Search engines and sharing

Start herePagesSearch engines and sharingHow to set what Google shows for a page, what happens when you leave it alone, how to keep a page out of search results, and what people see when they share a link to your site.Setting a page's search title and description

Open the page in the editor and click the Settings tab.

Click the SEO tab.

Type an SEO title: the headline search engines show, and the words on the browser tab.

Type a Meta description: the short summary under the headline in search results. The counter shows how long it is; about 160 characters is the most search engines show.

Leave Canonical URL blank. It's only for the rare page that copies another page's content and should send search engines to the original.These settings, and the ones on the Social tab, take effect as soon as they save. They don't wait for you to press Publish.A page's SEO settings.What happens when you leave them blank

No SEO title: Cairn uses the page's title. Either way, your site's name is added on the end, unless the title already includes it. The site name is set in Settings, on the General tab.

No meta description: the page has none, and search engines write their own summary from the words on the page. A description you write yourself is usually better, so it's worth doing for your main pages.

No share image: Cairn uses the site-wide one, if you've set one (see below).

Keeping a page out of search resultsTick No-index (hide from search engines) on the page's SEO tab. Search engines are told not to list the page or follow its links. The page still works for anyone who has the address, so use it for things like a thank-you page, not for anything private.You don't need it for drafts: search engines can't reach a page that isn't published, and a shared draft link is already marked not to be listed.If your site runs Members, Who can see this page on the General tab restricts a page to members. A restricted page is left out of the menu and the sitemap, and anyone not entitled to it is told it doesn't exist. See Members.How a link looks when it's sharedWhen someone pastes a link to your page into Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Slack and the like, a preview card appears. It shows the page's title (the same one search engines see), the meta description, your site's name and a picture.To choose the picture, open the page's Settings tab, click Social, and pick an image under Share image (Open Graph). A picture 1200 × 630 pixels works best; Cairn crops images from your media library to the right shape for you.Pages without a share image of their own use the site-wide one: the Social share image on the General tab of Settings. If neither is set, the preview has no picture.Leave Open Graph type and Twitter card as they are unless you have a reason to change them. The defaults suit almost every page.The sitemapYour site has a sitemap at /sitemap.xml: a list of its pages for search engines to work through. You don't need to do anything with it. Cairn keeps it up to date by itself: a page is added when you publish it and dropped when you unpublish or delete it.← Publishing, drafts and historyHow blocks work →Getting startedPagesBuilding with blocksNavigation and lookMediaForms and leadsCatalogueShopBookings and membersRunning the siteCairnWebsites for businesses that need more than a brochure. Built, hosted and kept running by us.StartBuildRun© 2026 Cairn. All rights reserved.Built with Cairn.