What is Metadata?

Metadata provides information about web pages. It is not visible to the user but works behind the scenes, embedded in HTML usually within [Tex]<head>[/Tex] element. This hidden information is crucial for search engines to index the content of the web page. Proper metadata increases the chances of higher ranking.

Some common metadata types include

  • Title: Title of the webpage displayed in a browser tab.

<title>Title</title>

  • Description: Brief overview of webpage content.

<meta name="description" content="This is a brief description of my webpage.">

  • Author: Author of the webpage generally used to give credit to the author.

<meta name="author" content="Sarthak Roy">

  • Date: Specified when webpage was last modified.

<meta name="date" content="2024-11-05T14:30:00+02:00">

  • Keywords: Comma seperated keywords related to webpage that search engines to index the content.

<meta name="keywords" content="Next.js, React, w3wiki">

  • Favicon: Small image displayed in browser tab.

Metadata Files Next.js

Metadata helps search engines index the content of a web page and helps users to find what they are looking for. Next.js 13 introduced new APIs which help developers to improve SEO in very simple ways. In this article, we are going to learn to define metadata in Next.js applications using meta files.

Table of Content

  • What is Metadata?
  • Why Metadata Matters?
  • Different ways to add Metadata in Next.js 13
  • Managing Metadata in Next.js
    • Favicon
    • Opengraph-image and twitter-image
    • robot.txt
    • Sitemap
    • Static metadata
    • Dynamic metadata
  • Conclusion

Similar Reads

What is Metadata?

Metadata provides information about web pages. It is not visible to the user but works behind the scenes, embedded in HTML usually within [Tex]&lt;head&gt;[/Tex] element. This hidden information is crucial for search engines to index the content of the web page. Proper metadata increases the chances of higher ranking....

Why Metadata Matters?

Search Engine Optimisation: Metadata helps search engines understand the content of website which helps search engines to index the website.Classify data: Metadata tags such as Title, Author, Publication date etc helps to classify data which make it easier for search engines to find important data especially from large websites.Social media integration: Metadata is essential for social media platforms because it provides important data about the content of website. Preview images are also a form of metadata that increases engagement rate....

Different ways to add Metadata in Next.js 13

Next.js 13 introduced new metadata APIs that makes it really easy and intuitive to add metadata to webpages. There are two ways to add metadata:...

Setting up Next.js project

Now its time to get started with coding. I am going to use pnpm and TypeScript for this demo but it is completely optional. Use the following command to initialise a new Next.js project in you desired directory....

Managing Metadata in Next.js

Now we are going to use metadata files to define metadata for our websites....

Conclusion

Next.js provides easy to use powerful APIs to define metadata. In this article we have learnt about how to add favicon, opengraph and twitter images, robot.txt and sitemap in Next.js application....

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