Managing Content: Blog, Guides, SEO and the Media Library

A publish panel sits at the top of the Blog, Guides and SEO screens and always tells you where things stand. It shows how many unpublished changes are waiting, whether a publish is queued or building, whether the last one failed, and when the site was last published and by whom.

When changes are waiting, select Publish to Live Site, read the note, then Confirm Publish. A build usually takes one to two minutes. Visitors keep seeing the current site until the new one is ready, and if the build fails, the live site is not changed. The panel then shows what went wrong, with Show Build Log for the details, and a Try Again button.

A publish ships everything saved on all three screens together, site SEO, page settings, blog posts and guides, including changes a colleague has saved. If someone else is part-way through an edit, check with them before you publish.

Open Blog or Guides. The list shows 20 posts a page, with a filter for All, Published and Drafts and a search box. Select New Post (or New Guide) to start one, or Edit on an existing post. The editor replaces the list, and All Posts (or All Guides) takes you back.

The Article section holds what a reader sees:

• Title: the headline on the post and in search
• Web Address: leave it empty and it is made from the title. Once a post exists, changing it breaks every existing link to the post.
• Excerpt: one or two sentences for the index card, also used as the meta description if you do not write one
• Intro: two or three lines, set large under the title
• Type: Blog Post or Guide. A new post starts as the kind of screen you opened it from. Blog posts are published under /blog and guides under /guides.
• Category: the chip above the title, such as Deliverability, with a colour chosen from green, teal, amber or blue
• Reading Time: leave it empty and it is worked out from the article

Changing the Type of a published post moves it to the other address, for example from /blog/your-post to /guides/your-post, and the editor warns that links to the old address will stop working. The post then appears on the other screen.

A counter turns amber when the excerpt or intro runs long. It is guidance only and never stops you saving.

The Body section builds the article from sections, each with a heading and a series of blocks. Use Add Section for a new heading, and Add Paragraph, Add List, Add Link or Add Image to add blocks to a section. Sections can be moved up or down or deleted, and any block can be deleted.

The first section's heading can be left empty, so an article can open with a paragraph or two before its first heading. Every other section needs a heading, and the headings become the post's table of contents.

There is no formatting toolbar, and that is deliberate. Nothing typed into the editor can turn into code, so every post uses the site's own typography. A link block has text before the link, the link text and the page it links to. Links can only point to pages on this site, written as a path starting with "/", such as /pricing.

An image block shows a picture inside the article, which suits a screenshot beside the step it illustrates. Upload the image, or enter the path of a file already on the site under /images/. Images from other sites are refused. Fill in Description (for screen readers) with what the image shows; the post cannot be saved without it. Caption is optional and appears under the image, which makes it a good place to say what to notice or press.

The Tags box sits at the end of the Article section. Type a tag and press Enter, or a comma, to add it. Select a tag's cross to remove it, or press Backspace in an empty box to remove the last one.

Under the box, existing tags are offered as suggestions. Pick from them where you can. Tags are matched regardless of capitals, so "WhatsApp" and "whatsapp" are the same tag, but a near-duplicate such as "WhatsApp Tips" beside "WhatsApp Tip" splits readers across two tag pages. A post can have up to 20 tags; two to four is plenty.

The Search & Sharing section controls how the post appears in Google and when its link is shared. Every field falls back to the article, so you only need to change what you want to be different:

• Title Tag: the title in search results. Clear it to go back to the post title followed by the site name.
• Meta Description: the snippet under the title. Clear it to go back to the excerpt.
• Share Image: the picture shown when the link is shared. Clear it to use the cover, then the site default.
• Hide This Post From Search Engines: adds noindex and leaves the post out of the sitemap. The post stays on the site and on the blog index.

A search preview beside the fields shows the title, description and image as they will appear, and updates as you type. Counters turn amber past about 60 characters for the title and 155 for the description, where Google tends to cut them off.

Save As Draft keeps the post as a draft. A draft is never built into the site, whatever you publish. Publish Post marks it as published, and the button then reads Save Published for later edits. A published post still only reaches visitors on the next Publish to Live Site.

For a published post, View Article (or View Guide) opens its page on the site in a new tab. Deleting a published post is permanent, and its web address stops working after the next publish.

To change many posts in one go, tick them in the list, or tick the box at the top of the list to select every post on the page. Buttons appear above the list:

• Publish Selected marks the ticked drafts as published. The count in brackets shows how many of your selection are drafts.
• Move to Draft takes the ticked published posts back to draft, after asking you to confirm. They leave the live site on the next publish.
• Clear removes the ticks.

Like the Publish Post button, these only change each post's status. Nothing reaches the live site, or leaves it, until someone selects Publish to Live Site.

Image fields in the console, the post's Cover, its Share Image and the share images on the SEO screen, all work the same way. Select Upload to choose a file from your computer, or paste the address of an existing image. A preview shows the image in the frame it will be shared in.

• Aim for 1200 × 675 or 1280 × 720 pixels, which is 16:9
• Use JPG, PNG or WebP, up to 5 MB
• Keep the logo and any words inside the dashed box on the preview, because the edges are cropped in some layouts

If an uploaded image is too narrow, too small or the wrong shape, the field says so and suggests the size to use. A cover is optional and must be an image uploaded in the console; the blog index card falls back to the share image when there is no cover.

Every image uploaded through an Upload button is stored in the site's own media library and served from the SmartEngage site, so it keeps working however the post is shared. There is no separate screen for browsing it: you upload an image from the field where it is used.

An uploaded image never changes. To replace one, upload the new version and set it in the field. An image that a post or page still uses cannot be removed, which protects live pages from broken pictures.

The SEO screen has two tabs. Pages lists every public page by section, such as Main Pages, Guides, Integrations and Legal. Open a page to set its Title Tag, Meta Description and Share Image, or to Hide This Page From Search Engines, then select Save Page. A page with its own settings is marked Custom, and Reset to Defaults returns it to the built-in ones. A blog post's search settings are set in the post itself.

Site Settings holds what applies everywhere: the site name added after each page title, the home page title and description, the default share image, company details for Google, and search console verification. Leave Let Search Engines Index the Site switched on for the live site; turning it off hides every page from Google once published, and is meant only for a staging copy.

Work done on a test copy of the site has to reach the live one somehow. The Blog, Guides and SEO screens each have a panel for this, scoped to that screen: Move Blog Posts Between Sites, Move Guides Between Sites and Move SEO Settings Between Sites. The Errors screen has one of its own too.

• Export Blog Posts, Export Guides or Export SEO Settings writes that screen's content to a file.
• Import From a File reads a file, up to 8 MB, and first only reports what would change: new, changed and already the same. Nothing is written yet.
• Apply to This Site then makes the change. Import creates what is missing and updates what matches, and never deletes anything.

Each post in the file keeps its own type, so a guide imported on the Blog screen still lands in Guides, and the import warns you that it went there. A post from an older file with no type is filed under the screen you imported it on.

Imported posts keep the Published or Draft status they had in the file, but like any other saved change, nothing reaches visitors until the next Publish to Live Site. Uploaded images do not travel in the file. If an imported post or page uses one this site does not have, the import warns you, and you upload that image here and set it again.

For a map of the whole console, read Admin Dashboard Overview.

For customer accounts and plans, read Managing Users, Companies and Subscriptions.