Solved General

Meta Title and Description tags for SP Property

Asked by Peter Dowse 2 years ago Last activity 9 months ago

Hi Guys,

Just wondering if there's a way to have meta title and description tags for individual properties in SP Property.

The Title tag seems to be pulled in from the title of the property (not a great solution as often the SEO title tag will need to be different to the name of the property) and the description tag seems to be pulled in from the first 170(ish) characters of the main description.

Considering accommodation is higly competitive in search engines, it seems crazy we're not able to add title and description tags to help with SEO rankings for sites that use this component.

What would I need to do to enable customisable title and description tags in this component?

Accepted answer

Marked as the solution

Ziaul Kabir Staff

2 years ago

Hello Peter Dowse,

Thank you for bringing this up. At the moment, when adding properties, categories, or other elements to the menu, there is an option to customize the metadata. However, you’re right that SP Property itself doesn’t currently offer a direct way to set meta titles or descriptions for individual properties or other elements.

I’ll share your feedback with our team, and if they agree, we’ll consider including this feature in a future update.

Thanks again for your input!

Best Regards,

10 more replies

Peter Dowse Asked this

2 years ago

This would turn this component from 'great' to 'absolutely brilliant' .

Again, I stress that accommodation is a highly competitive field so not being able to modify the SEO title and description tags is a real roadblock to us using this for many clients.

Ziaul Kabir Staff

2 years ago

Hi Peter,

Thank you for your feedback. I will definitely consult with the team regarding this issue, and I hope we can achieve a positive outcome.

Thanks for your understanding.

Best regards,

Scott

10 months ago

I would also like the ability to identify meta keywords for individual properties in SP Property.

Also, the SP Property -> Properties pages have no ability to identify a meta description or keywords.

Seems odd that the ability to specify meta description & keywords wouldn't have been built in from day one since SP Page Builder has it. Essentially the SP Property module removes parent functionality.

Is it possible to point me to the file where I could customize the code to add meta keywords for individual properties? At a minimum I would just take the title & add a static string.

Scott

10 months ago

I just found that SP Property -> Properties pages do have the ability to set a meta description through the metadata tab on the menu configuration, but it doesn't work.

Ziaul Kabir Staff

10 months ago

Yes, there is an issue here. I have added it to our feature list.

You have two options for now:

Create an override at
/templates/shaper_helixultimate/html/com_spproperty/property
and then customize this file:
/templates/shaper_helixultimate/html/com_spproperty/property/default.php
so it can pull the meta descriptions and inject them into the header when the page loads.
However, the downside is that it will inject the same description for all properties.
Create a plugin for SP Property, which can dynamically fetch each property’s title and other necessary data, provide options to add them, and render them properly when the page loads.

Thanks.

Scott

10 months ago

I was able to add meta keywords for a property by adding the following to the file components/com_spproperty/views/property/view.html.php:
$itemMeta['keywords'] = $this->item->title . ", " . "space for lease";
since 'keywords' was already defined in the helper function.

What I really need to fix is the meta description for SP Property -> Properties pages because they just use the global configuration and SEO doesn't like duplicated meta descriptions across pages. Could you point me to the file where this is being set so I can modify the meta description?

Thanks.

Ziaul Kabir Staff

10 months ago

Please, read my previous response again.

Thanks

Scott

10 months ago

I am not referring to an individual property listing, which is the file you pointed me towards.
I am referring to when you create a menu page and make the menu item type: SP Property -> Properties
it creates a page of properties (of similar type) with an ordering (e.g. office). What file controls this where meta data could be inserted?

Ziaul Kabir Staff

10 months ago

You can override the properties listing page at:

/templates/shaper_helixultimate/html/com_spproperty/properties

This functionality has been noted as a feature request for a future update.

Thank you for your understanding.

Scott

9 months ago

I found an easier way to correct this deficiency. Instead of making a menu item point directly to the SP Property -> Properties module, have the menu item point to SP Page Builder -> Page and have the page builder page point to the SP Properties module. This then allows you to update the meta description & keywords within Page Builder.

Scott

9 months ago

Doing this creates another issue, longer url's (which could approach 100 characters) because "component/spproperty/" is added to the path and "?Itemid=101" is added at the end. Is there a way to remove "?Itemid=101"? Every property listing has it and the property listing can be reached without it.

Ziaul Kabir Staff

9 months ago

Hi Scott,

Thanks for sharing your findings and workaround. You’re correct that using a Page Builder page to embed SP Property allows you to edit meta titles, descriptions, and keywords.

Regarding the longer URLs and the ?Itemid=101 issue, this happens because Joomla adds query strings when there isn’t a dedicated menu item for each property. While it’s technically possible to remove this by creating hidden menu items or implementing a custom router override, we do not recommend this approach as it requires deep customizations and development knowledge.

If you want to pursue this, you could either explore these options carefully yourself or consider hiring a developer to implement a proper solution.

Thank you for your understanding.

Best regards,