Pacharapol Withayasakpunt Pacharapol Withayasakpunt
Tue, November 19, 2019
SEO meta tags and Server Side Rendering automation

SEO meta tags and Server Side Rendering automation

I write this topic, because I think SEO should be more about SSR automation, than about manual writing / or SEO training.

<meta> tags are much about how your webpage will look like on search engines, like Google, as well, not only about search engine ranking, i.e. on-page SEO.

If you use SSR, such as traditional methods, like templating engines; or SPA-related methods, like Nuxt.js; you still might not be creating enough meta tags…

Which meta tags are needed

A very concise guide can be found from here: https://css-tricks.com/essential-meta-tags-social-media/

How to automate

I suggest this, with a templating engine. This is Nuxt.js, BTW.

{
  head: {
    title: title,
    link: [
      {
        rel: 'canonical',
        href: url,
      },
    ],
    meta: [
      { hid: 'description', name: 'description', content: description },
      { hid: 'keywords', name: 'keywords', content: keywords.join(', ') }
      {
        hid: 'og:title',
        property: 'og:title',
        content: title
      },
      {
        hid: 'og:description',
        property: 'og:description',
        content: description
      },
      {
        hid: 'og:image',
        property: 'og:image',
        content: metaImage
      },
      {
        hid: 'og:url',
        property: 'og:url',
        content: url
      },
      {
        hid: 'twitter:title',
        property: 'twitter:title',
        content: title
      },
      {
        hid: 'twitter:description',
        property: 'twitter:description',
        content: description
      },
      {
        hid: 'twitter:image',
        property: 'twitter:image',
        content: metaImage
      },
      {
        hid: 'twitter:card',
        property: 'twitter:card',
        content: 'summary_large_image'
      },
    ],
  }
}

How to double-check on-page SEO

I recently found this Chrome extension https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/seo-extension-metrics-bac/iodbnclobmalekpemjhncgfphojcgocd.

Also, when you create a website, don't forget to check how it looks on mobile devices. -- https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/device-mode. Often, very small devices and mid size devices can be problematic. If you need different looks for mobile, tablet and desktop, I suggest you look into media query (which is not about CSS, but can be JavaScript).

Real project

You can check automation script of this blog at https://github.com/patarapolw/blog

Futures

Perhaps, I should learn more about OpenGraph.

I have just watched this. It is quite good.