How can I keep my custom meta tags?

Question: I have previously written custom page titles and meta descriptions in Shopify for some of my products or pages. How do I prevent the app's AutoPilot from overwriting my custom meta tags?

Answer: It is possible to use AutoPilot alongside custom meta tags that you have already written in your Shopify admin. Rest assured that SEO Optimizer will never overwrite any page titles or meta descriptions that you have previously customized. The app's AutoPilot does not actually delete the tags set in Shopify; AutoPilot simply creates new meta tags and applies them to your pages in place of Shopify's tags. Your previously written tags are safely stored in your Shopify admin. (The one exception is image alt tags, which are permanently set by the app, but the app does not overwrite alt tags already set in Shopify unless you select that option on the Optimize Images page.)

Here are two ways to use the custom meta tags that you've already written in Shopify.

Option 1

Choose this option if:

  • You have customized meta tags across all pages.
  • You do not want to use our app's AutoPilot features for those tags.

If you simply want to let Shopify apply page titles and/or meta descriptions that you've customized across all of your pages, simply go to the AutoPilot page and turn off AutoPilot for page titles and/or meta descriptions. With AutoPilot turned off, your custom tags from Shopify will be applied to your pages.

Option 2

Choose this option if:

  • You have customized meta tags across all pages.
  • You do want to use our app's AutoPilot features for those tags.

To use your Shopify meta titles and meta descriptions in our app's AutoPilot templates, simply add the template variable [shopify_seo_title] or [shopify_seo_description] into your template. For example, to add your shop name and "Women's Apparel" to the end of your Shopify meta titles, you could use the template [shopify_seo_title] - [shop_name] Women's Apparel.

Option 3

Choose this option if:

  • You have customized meta tags on only some pages.

If you have only a few pages with customized meta tags, we don't want to turn off AutoPilot for those tags, because then your regular pages without customized tags won't have their tags set by the app either.

There is no way to exclude only certain pages from AutoPilot. So you'll need to turn on AutoPilot completely, and then copy and paste your custom tags from your Shopify admin into each page's audit in the override settings:

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