How do I add a meta description to the individual pages on my cms driven site?

[OTSEO]

Hello,

As you can tell from my question, I'm COMPLETELY new to SEO. SEOMOZ flagged some pages as lacking a meta description. How do I add a meta description to the site?

The site has a CMS architecture so I can edit text on the individual pages, but I don't know how to add a meta description, or where on the page it should go.

Thanks!

[EugenOprea]

Your CMS should have the ability to add custom meta title and meta description tags.

If it doesn't have that by default you should look for a plugin that will do the job.

Alternatively you might want to move to a more powerful CMS, such as WordPress.

[AndrewWheeler58]

Hi OT SEO,

Which CMS are you using? Wordpress/Joomla/Typo3? Or an enterprise solution such as Sitecore or Magento?

If you can tell me which one, I'll be able to help

Cheers

[OTSEO]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the super quick replies. Some of the pages have meta description tag fields that can be added in, but the bottom menu pages (among others) don't have this.

The CMS program (I think) is FCK Editor.

Thanks!

[AndrewWheeler58]

Hi OT SEO,

The FCK Editor is the wysiwyg you use to format text, add links etc. Like the one here on SEOMOZ comment replies.

If you could create a screenshot (feel free to send it to me privately) I might recognise the CMS you are using.

Cheers

Andrew

[EugenOprea]

Is it Drupal, Plone, Movable Type?

[OTSEO]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the replies. I contacted the site manager (he didn't do the development). He said that the CMS is FCK Editor also.

I checked the CK Editor homepage and it indicated what Andrew said about it being the wysiwyg.

If CK Editor isn't the CMS, then where would I find the CMS information? When I want to change the content on a page I just change the text in the FCK Editor.

Thanks!!!!

[AndrewWheeler58]

Hi again OT SEO,

FCK Editor isn't a CMS. However, 'CK Editor' looks like it incorporates editing functionality by dropping in a plugin of some sort.

I've just found this:
http://ckeditor.com/integrations

Which shows it supports Sharepoint, Joomla and Drupal CMS - so it would indicate you have one of these. If you can post your URL (PM if you wish) I will check for you.

Otherwise, here are links for each CMS listed on CKEditor explaining how to add Meta data, your original request:

Joomla:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0ZcYDEjYbs

Drupal (looks like there are some workarounds until a new update):
http://drupal.org/node/1039440

Sharepoint:
http://sharepointyankee.com/2011/03/24/description-meta-tag-in-sharepoint-publishing-pages/

Hope that helps.

Cheers,

Andrew

[OTSEO]

Hi Guys,

I spoke with the developers again and they confirmed that the FCK Editor was built using "PHP with Smarty Technology".  Maybe they mean smarty.net??

Anyway, I'm not sure if this really answers the underlying concern. The pages that SEO Moz flagged as needing meta descriptions are all bottom menu pages. I'm not sure if that makes them less important or not.

Anyway, if someone knows how to add in meta descriptions to Smarty, that would be great!

Cheers!

[AndrewWheeler58]

Hi OT SEO,

Please provide the URL, it should be obvious from the code for one of us to see which CMS you are using.

Cheers

Andrew

[OTSEO]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for your replies. I spoke with the developer and they seemed to think I wouldn't be able to edit the meta descriptions. That said, the url is objectivetrading.com Hopefully someone will know how to identify the CMS and update the meta descriptions.

Thanks!

[timhatton]

Source code doesn't give any obvious clues.  There's an admin page at objectivetrading.com/admin but that doesn't give anything away either (what can you do when you log into admin?)

So my best guess would be it's a custom-made, basic "CMS" from your developers, which isn't going to be much help I'm afraid...

[JohnIreland]

Hi there

I have a similar problem using Weebly. One can only add tags to the home page. My url is www.positiveimpact4health.com Any ideas how to add the tags to each page?

John