How to set SEO for a blog post

In TeleportHQ, each Blog post and Help Center article has its own SEO settings at the bottom of its panel: Meta Title and Meta Description set what Google shows, No Index keeps the post out of search results, Custom Canonical points search engines to the original version, and Custom Redirect sends visitors to another page. These changes go live without publishing your site again. TeleportHQ also lists your published posts in your site's sitemap and llms.txt by itself, and describes each one to Google as an article.

Before you start#

• Your project needs the Blog or the Help Center with at least one post. See How to write and publish a blog post.
• Everything below works the same way for Help Center articles: the panel is called Edit Help Center Article instead of Edit Blog Post.

Set the title and description for Google#

1. In the left sidebar (the icon column), click Blog, or Help Center.
2. Click the post. The Edit Blog Post panel opens.

3. Scroll down to the SEO fields. They are, from the top:

   1. Meta Title and Meta Description: what search results show.
   2. No Index: keeps the post out of search engines.
   3. Custom Canonical: names the original version of the post.
   4. Custom Redirect: sends visitors who open the post somewhere else.

   

4. In Meta Title, type the title you want in search results. For example, How we bake our sourdough: a 48-hour recipe.
5. In Meta Description, type one or two sentences that make people want to click.
6. Click Save Changes.

While you type a post's title, Meta Title follows it, until you type a Meta Title of your own. When you create a post and leave Meta Description empty, TeleportHQ fills it with the post's Excerpt. It doesn't follow later changes to the excerpt: update it here.

Hide a post from search engines#

1. In the post's panel, turn on No Index ("Excludes this post from the sitemap and adds a noindex tag so search engines skip it.").
2. Click Save Changes.

Set a canonical URL#

Use this when the same article was first published on another site, so Google credits the original.

1. Turn on Custom Canonical.
2. Type the original address. For example, https://example.com/original-article.
3. Click Save Changes.

Redirect a post to another page#

Use this to retire an old post and send its visitors somewhere useful.

1. Turn on Custom Redirect.
2. Under Redirect Mode, choose Page to pick a page of your site, or URL to type an address.
3. Choose 301 - Permanent (the post is gone for good) or 302 - Temporary.
4. Pick the page, or type the address. For example, /blog or https://example.com/new-article.
5. Click Save Changes.

Your live site then answers the post's address with a real redirect, 301 or 302 as you chose, so search engines move to the new address.

What TeleportHQ does for every post#

You don't set these up: they come with the Blog and the Help Center on sites you publish with TeleportHQ.

• A live sitemap. With Automatically Generate Sitemap on (the default), your site's sitemap.xml becomes a list of sitemaps: sitemap-pages.xml for your pages, sitemap-blog.xml for Blog posts and sitemap-help.xml for Help Center articles. The post sitemaps are written each time a search engine asks, so a post you publish is listed without publishing your site again. Each post comes with the date it last changed.
• llms.txt for AI assistants. On Trial, Pro and Premium, your site's llms.txt adds your posts by category after your pages, and llms-full.txt holds every post's full text. They're updated the same way, without publishing again, as long as the LLMS.txt setting is on Auto: text you write yourself in Edit replaces the whole file.
• Article structured data. Each post page tells Google it's an article (a "BlogPosting" for Blog posts, an "Article" for Help Center articles), with its title, description, main image, publishing and update dates, author and your site's name. To give the post page schema markup of your own, written by hand or with AI, see How to add schema markup (structured data) to your pages.

Only published posts are listed, and never one with No Index or Custom Redirect on.

To see what your next publish writes, open Project settings (cog, bottom left) → SEO & social → Search engines. Under Automatically Generate Sitemap, a line such as "sitemap-blog.xml: your site lists its 2 Blog posts there each time a search engine asks." names the post sitemaps.

For the sitemap and llms.txt settings, see How to set up your sitemap, robots.txt and llms.txt.

Check that it worked#

On your live site, open the post and look at the page's title in the browser tab. A post with Custom Redirect takes you to the destination instead. Open /sitemap-blog.xml (or /sitemap-help.xml) on your site: the post's address is listed. Search engines update their results on their own schedule, which can take days.

Troubleshooting#

"Custom redirect: please select a destination page" You chose Page but didn't pick a page. Pick one, or turn Custom Redirect off.

"Custom redirect: a destination URL is required" You chose URL but left the address empty. Type a full address or a path such as /blog.

"Custom redirect: a post cannot redirect to itself" The destination is the post itself ("an article cannot redirect to itself" in the Help Center). Pick a different page or address.

"SEO options could not be saved: the SEO columns are missing…" TeleportHQ couldn't add the SEO fields to the database that stores your posts. If your blog uses your own database, check that the database user TeleportHQ connects with may add columns, then save again.

My post isn't in sitemap-blog.xml The post is a draft, scheduled or archived, or it has No Index or Custom Redirect on. Your site also lists no posts when its post page is for signed-in members only.

Good to know#

• When Custom Canonical or Custom Redirect is off, the settings of the post page (blog-post-details, or help-article-details) apply.
• No Index, Custom Canonical and Custom Redirect have one value for all languages. Meta Title and Meta Description can be translated per language. See How to translate blog posts.
• The SEO title and description of the list page (/blog or /help) are set like any page's. See How to set a page's title and description for Google.
• If you turn off Show this site in search engines (Project settings → SEO & social → Search engines), every address of your site, posts included, asks search engines not to list it from your next publish.
• Links in your posts that lead nowhere show in the editor's Issues window. See How to find and fix broken links on your site.