Ghost SEO Checklist
SEO checklist for Ghost CMS blogs and publications. Covers Ghost's built-in SEO features, content optimization, and performance settings.
What is the SEO checklist for Ghost?
The Ghost SEO checklist covers 17 essential tasks across Technical SEO, On-Page SEO, Content, and Performance categories. Key items include configuring XML sitemaps, optimizing meta tags, improving page speed, and setting up structured data. SEO checklist for Ghost CMS blogs and publications. Covers Ghost's built-in SEO features, content optimization, and performance settings.
Technical SEO
Set up your site title and description
Go to Settings > General and set your publication title and description. These are used in meta tags site-wide.
Enable automatic XML sitemaps
Ghost auto-generates sitemaps at /sitemap.xml. Submit to Google Search Console for indexing.
Configure a custom robots.txt
Create a custom robots.txt by adding it to the theme's root or using redirects. Ghost's default is permissive.
Set up proper URL structure
Configure post URL patterns in Settings > Design > Navigation. Use clean, descriptive slugs.
Enable SSL and force HTTPS
Ensure your Ghost installation uses HTTPS. Configure your hosting or Cloudflare to force SSL.
On-Page SEO
Edit meta titles and descriptions for all posts
Expand the post settings panel and fill in the Meta title and Meta description fields for every post.
Set custom URL slugs
Edit the post slug in the post settings panel. Use keyword-rich, concise URLs.
Use heading tags properly in the editor
Use the heading buttons (H2, H3, H4) in the Ghost editor. The post title is automatically H1.
Add alt text to images
Click on images in the editor to add alt text via the caption/alt text field.
Set Open Graph and Twitter card images
In post settings, set custom social sharing images for Facebook/Open Graph and Twitter.
Content
Create pillar content for main topics
Write comprehensive guides for your primary topics. Use these as authoritative references.
Use tags for content organization
Apply consistent tags to posts. Create tag pages that serve as topic hubs with descriptions.
Add internal links between related posts
Link to related posts within your content. Use descriptive anchor text.
Add structured data via code injection
Use Ghost's Code Injection (Settings > Code Injection) to add JSON-LD schema markup to header.
Performance
Optimize images before uploading
Compress images to under 200KB. Ghost does some processing but starting optimized is better.
Choose a lightweight, fast theme
Use a theme that is well-coded and minimal. Ghost's default Casper theme is already well-optimized.
Enable caching via your hosting
Set up server-level caching or use Cloudflare. Ghost's built-in caching is basic.
Optimize Your Ghost Site
Use our free SEO tools to generate meta tags, schema markup, and robots.txt for your Ghost site.