SEO → Search Appearance sets the default title and description for every kind of page, using template variables.
Out of the box, titles are %title% %page% %sep% %sitename% and descriptions are %excerpt%: the excerpt, or the start of the content, shortened to about 160 characters.
- Content types: posts, pages, products and any other public post type. Turn off Show in search results to keep a whole type out of search (individual items can override this). Types with an archive page have their own archive settings.
- Taxonomies: categories, tags and other taxonomies.
- Archives: home page, author archives, date archives, search results and the 404 page. Author and date archives can be turned off completely; visitors are then redirected to the home page.
- Advanced: whether page 2 and later of archives are noindexed (usually best left off) and whether search engines may show large previews (recommended).
Click the + next to a field to insert a variable.