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Version: 1.0

SEO & Meta tags

Add app title​

You certainly want to change the title of your Redwood app. You can start by adding or modify title inside redwood.toml

[web]
- title = "Redwood App"
+ title = "My Cool App"
  port = 8910
  apiUrl = "/.redwood/functions"

This title (the app title) is used by default for all your pages if you don't define another one. It will also be use for the title template !

Title template​

Now that you have the app title set, you probably want some consistence with the page title, that's what the title template is for.

Add titleTemplate as a prop for RedwoodProvider to have a title template for every pages

In web/src/App.{tsx,js}

-  <RedwoodProvider>
+  <RedwoodProvider titleTemplate="%PageTitle | %AppTitle">
    /* ... */
  <RedwoodProvider />

You can write the format you like.

Examples :

"%PageTitle | %AppTitle" => "Home Page | Redwood App"

"%AppTitle · %PageTitle" => "Redwood App · Home Page"

"%PageTitle : %AppTitle" => "Home Page : Redwood App"

So now in your page you only need to write the title of the page.

Adding to page <head>​

So you want to change the title of your page, or add elements to the <head> of the page? We've got you!

Let's say you want to change the title of your About page, Redwood provides a built in <Head> component, which you can use like this

In AboutPage/AboutPage.{tsx,js}

+import { Head } from '@redwoodjs/web'

const AboutPage = () => {
  return (
    <div>
      <h2>AboutPage</h2>
+     <Head>
+       <title>About the team</title>
+     </Head>

You can include any valid <head> tag in here that you like, but just to make things easier we also have a utility component MetaTags.

What about nested tags?​

Redwood uses react-helmet-async underneath, which will use the tags furthest down your component tree.

For example, if you set title in your Layout, and a title in your Page, it'll render the one in Page - this way you can override the tags you wish, while sharing the tags defined in Layout.

Side note for these headers to appear to bots and scrapers e.g. for twitter to show your title, you have to make sure your page is prerendered If your content is static you can use Redwood's built in Prerender. For dynamic tags, check the Dynamic head tags

Setting meta tags / open graph directives​

Often we want to set more than just the title - most commonly to set "og" headers. Og standing for open graph of course.

Redwood provides a convenience component <MetaTags> to help you get all the relevant tags with one go (but you can totally choose to do them yourself)

Here's an example setting some common headers, including how to set an og:image

import { MetaTags } from '@redwoodjs/web'

const AboutPage = () => {
  return (
    <div>
      <h2>AboutPage</h2>
      <MetaTags
        title="About page"
        description="About the awesome team"
        ogUrl="https://awesomeredwoodapp.com/start"
        ogContentUrl="https://awesomeredwoodapp.com/static/og.png"
        robots={['nofollow']}
        locale={}
      />
      <p className="font-light">This is the about page!</p>
    </div>
  )
}

export default AboutPage

This is great not just for link unfurling on say Facebook or Slack, but also for SEO. Take a look at the source if you're curious what tags get set here.

Dynamic tags​

Great - so far we can see the changes, and bots will pick up our tags if we've prerendered the page, but what if I want to set the header based on the output of the Cell?

Just keep in mind, that Cells are currently not prerendered - so it'll be visible to your users, but not to link scrapers and bots.

<Head>s up
For dynamic tags to appear to bots and link scrapers you have to setup an external prerendering service. If you're on Netlify you can use their built-in one. Otherwise you can follow this great how to from the Redwood community

Let's say in our PostCell, we want to set the title to match the Post.

import Post from 'src/components/Post/Post'

export const QUERY = gql`
  query FindPostById($id: Int!) {
    post: post(id: $id) {
      title
      snippet
      author {
        name
      }
    }
  }
`

export const Loading = /* ... */

export const Empty = /* ... */

export const Success = ({ post }) => {
  return (
    <>
      <MetaTags
        title={post.title}
        author={post.author.name}
        description={post.snippet}
      />
      <Post post={post} />
    </>
  )
}

Once the success component renders, it'll update your page's title and set the relevant meta tags for you!