SEO Optimization#

Learn how to improve your blog’s visibility through Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Basic SEO Configuration#

hugo.toml Settings#

baseURL = 'https://chiho.me/'
title = 'My Blog'
languageCode = 'en-us'

# Google Analytics (optional)
googleAnalytics = 'G-XXXXXXXXXX'

# Author information
[author]
  name = 'Author Name'
  email = 'email@example.com'

# Social media
[params]
  description = 'Blog description'
  keywords = ['keyword1', 'keyword2', 'keyword3']
  images = ['/images/og-image.jpg']

[params.social]
  twitter = 'username'
  github = 'username'

Robots.txt#

Hugo automatically generates robots.txt. To customize:

# hugo.toml
enableRobotsTXT = true

Create layouts/robots.txt:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /private/

Sitemap: {{ .Site.BaseURL }}sitemap.xml

Front Matter Optimization#

Optimize metadata for each post:

---
title: "Clear and Descriptive Title (under 60 chars)"
description: "Summary of page content (under 155 chars)"
date: 2025-12-19T20:00:00+09:00

# SEO metadata
keywords: ["keyword1", "keyword2", "keyword3"]
author: "Author Name"

# Open Graph (social media sharing)
images: ["/images/post-image.jpg"]

# Search engine crawling control
robots: "index, follow"
---

Title Writing Tips#

  1. Length: 50-60 characters
  2. Keywords: Place important keywords at the beginning
  3. Uniqueness: Unique title for each page
  4. Meaning: Clear title that encourages clicks

Examples:

# Good
title: "Complete Guide to Hugo Blog SEO Optimization"

# Bad
title: "Blog Post 1"

Description Writing Tips#

  1. Length: 120-155 characters
  2. Summary: Accurately summarize page content
  3. Call-to-Action: Include phrases that encourage clicks
description: "Detailed guide on SEO configuration methods and best practices for Hugo static sites."

Sitemap Configuration#

Hugo automatically generates sitemap.xml.

Customizing Sitemap#

# hugo.toml
[sitemap]
  changefreq = 'weekly'
  filename = 'sitemap.xml'
  priority = 0.5

Per-page configuration in Front Matter:

---
title: "Important Page"
sitemap:
  priority: 1.0
  changefreq: daily
---

URL Structure#

Clean URLs#

Hugo generates clean URLs by default:

/docs/getting-started/  (good)
/docs/getting-started.html  (not recommended)
# hugo.toml
[permalinks]
  posts = '/blog/:year/:month/:slug/'
  docs = '/docs/:slug/'

Examples:

/blog/2025/12/my-post/
/docs/getting-started/

Performance Optimization#

Image Optimization#

  1. Appropriate Size: Resize to needed dimensions
  2. Compression: Use WebP, JPEG compression
  3. Lazy Loading: Apply lazy loading
![Description](/images/photo.jpg "Title")

Using Hugo Page Resources:

content.en/
  docs/
    my-post/
      index.md
      featured.jpg

Minification#

Automatic compression on build:

# hugo.toml
[minify]
  disableHTML = false
  disableCSS = false
  disableJS = false
  disableJSON = false
  disableXML = false

Structured Data (Schema.org)#

Article Schema#

Create layouts/_default/single.html or partial:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "headline": "{{ .Title }}",
  "description": "{{ .Description }}",
  "author": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "{{ .Site.Author.name }}"
  },
  "datePublished": "{{ .Date.Format "2006-01-02" }}",
  "dateModified": "{{ .Lastmod.Format "2006-01-02" }}",
  "image": "{{ .Params.images | default .Site.Params.images }}",
  "url": "{{ .Permalink }}"
}
</script>

Open Graph & Twitter Cards#

hugo-book theme supports basic Open Graph. Additional configuration:

---
title: "Post Title"
description: "Post description"
images: ["/images/og-image.jpg"]

# Twitter Card
twitter:
  card: "summary_large_image"
  site: "@username"
---

Multi-language SEO#

hreflang Tags#

Hugo automatically generates hreflang tags:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ko" href="https://chiho.me/ko/docs/post/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://chiho.me/en/docs/post/" />

Per-language Sitemap#

Separate sitemap for each language:

/ko/sitemap.xml
/en/sitemap.xml
/sitemap.xml (combined)

Content Optimization#

Heading Structure#

Use proper heading hierarchy:

# H1 - Page Title (only one)

## H2 - Main Sections

### H3 - Sub-sections

#### H4 - Detailed Items

Internal Linking#

Link related content:

For more details, see [Writing Posts]({{< relref "writing-posts" >}}).

Keyword Usage#

  • Include main keywords in title and first paragraph
  • Distribute keywords naturally throughout content
  • Avoid keyword stuffing

Analytics and Monitoring#

Google Analytics#

# hugo.toml
googleAnalytics = 'G-XXXXXXXXXX'

Google Search Console#

  1. Verify site ownership
  2. Submit sitemap: https://chiho.me/sitemap.xml
  3. Monitor crawling errors
  4. Analyze search performance

Performance Measurement Tools#

  • Google PageSpeed Insights: Page speed analysis
  • Lighthouse: Overall quality assessment
  • GTmetrix: Performance and optimization suggestions

Checklist#

Before publishing:

  • Clear and descriptive title (under 60 chars)
  • Appropriate description (under 155 chars)
  • Keywords configured
  • Image alt text added
  • Internal links included
  • Proper heading structure
  • Open Graph image set
  • URL structure verified
  • Mobile-friendly tested
  • Page loading speed checked

Additional Resources#

Backward Organizing Content