The HEAD section of every page in your store contains elements providing the page metadata. These elements (page title, meta description, and meta keywords) may significantly impact how the page is ranked by search engines and described in search engine results pages.

The relevant website title, meta description, and keywords increase the chance that a user will find your website via search engines like Google.

The title element contained in the <title> tag defines the page title, for example:

<title>*Your company name* / Catalog</title>.

This element appears in the browser title bar when a page opens in a web browser. The title element also describes the page in the bookmarks list when the page is bookmarked.

The title element is vital for search engines. The text in a page's title tag is one of the most important factors determining how the page is ranked. In addition, in all major search engines, the title element's text is displayed as the page's title in the search results.

X-Cart provides some controls allowing the store administrator to adjust the title element.

See more info in Managing Page Title Format.

The meta description tag provides a summary of a page's content; for example:

<meta name="description" content="Welcome to X-Cart Demo Store!It illustrates operation and features of X-Cart - all-in-one eCommerce solution for swift and easy launch of a professional online store. Orders placed here cannot be fulfilled as all the sample products listed in this store are for demonstration and testing purposes only.">

The text that goes between the quotation marks after the "content=" portion of the tag is a meta description.

This tag comes in handy for SEO because it allows you to influence the description of your store's pages in the web crawlers that support this tag. Different crawlers use this tag differently, but you should expect that if your page's meta description is deemed relevant by a web crawler, at least a portion of it will be displayed as the page's description in the search results. If this description is enticing enough, you may get more targeted traffic to your site.

Your online store autogenerates a meta description for almost every page based on the page description or content. If you want to add a custom meta description, use the Meta description field when editing the page details.

The meta keywords tag is another meta tag that has some significance for SEO. It allows you to provide relevant keywords for your pages; for example:

<meta name="keywords" content="shop, shopping cart, web store, gift certificates, wish list, top sellers" />

Today, very few search engines rely on this tag for information about a page. However, you can still use this tag to reinforce the terms you think a page is essential for.

When editing the page details, you can define keywords for a page in the Meta keywords or Keywords field.

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