SEO Guide

Prestruct handles technical SEO at build time. This guide covers best practices.

How Prestruct Works

Prestruct prerenders each route to static HTML with:

• <title> tags
• <meta name="description">
• Open Graph tags (og:title, og:description, og:image, og:url)
• Twitter Card meta tags
• Canonical URLs
• JSON-LD structured data

Configuration

Define routes in ssr.config.js:

module.exports = {
  siteUrl: 'https://example.com',
  siteName: 'Example',
  ogImage: 'https://example.com/og-image.png',
  routes: [
    {
      path: '/',
      priority: '1.0',
      changefreq: 'weekly',
      meta: {
        title: 'Home | Example',
        description: 'Your homepage description (150-160 chars)',
      }
    },
    {
      path: '/about/',
      priority: '0.8',
      changefreq: 'monthly',
      meta: {
        title: 'About Us | Example',
        description: 'Learn more about our company...',
      }
    }
  ]
}

Meta Best Practices

Title Tags

• Keep under 60 characters
• Include primary keyword near the start
• Unique for every page

Descriptions

• 150-160 characters optimal
• Include primary and secondary keywords
• Unique for every page

Canonical URLs

Prestruct automatically generates canonical URLs based on your route paths. For trailing slashes:

// Route with trailing slash
{ path: '/about/' }
// Generates: <link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/about/" />

// Root stays naked
{ path: '/' }
// Generates: <link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/" />

Structured Data (JSON-LD)

Add schema.org data in ssr.config.js:

module.exports = {
  // ...other config
  schema: {
    '@context': 'https://schema.org',
    '@type': 'Organization',
    name: 'Example Inc',
    url: 'https://example.com',
    logo: 'https://example.com/logo.png',
    contactPoint: {
      '@type': 'ContactPoint',
      telephone: '+1-555-1234',
      contactType: 'customer service'
    }
  }
}

This injects a <script type="application/ld+json"> into every page.

Sitemap

Prestruct auto-generates sitemap.xml with:

• All routes from config
• <lastmod> with build date
• <changefreq> from config
• <priority> from config

404 Pages

Prestruct generates a 404 page with noindex robots directive:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow, noarchive, nosnippet, noimageindex" />

This prevents 404 pages from appearing in search results.

Robots.txt

Add your own in public/robots.txt:

User-agent: *
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml

Security Headers

Prestruct sites on Cloudflare Pages get security headers automatically:

• Strict-Transport-Security
• Content-Security-Policy
• X-Content-Type-Options
• X-Frame-Options

Validation

Use these tools to verify SEO:

• Google Rich Results Test
• Schema Markup Validator
• Google PageSpeed Insights
• Sitemap Validator

Gotchas & Troubleshooting

Duplicate Meta Tags

If you see duplicate <title> or <meta name="robots"> tags, check your public/index.html for pre-existing meta tags. Prestruct’s inject-brand.js adds meta tags dynamically - remove duplicate meta from your base HTML.

404 Pages Not Indexed

Prestruct automatically adds noindex directives to 404 pages to prevent them from appearing in search results:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow, noarchive, nosnippet, noimageindex" />

This is correct behavior - don’t remove it unless you want 404s indexed.

Trailing Slash Mismatch

If your canonical URL has a trailing slash but users access without (or vice versa), you may see duplicate content warnings. Choose one style in your route definitions and stay consistent.

Environment Variables

Prestruct uses different behavior based on PRODUCTION environment:

• Development: Non-bot visitors redirected to local dev server
• Production: Full prerendered content served

Ensure PRODUCTION=true is set in Cloudflare Pages settings.