SEO settings

All plans Last updated

TubeCMS includes built-in SEO tools to help your site appear in search results. Basic SEO is available on all plans; advanced tools require the Pro plan.

What's included on all plans

  • Site description — set your default meta description, shown in Google search results. Keep it under 160 characters for best results — a character counter and SERP preview are shown as you type.
  • Keywords — add keywords to help describe your site's content. Most search engines no longer use keywords for ranking, but the field is there if you want it.
  • Sitemap — auto-generated sitemap.xml to help search engines discover your pages. Includes video sitemap extensions (thumbnail, title, description, duration, view count, embed URL) for richer video indexing. Enabled by default.
  • Robots.txt — auto-generated robots.txt to guide search engine crawling. Automatically blocks admin areas and search/filter/sort query pages (thin content) from being indexed. Enabled by default.

All settings are in Admin Panel → Settings → General, then the SEO tab.

Pro plan SEO tools

The following features are available on the Pro plan:

  • Social sharing image — upload an image that appears when your site is shared on social media (Facebook, Twitter/X, LinkedIn). Recommended size: 1200x630 pixels.

  • Structured data (JSON-LD) — auto-generated schema markup so search engines understand your content. Choose between Organization or Person type, set your name, logo, Twitter handle, and Facebook App ID.

  • Google and Bing site verification — add your verification code for Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools (which also powers DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, and Ecosia). You can paste just the code or the full <meta> tag for either.

  • Custom page titles and descriptions — override the default page title and meta description for every page on your site. Write whatever you want, or use template variables to build dynamic titles.

    Available for: Homepage, Videos, Blog, About, Contact, FAQ, Merch, Instagram, TikTok, Link in Bio, Live, Privacy — plus Video Page and Blog Post templates that apply to all individual video and blog pages.

    Template variables:

    • {sitename} — your site name
    • {pagetitle} — the default page name (e.g. "Videos", "About")
    • {videotitle} — the video title (Video Page template only)
    • {posttitle} — the blog post title (Blog Post template only)
    • {postsummary} — the blog post summary (Blog Post template only)
    • {year} — the current year

    Examples:

    • Homepage title: {sitename} — Watch My Latest YouTube Videos
    • Video page title: {videotitle} | Watch on {sitename}
    • Video page description: Watch {videotitle} on {sitename} — your home for all my videos
    • Blog post title: {posttitle} | {sitename}
    • Blog post description: {postsummary}
    • FAQ title: FAQ | {sitename} — Your Questions Answered

  • Page robots controls (noindex / nofollow) — control which pages search engines can index. Each page in the SEO grid has noindex and nofollow checkboxes. Use noindex to hide a page from search results (e.g. your Link in Bio page, which defaults to noindex to avoid duplicate content). Use nofollow to tell search engines not to follow links on a page. Paginated pages (e.g. /videos?page=2) are automatically set to noindex, follow.

  • Advanced robots directives — fine-tune how Google displays your content in search results. Set max-snippet (text snippet length), max-image-preview (image preview size), and max-video-preview (video snippet duration). Found under the collapsible "Advanced Robots Directives" section. Leave empty for no restrictions (recommended for most sites).

  • Crawl delay — optional delay (1-60 seconds) between crawler requests. Shown when robots.txt is enabled. Most major search engines ignore this, but some smaller bots respect it.

  • llms.txt — auto-generated files at /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt that make your content accessible to AI search engines and language models. Includes your videos, blog posts, FAQ, and about page.

IndexNow

TubeCMS automatically notifies search engines when your content changes using the IndexNow protocol. Submissions happen automatically when:

  • Your site goes live for the first time — all enabled pages are submitted in one batch
  • A new video is synced from YouTube
  • A blog post is published for the first time

URLs are submitted to Bing, Yandex, and other supporting search engines immediately — no action needed from you.

What TubeCMS handles automatically

Even without configuring anything, TubeCMS generates the following on every site:

  • Canonical URLs on every page — prevents duplicate content issues and tells search engines which URL is the "real" one
  • Open Graph tags — og:title, og:description, og:image, og:url, og:type so your pages look great when shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, and messaging apps
  • Twitter Card tags — twitter:card, twitter:title, twitter:description, twitter:image for rich previews when shared on Twitter/X
  • Article structured data — blog posts include Article JSON-LD markup (headline, publish date, modified date, author, publisher) so Google can display rich results
  • Video structured data — every video page includes VideoObject schema.org markup (title, description, thumbnail, duration, view count, upload date, embed URL)
  • Video chapters in search results — if your YouTube videos have chapter timestamps in the description, TubeCMS automatically generates Clip and SeekToAction structured data. This can produce rich results in Google showing individual timestamped segments
  • BreadcrumbList markup — structured data for navigation breadcrumbs, helping Google display your site hierarchy in search results
  • FAQPage structured data — your FAQ page automatically includes FAQPage schema so questions and answers can appear directly in Google search results
  • Video sitemap extensions — your sitemap includes full video metadata (thumbnail, title, description, player URL, duration, view count, publication date) for better video indexing
  • Proper heading hierarchy and semantic HTML throughout
  • 301 redirects from your subdomain to custom domain (if configured) — ensures search engines index the right URL