For this guide, we will be working with the free, SEOPress plugin.
Any time someone puts up a “what’s the best SEO plugin” poll within SEO-based communities, SEOPress is always the top recommendation, and it’s my recommendation as well.
SEOPress competitors (Rank Math, Yoast, etc.) are either bloated, not innovating or a combination of both.
SEOPress Pro should be on every MyListing website, in my opinion, for its many premium features, and for the other things mentioned above.
MyListing Default Meta for Listings
Out of the box, MyListing applies meta to Listings, but you need to do a bit more in order to have proper meta on your website. Why?
Without SEOPress in play, the default output for the title will be something like Listing Name – Site Name. The problem with this is the ‘–’ portion, which isn’t an SEO-friendly separator, like ‘|’ or like ‘-‘, is.
The screenshot below shows what SEOPress helps assign by default, as soon as you install and activate it.
Looking at the Title meta template, the default variables (%%post_title%% %%sep%% %%sitetitle%%) will output something like Service Listing 1 – MyListing Sandbox, which is an SEO-friendly title containing a proper separator.
The title meta at this point is fine for most MyListing websites, but depending on your particular business, you might have good reasons to apply some changes.
Looking at the meta description, the default variable (%%post_excerpt%%) will output a blank meta description. This is a problem.
All Listings should have a unique meta description that is SEO-friendly.
Your Listing owners have no control of the meta you’re applying to their Listings. Automating SEO-friendly meta descriptions should be a task that’s included in your MyListing website build checklist.
Apply Meta to Listings With SEOPress
The following steps assume you already have SEOPress installed and activated. Also, while we will be focusing on the meta description, the same process applies to adjusting the Listing title meta.
What we’re going to do here, is inject the Listings’ Title, Listing Type, Region, and Site Title, into the meta description.
- WordPress Dashboard > SEO > Titles & Metas > Post Types > Listings.
- Clear out the default %%post_excerpt%% variable.
- Add the text shown below.
%%post_title%% provides wedding %%_cf__case27_listing_type%% services in the %%_ct_region%% area. Check out their Listing on %%sitetitle%%.
Breaking Down the Meta
%%post_title%% provides wedding
We are pulling in the Listing title and adding a bit of text at the end.
%%_cf__case27_listing_type%% services in the
We are pulling in the Listing Type and adding a bit of text at the end.
%%_ct_region%% area.
We are pulling in the Listing region and adding a bit of text at the end.
Check out their Listing on %%sitetitle%%.
We are pulling in the name of the website, adding a bit of text before it, and a period at the end.