Along with the visible text in your story, search engines also read metadata in your story's header, which helps them categorise, understand context and index your content.
You can add and edit this metadata from within the Editor — no need to touch any code yourself. Click the SETTINGS icon in the top left:
Story Title and Story Description
The TITLE field will be added to the <title> HTML tag and social sharing <meta> tags. The DESCRIPTION field will be added to the description <meta> tag and social sharing meta tags, for example:
<meta name="description" content="Combine large, bold images with the beautifully crafted words of your story.">
By default, the title and description fields in the story settings panel will be automatically filled in from the text you've entered in the Title Section of your story, however, the title you add to the settings panel does not need to match the text title within your story.
For instance, you could use a more descriptive title for search engines, social shares, and screen readers, while using a shorter or more eye-catching title within the story itself. You could even use a graphical title in the story, and add a text version of the title in the panel.
Shorthand also uses the version of the story title from the panel to display titles for your stories on the Shorthand dashboard.
Note: Once you have added a custom title in the story settings, it will no longer stay in sync with the text in your Title section (as the Editor doesn't know whether you'd like them to differ or stay the same), so you may need to make updates in both places. It will re-sync if you remove the custom title in the panel.
This is also true if you copy a story that has custom title text in its story settings, it will retain the custom text from the panel.
You can also use the AUTHORS field to enter a comma-separated list of names that will be added to the author <meta> tag, for example, <meta name="author" content="John Shorthand, Jane Doe">:
Note: There is a TAGS field included in the same section of the story settings as the fields above. Tags added here are only used as an organisational tool for you and the other Shorthand users in your workspace. Tags are not added to any metadata for the story.
Custom Story Meta Data
Adding metadata from the custom head field
If your plan has access to custom code fields, there will be a Custom <HEAD> field in the story or project settings.
Any HTML meta tags you add there will be injected into the <head> of the page, for example you can set the page to noindex so search engines cannot index it:
Did you know?
When you publish a story as "anyone with a link", Shorthand adds a noindex meta tag to the story's own published page. Search engines that honour the tag keep that URL out of their results.
This doesn't extend to pages that embed the story. An embedded story sits inside a page you control, and that page carries its own metadata — so if you embed an unlisted story somewhere you'd rather wasn't found, add noindex to the embedding page yourself.