Hugo FortyTen is built with SEO in mind. Learn how to optimize your blog for search engine visibility and ensure your content reaches the right audience.

Meta Tags in FortyTen

The theme includes essential meta tags for search engines and social media. Check layouts/partials/head.html to see all configured tags.

Key Meta Tags

Character Encoding

<meta charset="UTF-8" />

Ensures proper text rendering in all browsers and search engines.

Viewport Meta Tag

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />

Tells mobile browsers how to render your site - crucial for mobile SEO.

Description Meta Tag

<meta name="description" content="Your site description" />

Appears in search results. Keep it between 150-160 characters for best display.

Open Graph Tags (for social sharing)

<meta property="og:title" content="Page Title" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Page description" />
<meta property="og:url" content="Page URL" />

Controls how your content appears when shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

Optimizing Your Posts

Title Tags

Create compelling titles that include keywords:

title = "How to Optimize Your Blog for SEO: A Complete Guide"

Best practices:

• Include main keyword naturally
• Keep under 60 characters
• Make it descriptive and compelling
• Avoid keyword stuffing

Post Summaries

Write clear summaries for your posts:

summary = "Learn essential SEO strategies to improve your blog's search visibility and drive more traffic."

Guidelines:

• 150-160 characters ideal
• Include target keywords naturally
• Summarize the post content
• Make readers want to click

Dates and Content

Hugo FortyTen automatically includes:

• Publication date (for search engines)
• Last modified date (when you update posts)
• Word count (shown in post headers)
• Reading time estimate

These signals help search engines understand your content’s freshness and value.

Internal Linking

Link to your other posts naturally:

[See our post on Responsive Design](/posts/responsive-design-and-grid-system/)

Benefits:

• Helps search engines crawl your site
• Improves user engagement (readers stay longer)
• Distributes page authority throughout your site

Tags and Categories

Use tags strategically to organize content:

tags = ["seo", "optimization", "content"]

Tag best practices:

• Use 2-4 tags per post
• Be specific (avoid vague tags)
• Use consistent tag names
• Create dedicated tag pages

Each tag automatically generates a page listing all posts with that tag - great for SEO!

Site Structure for SEO

FortyTen’s clean structure helps search engines:

/                    - Homepage
/posts/              - Posts list page (paginated)
/posts/my-article/   - Individual posts
/tags/               - All tags page
/tags/seo/           - Posts tagged with "seo"

This logical hierarchy makes crawling and indexing efficient.

Configuration Tips

In Your hugo.yaml

baseURL: 'https://yourdomain.com/'
languageCode: 'en-US'
title: 'Your Blog Title'

params:
  author:
    name: "Your Name"
    email: "your-email@example.com"
    bio: "Your author bio - appears on posts"

The baseURL is critical - it tells search engines your canonical domain.

Image SEO

When adding images to posts:

1. Use descriptive alt text

   ![A person typing on a laptop while reviewing SEO metrics](/image.jpg)
   

2. Optimize file names

   Good: seo-optimization-guide.jpg
   Bad:  IMG_1234.jpg
   

3. Compress images

   • Faster loading = better SEO
   • Use WebP format when possible
   • Aim for < 200KB per image

Performance SEO

Search engines consider page speed. FortyTen excels here:

• Lightweight CSS - Tailwind CSS is minimal
• No external dependencies - Jost fonts are self-hosted
• Optimized assets - Images in static folder are served efficiently
• Mobile-friendly - Responsive design is built in

Sitemap and Robots

Hugo automatically generates:

• Sitemap (/sitemap.xml) - Lists all pages for search engines
• Robots.txt - Can be customized to control crawler access

These are essential for SEO and usually work without configuration.

Monitoring Your SEO

Use free tools to monitor your blog’s SEO:

• Google Search Console - Track search visibility
• Google Analytics - Monitor traffic and user behavior
• Lighthouse - Check page speed and SEO scores
• Ubersuggest - Find keyword opportunities

Final SEO Checklist

Before publishing each post:

• ✅ Title includes main keyword (under 60 chars)
• ✅ Summary is compelling (150-160 chars)
• ✅ Post has 2-4 relevant tags
• ✅ Internal links point to related posts
• ✅ Images have descriptive alt text
• ✅ Images are optimized (< 200KB)
• ✅ Content is well-structured with headings
• ✅ No spelling or grammar errors
• ✅ Post is not marked as draft

FortyTen gives you the tools for SEO success - now write great content! 🚀