Next.js is a popular framework for building server-rendered React applications. In this guide, we'll cover how to optimize your Next.js app for search engine optimization (SEO).
By default, Next.js generates static HTML files for each page in your app. This is great for SEO, as search engines can easily index the content of your pages. However, there are a few things you should do to ensure that your Next.js app is fully optimized for SEO.
Every page in your app should have a unique <title> tag in the of the document. This tag is used by search engines to understand the content of your page, and it should accurately describe the content of the page.
To set the <title> tag for your pages in Next.js, you can use the Head component provided by the next/head module:
import Head from 'next/head'
function MyPage() {
return (
<>
<Head>
<title>My Page Title</title>
</Head>
{/* Page content goes here */}
</>
)
}
In addition to the <title> tag, you should also include relevant tags in the of your pages. These tags provide additional information about your page to search engines, such as a description of the page's content or the keywords that the page should be associated with.
To add tags to your pages in Next.js, you can use the Head component in the same way as the <title> tag:
import Head from 'next/head'
function MyPage() {
return (
<>
<Head>
<meta name="description" content="My page description" />
<meta name="keywords" content="page, keywords, seo" />
</Head>
{/* Page content goes here */}
</>
)
}
Search engines also use the URLs of your pages to understand the content of your site. Make sure that your URLs are descriptive and accurately reflect the content of the pages they point to.
In Next.js, you can define the URL of a page by creating a file in the pages directory with a name that matches the desired URL. For example, to create a page at the URL /about, you would create a file named about.js in the pages directory.
One of the key benefits of using Next.js is that it can render your pages on the server, rather than solely on the client-side with JavaScript. This is important for SEO, as it allows search engines to index the content of your pages even if they don't execute JavaScript.
By default, Next.js will server-side render all of your pages. However, if you need to disable server-side rendering for a specific page (for example, if you are using a client-side only library), you can do so by exporting a no-ssr component from the page:
import { NoSsr } from 'next/no-ssr'