How Exposure helps your stories and site get discovered by search engines, social media, and AI assistants.

Every Exposure site is built with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. When you publish a story, Exposure automatically generates the meta tags, structured data, sitemaps, and social sharing previews that help Google, Bing, and other platforms find and display your content.

This guide explains what Exposure does for you behind the scenes, what you can customize, and how to get the most visibility for your work.

You don't need to install plugins or write code. The moment you publish a story, Exposure handles:

When you hit "Publish," Exposure immediately notifies search engines that your new story exists. We use the IndexNow protocol to ping Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, Naver, and Amazon the moment you publish. Instead of waiting days or weeks for crawlers to discover your content, these search engines typically index your story within minutes.

This happens automatically for every published story. You don't need to do anything.

Every page on your site includes:

When someone shares your story on Facebook, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, or WhatsApp, they'll see a rich preview card with:

This is powered by Open Graph and Twitter Card meta tags that Exposure generates for every published story.

Exposure embeds structured data (JSON-LD) on every page so search engines understand your content:

Your Exposure site is optimized for AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews:

By default, your site title is "Your Name on Exposure." You can change this to anything you want.

How to set it:

This title appears in browser tabs, search results, and when your homepage is shared on social media.

Your site's meta description appears in Google search results below the title. By default, Exposure uses your bio.

How to set it:

Tip: Think of this as your elevator pitch in search results. Include what you photograph and where you're based.

Each story can have its own meta description that overrides the default.

How to set it:

If you don't set one, Exposure uses the first text block in your story.

You can set keywords for your site and individual stories to help search engines understand your content.

How to set it:

Tip: Use relevant, specific terms like "wedding photography Atlanta" rather than generic words like "photos."

Your sitemap tells search engines about every page on your site. Exposure generates and maintains it automatically.

Your sitemap URL: https://yourname.exposure.co/sitemap.xml (or https://yourcustomdomain.com/sitemap.xml if you use a custom domain)

While search engines usually find your sitemap automatically via your robots.txt file, you can speed things up by submitting it directly:

Exposure uses a combination of techniques to get your content indexed as quickly as possible:

For Google specifically, your content is discovered through the sitemap. Exposure's main domain sitemap index helps Google find your site even if no one has linked to it yet.

If you use a custom domain (e.g., stories.yourbrand.com), your SEO benefits include:

Your sitemap, robots.txt, and all meta tags work identically on custom domains. IndexNow notifications use your custom domain URL when configured.

Organizing your stories into categories improves your SEO in several ways:

How to add categories:

If you want your site to be completely private from search engines:

This tells all search engines and AI crawlers not to index your site. Your sitemap will return empty, and your robots.txt will block all crawlers. IndexNow notifications will also be skipped.

Note: This is a request to search engines, not a guarantee. For true privacy, use a profile password instead.

You can keep specific stories out of search results while leaving the rest of your site visible:

Hidden stories are:

They're still accessible via direct URL -- they just won't be discovered through search or your site navigation.

If you set a password on your profile (Settings > Privacy), your entire site is excluded from the main Exposure sitemap index and search engines will encounter your password page instead of content.

Alt text helps search engines understand your photos and is essential for accessibility. Exposure handles alt text in several ways:

Tip: Custom alt text that describes what's in the photo will always perform better for SEO than generic fallbacks.

Your RSS feed helps people subscribe to your stories and enables syndication to other platforms.

Your RSS URL: https://yourname.exposure.co/feed.rss

RSS feeds include:

RSS feeds are available when enabled in your settings and can be used with feed readers (Feedly, Inoreader), automation tools (Zapier), and newsletter services.

When your stories are embedded on other websites using Exposure's embed feature, the embedded version includes a noindex tag so it doesn't compete with your original story in search results. Links in the embed code point back to your original story, passing link equity to your site.

Your story title is the most important SEO element. Use clear, descriptive titles that include relevant keywords.

Subtitles appear in search results and social shares below your title. Use them to provide additional context.

Stories with text blocks rank better than photo-only stories because search engines can read and index the text. Even a paragraph or two of context helps search engines understand your story.

Categories create additional indexed pages and add structured data tags to your stories.

The auto-generated description from your first text block might not be the best summary. A custom meta description lets you control exactly what appears in search results.

Search engines favor sites that publish regularly. Even one new story per month signals that your site is active and worth crawling frequently. Plus, each new publish triggers an IndexNow notification for instant indexing on Bing and DuckDuckGo.

Links from social media, other websites, and email newsletters all help search engines discover and rank your content. Every share is a potential backlink.

The best way to monitor your search presence:

No. Exposure handles all technical SEO automatically, including instant IndexNow notifications when you publish. The customization options above are optional ways to improve your results further.

When you publish a story, Exposure automatically sends a notification to major search engines (Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, Naver, Amazon) telling them your new content exists. They typically crawl and index it within minutes. This is completely automatic -- you don't need to configure anything.

Google does not currently support the IndexNow protocol. For Google, your content is discovered through your sitemap, which is updated automatically. Exposure's main domain sitemap index also helps Google discover your site.

Yes. Your story photos are included in your sitemap with image metadata, and each photo has alt text. Google can index them for Image Search results.

Yes. Go to Settings > Site and add your Google Analytics tracking ID. This lets you track traffic in your own GA dashboard alongside Exposure's built-in stats.

Yes. You can verify your site with Google Search Console using the HTML meta tag method. Add the verification tag via Settings > Site > Custom Code (Head).

Exposure automatically sets up 301 redirects from your old subdomain URLs to your new custom domain URLs. This preserves your existing search rankings and link equity.

Yes. Exposure explicitly allows major AI crawlers and provides machine-readable versions of your content. Your stories can appear in AI-generated answers and summaries.

Have more questions? Contact us and we'll be happy to help.