Better SEO for express entry detail page

This is a community-contributed tutorial. This tutorial is over a year old and may not apply to your version of Concrete CMS.
Jul 1, 2020
By hissy for Developers

Tested on 8.5.4

You can override core controller of express entry detail block type by putting the file application/blocks/express_entry_detail.controller.php.

It append the label of express entry by default, but you can change how it changes some meta tags.

<?php
namespace Application\Block\ExpressEntryDetail;

use Concrete\Core\Html\Service\Seo;
use Concrete\Core\Url\SeoCanonical;

class Controller extends \Concrete\Block\ExpressEntryDetail\Controller
{
    public function action_view_express_entity($exEntryID = null)
    {
        $entry = $this->entityManager->find('Concrete\Core\Entity\Express\Entry', $exEntryID);
        if (is_object($entry)) {
            $entity = $this->entityManager->find('Concrete\Core\Entity\Express\Entity', $this->exEntityID);
            if ($entry->getEntity()->getID() == $entity->getID()) {
                /** @var Seo $seo */
                $seo = $this->app->make('helper/seo');
                // Get the value of meta_title attribute of the entry
                $seo->setCustomTitle($entry->getMetaTitle());

                // Get the value of meta_description attribute of the entry
                $this->addHeaderItem('<meta name="description" content="' . h($entry->getMetaDescription()) . '">');

                /** @var SeoCanonical $canonical */
                $canonical = $this->app->make(SeoCanonical::class);
                $canonical->setPathArguments(['view_express_entity', $exEntryID]);

                $this->set('entry', $entry);
                $this->view();
            }
        }
    }
}

Important:

In order for concrete to take into account your custom title you must leave the page's Meta Title tag empty. If it has a value set in the SEO section, your custom title will not be used.

The same is true for the description. You must remove both the page's Meta Description value under the SEO section and any value set in the page's Description field under the Attributes section. Otherwise your page will end up with 2 conflicting Meta Description tags.

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