SEO Implementation (& Documentation) for frontend/SEO developers

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Dear Community,

While Hugo does provide some fundamental SEO optimization from a technical standpoint, it appears to me coming from a SEO background. It still lacks practical tools for new SEO changes without the need of a backend/hugo oriented developer. And even then the documentation and templates appear to fall short.

I do not doubt that you are able to make changes to your Hugo generated website, SEO optimization covering most, if not of every aspect. What complicates the matter however is the lack of tools enabling front end or marketing teams to make such changes, which generally is the department assigned to do just that. Thus currently making it a potentially unnecessary costly operation due to the need of other devs to make such changes, resulting in a diminishing potential to scale - as a company, its site and staff grow larger.

Correct me if I am wrong, I honestly hope I am. But I have engaged a handfull of experienced SEO & front end developer in a project related to implementing SEO changes in Hugo recently. Only to discover a much more than desired friction and lack of a intuitive approach, at least one that is documented and easily identified.

The closest I have been able to identify in my opinion is a solution provided by integrating DatoCMS to Hugo. https://docs.datocms.com/hugo/overview.html

If anyone have any suggestions or examples of sites that have implemented a framework enabling intuitive SEO optimization to take place, without the need of a backend developer. I would be very eager to learn more.

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Have you looked at something like https://forestry.io/

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Can you give us an idea on the types of SEO features you’re looking to implement, or having difficulty with? Are the issues at the post-level, or more in making large changes across a site?

In most cases, it’s a simple issue of adding a few frontmatter fields and corresponding variables in your templates.

As far as the front-end goes, Hugo having a CMS has been a popular request. It certainly could help lower the barrier to entry. Though, the issue is, major product features like that have the potential to complicate and significantly deviate from the main focus.

Thankfully, there have been a number of good third party options. Forestry is quite nice. I found them to be quickest and easiest for getting sites live while still having a simple front-end for content writers.

Netlify is also good, and extremely flexible. The main issue I’ve found with them is a degree of ambiguity in the documentation. Also, initial setup can be a bit more tricky, depending on how heavily you want to customize your front end.

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