You've got a Gatsby site. What do you do about SEO? React and SEO are tricky, how does Gatsby hold up? What other SEO considerations are there in Gatsby?
tl;dr - Gatsby is awesome for SEO automatically. Use react-helmet to set your meta tags. Rejoice.
What is SEO? Search Engine Optimisation. What does that really mean? It means getting more visitors from Google. More people finding your site in Google search results.
Google is constantly evolving. They want to find the best page for the user. So make the best page. It's really that simple. That's the absolute essence of SEO.
But. There are tricks. You can help Google to understand your page better. That won't change your fundamentals, but can give you a little boost. Two major points here. First, make your site fast. Second, set the right meta tags.
Gatsby is always fast. Just using Gatsby means you're already winning on this. There are some optimisations you can use. You don't need them. Gatsby is fast. Awesome.
Meta tags help Google to understand your site. There are 2 main types of meta tags. Tags that describe the page, and social meta tags. Social meta tags are aimed at social media sites. They also help Google to understand your content.
Use react-helmet to manage meta tags. It's very easy to use. See our article on meta tags for all the details.
Fundamentally, SEO is not a software problem. If you create awesome content, Google will find you, and Google will love you. It's really that simple. The great dirty secret of SEO. The rest is all just trickery. It can help you short term, give you a small boost, but nothing can beat great content.
So use helmet, set some meta tags, and spend your time creating awesome content instead of trying to hack SEO. Know that Gatsby does 90% of the work for you on its own, automatically.
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Post last updated: May 27, 2018
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yes, well, does this even work ?