Title and Meta Description Templates for WordPress

Rank Forge lets you define title and meta description templates for each post type, with an override on a single post — with variable substitution that automatically fills in things like post title, site name, publish year, and category. Set the template once, and every post follows it without manual configuration.

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Why templates matter

On any WordPress site with more than a handful of posts, writing unique SEO titles and descriptions for each one is either (a) a lot of manual work or (b) something that gets forgotten and ends up with empty or default fields.

Templates solve this by giving you a pattern every post automatically follows. For example:

• Template: {{title}} — {{siteName}}
• Applied to a post titled “Best Caching Plugins”:
• Result: Best Caching Plugins — Example Site

You can still override the template on individual posts when you need to. But for the 90% of posts where a standard pattern is fine, templates eliminate the busywork.

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Available variables

• {{title}}: the post title
• {{excerpt}}: the post excerpt, or the opening of the post text when it has none
• {{author}}: the author’s display name
• {{date}}: the publish date
• {{modifiedDate}}: the date the post was last modified
• {{category}}: the name of the post’s first category (post categories only; WooCommerce product categories are not read)
• {{siteName}}: your WordPress site title
• {{siteDesc}}: your WordPress tagline
• {{currentYear}}: the current year
• {{currentMonth}}: the current month name
• {{separator}}: the character picked in the Separator menu
• {{field:NAME}}: the value of a custom field (FieldForge or ACF) on the post; %field:NAME% works too

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Template cascade

Rank Forge uses a cascade to determine which template applies to a given post:

1. Per-post value: a title or description typed in the Rank Forge box of the post wins
2. Term template: the Cascade line of the Title Templates card names this level, but no screen sets one. Rank Forge reads it only when a developer stores it in the rankforge_tax_templates option under a key such as category_12
3. Post type template: the Title Template and Description Template of the post type’s block in the Title Templates card
4. Built-in default: {{title}} {{separator}} {{siteName}} for the title and {{excerpt}} for the description, for Posts, Pages and Products

When none of these gives a value, the title is the post title and the description is the opening 160 characters of the post text. Set a template for each post type you use.

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Templates for each post type

The Title Templates card (Rank Forge > Settings, tab Search Appearance) has one block for each public post type on your site: Posts, Pages, Products and custom post types. Attachments have no block. Each block has:

• a Title Template field
• a Description Template field
• a Show in search results toggle. Turning it off adds noindex to that post type and leaves it out of the sitemap

The Separator menu above the blocks sets the character that {{separator}} becomes. The card has no template fields for archive pages, the search results page or the 404 page.

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Live preview

Below the fields of each block, the Live Preview shows the title and the description with the variables filled in with sample values. It shows the pattern, not a real post.

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Length of a template

Rank Forge does not check the length of a template, and a template gives a different length for each post. The length meter under the SEO Title and Meta Description fields of the Rank Forge box measures only text typed in those fields, not the result of a template. The meter has an ideal length of 60 characters for the title and 160 for the description: it is red below half of the ideal length, amber up to 80 percent of it, green up to the ideal length and red above it.

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Auto-cleanup of empty variables

If a variable gives an empty value (for example a {{field:NAME}} custom field the post does not have), Rank Forge cleans up the result: it removes a doubled separator, a separator at the start or the end, and repeated spaces. A title that would read “Post Title | | Site Name” reads “Post Title | Site Name”.

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Example template patterns

Blog post template

{{title}} — {{siteName}}

Produces: Best Caching Plugins — Example Site

WooCommerce product template

{{title}} {{separator}} {{siteName}}

Produces, with the default separator: Blue Running Shoes | Example Store. This is also the built-in default for Products.

Guides template

{{title}} by {{author}} {{separator}} {{siteName}}

Produces: Trail Shoe Guide by Sarah Johnson | Example Site

Evergreen content template

{{title}} ({{currentYear}} Updated) — {{siteName}}

Produces: WordPress SEO Guide (2026 Updated) — Example Site

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Global default OG image

Alongside templates, Rank Forge lets you set a global default Open Graph image used as a fallback when a post doesn’t have a featured image. The cascade is:

1. Post’s custom OG image
2. Post’s featured image
3. For a WooCommerce product, the WooCommerce placeholder image (it comes before the global default, so a product with no image shows the placeholder)
4. Global default OG image
5. Empty (no OG image tag output)

With a global default image set, a post with no image of its own still has a social preview image.

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Ready to set up SEO templates?

See pricing →

Title and meta description templates are included in every paid plan.