Getting Started with Astro - Part 5: SEO, Sitemaps, and RSS
Give search engines and readers everything they need: canonical metadata, sitemaps, RSS feeds, robots.txt, and structured data for an Astro site.
Dragos7 min read
Astro Get Started
Part 5 of 5
A fast Astro site still needs to tell search engines what it is. The good news is that most SEO work on a static site is configuration rather than content marketing. This final part of the series covers the pieces that belong in the build.
Metadata That Matters
Every page needs a unique, descriptive title and a one-sentence description. In Astro you pass them into a single layout component instead of repeating them in every page:
---
interface Props {
title: string;
description: string;
}
const { title, description } = Astro.props;
---
<head>
<title>{title}</title>
<meta name="description" content={description} />
<link rel="canonical" href={new URL(Astro.url.pathname, Astro.site)} />
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
<meta property="og:title" content={title} />
<meta property="og:description" content={description} />
</head>Two rules prevent most duplicate-content problems:
- One page, one canonical URL. If the same post is reachable at two paths, every copy points at the canonical one.
- One page, one
<h1>. The visible heading is the page title; the document<title>can be slightly more descriptive.
Sitemaps
The @astrojs/sitemap integration generates sitemap-index.xml at build time:
npx astro add sitemap// astro.config.mjs
import { defineConfig } from "astro/config";
import sitemap from "@astrojs/sitemap";
export default defineConfig({
site: "https://example.com",
integrations: [sitemap()],
});The site option is not optional — without it the sitemap cannot emit absolute URLs. If some routes should not be indexed, filter them out with the filter option rather than leaving them in and hoping.
An RSS Feed
RSS is still the cheapest distribution channel a blog can offer. With @astrojs/rss the whole feed is one endpoint:
// src/pages/rss.xml.ts
import rss from "@astrojs/rss";
import type { APIContext } from "astro";
import { getCollection } from "astro:content";
export async function GET(context: APIContext) {
const posts = await getCollection("posts", ({ data }) => !data.draft);
return rss({
title: "Example Blog",
description: "Practical guides for developers",
site: context.site!,
items: posts.map((post) => ({
title: post.data.title,
description: post.data.description,
pubDate: post.data.date,
link: `/${post.id}/`,
})),
});
}Then add <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" href="/rss.xml"> to the layout head so readers can discover it automatically.
Robots and Structured Data
robots.txt should follow the same site value as the sitemap. Generate it at build time so a staging deployment cannot accidentally advertise the production host. For content pages, add JSON-LD so search engines understand the page type:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "BlogPosting",
"headline": "Getting Started with Astro",
"datePublished": "2026-03-31",
"author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Dragos" }
}
</script>Escape the payload before injecting it into the page, and keep the data in one utility so every post emits the same shape.
Social Cards
Open Graph images should be 1200×630 and consistent across posts. You can design one per post, set a site-wide default, or generate them at build time from the post title. Whichever you choose, test the result with a link preview tool instead of assuming it works.
A Pre-Launch Checklist
- Unique
<title>and<meta name="description">on every route. - Canonical URL on every page, including paginated archives.
- Sitemap generated and referenced in
robots.txt. - RSS feed linked from the head.
noindexon thin archive pages you do not want ranked.- JSON-LD for articles, breadcrumbs, and the site itself.
- A 1200×630 social card, verified with a preview tool.
- Redirects for any URL you moved.
Conclusion
That closes the five-part Astro series. You can now build a project, model content, deploy it, add interactivity where it earns its place, and give search engines a clean picture of the result. The next step is the one no tutorial can do for you: publish something.
