What are the SEO Title and SEO Description fields used for?

Question

I have seen SEO Title and SEO Description fields in various places around the Hub. What do these fields do?

For example:

• Hub Level (Appearance > Branding > Text > SEO Title):
  
• Stream Level (Content > Manage Stream > Metadata):
  
• Item Level (Content > Edit Item > SEO):
  

Answer

The SEO Title and SEO Description fields serve two purposes.

The main purpose is basically as the names suggest: these fields are used by search engines when your Hubs, Streams or Items appear in search results. For example, here's what it looks like when you Google "content experience hub":

Note how the title of the result and the snippet/blurb that appear below are the same as what we have for our Hub-level SEO Title and SEO Description:

Keep in mind that Google and other search engines won't always display the title and description you set, and can also display alternative titles and descriptions based on how the result was generated (e.g. you might see a snippet of text with the keyword(s), rather than the description).

The SEO Title and SEO Description fields also have a secondary purpose, which is to act as an override for Facebook Open Graph tags. You can learn more about Open Graph tags and how to set them for your Hub in this article:

• Customize Open Graph Tags for Your Hub