How can I test my SEO tags before publishing the site?

Why test your SEO tags before publishing

Key points • Testing your SEO tags prevents errors in titles, descriptions, or indexing • Previews allow you to adjust your meta tags before publishing • Good preparation guarantees optimal SEO from the moment of publication

Testing your SEO tags before going live is essential for any hotel website. This allows you to verify that your meta titles, meta descriptions, Open Graph tags, and indexing settings are consistent and correct before Google discovers your site. Accurate configuration improves your visibility and impact from launch.

To begin, use the SEO preview built into your page settings. When you open Page Settings, you can see a preview of how your meta title, URL, and meta description will appear in Google. This simulation helps you correct overly long titles, incomplete descriptions, or missing keywords.

Next, test your pages using a Google snippet simulator. These external tools replicate the appearance of a Google result and show you any potential truncations or errors. They are very useful for ensuring a professional and impactful result, especially for your key pages: rooms, restaurant, spa, offers, news, blog.

💡 Tip: aim for a meta title under 65 characters and a meta description between 140 and 155 characters to optimize display.

For Open Graph tags (image, title, description), use the official validators: • Facebook Sharing Debugger to check og:title, og:description, and og:image • LinkedIn Post Inspector to preview professional shares • Twitter Card Validator to check twitter:image, twitter:card, and twitter:title

These tools allow you to test your social tags before publishing and adjust your images or texts for better visual impact.

If you're working with dynamic CMS pages, remember to test several elements. Dynamic fields must appear correctly in the meta titles and descriptions. Check that: • the dynamic title displays correctly • the description correctly includes the summary field • the URL (slug) is clean and consistent • the dynamic Open Graph image loads correctly

To test indexing before going live, examine your robots.txt and indexing tags. If you have enabled or disabled noindex on certain pages, ensure that: • strategic pages are indexable • internal/test pages are set to noindex • your CMS templates adhere to your SEO strategy

Finally, for thorough verification, use a version published on a test subdomain, if your workflow allows it. This will allow you to test the sitemap, meta tags, and live preview in external tools without impacting the final version. This is ideal before a hotel launch or a major redesign.

Conclusion

Testing your SEO tags before publication is essential to ensure a smooth launch and immediate visibility in Google. Thanks to previews, snippet simulators, Open Graph validators, and a thorough review of dynamic pages, you can ensure your hotel website is perfectly optimized from day one.