    • The principle
    • The implementation
  • Robots directives are explicit
    • The principle
    • The implementation
  • Social cards, including the parts platforms silently require
    • The principle
    • The implementation
  • Icons, the manifest, and cache busting
    • The principle
    • The implementation

Checks this chapter covers

Each one has a command you can run against your own site.