Ghost CMS SEO: The Complete Guide

Ghost’s SEO Advantage

Ghost was built with SEO as a core feature, not an afterthought bolted on through plugins. Every Ghost site ships with proper sitemaps, structured data, canonical URLs, meta controls, and clean HTML — the technical foundations that many CMS platforms require plugins or manual configuration to achieve.

This guide covers every SEO feature Ghost offers and how to use each one effectively.

Technical SEO (Automatic)

These features work out of the box on every Ghost installation. No configuration required.

XML Sitemap

Ghost auto-generates an XML sitemap at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. The sitemap is referenced in robots.txt and updates automatically when you publish, update, or delete content.

The sitemap includes:

All published posts with last-modified dates
All published pages
Author pages
Tag pages

Draft and private content is excluded. The sitemap follows the standard protocol that Google, Bing, and other search engines expect.

Schema.org Structured Data

Every Ghost page includes JSON-LD structured data automatically:

Posts: Article schema with author, datePublished, dateModified, publisher, and image
Pages: WebPage schema
Author pages: Person schema with social links
Tag pages: CollectionPage schema

Structured data helps search engines understand your content type, authorship, and publication dates. It also enables rich snippets in search results — showing author photos, star ratings, and publication dates alongside your listings.

When we checked the source of our demo sites, each post renders proper Article schema markup. This level of automatic structured data is unusual — most CMS platforms require a plugin or manual implementation.

Clean HTML and Semantic Markup

Ghost generates clean, semantic HTML without the bloat that plugin-heavy CMS platforms accumulate:

Proper heading hierarchy (H1 for title, H2 for sections, H3 for subsections)
Semantic elements (<article>, <nav>, <header>, <footer>)
Minimal JavaScript payload
No unused CSS from inactive features
Fast load times from lightweight architecture

robots.txt

Ghost serves a robots.txt file at the root of your domain that references the sitemap and allows all crawlers. On self-hosted installations, you can customize this file.

SSL / HTTPS

All Ghost(Pro) sites are served over HTTPS with automatically provisioned Let’s Encrypt certificates. Self-hosted installations can use Ghost-CLI for automatic SSL setup.

HTTPS is a ranking signal. Ghost handles this without any configuration.

On-Page SEO (Manual Controls)

These features require your input per post or page.

Custom Meta Titles and Descriptions

Every post and page has editable meta fields in the post settings sidebar:

Meta title: Custom title for search results (defaults to post title if not set)
Meta description: Custom description for search results (defaults to post excerpt)

Best practices:

Keep meta titles under 60 characters
Keep meta descriptions between 150-160 characters
Include your target keyword naturally in both
Write descriptions that encourage clicks (think of them as ad copy)

Canonical URLs

Ghost auto-generates canonical URLs for every post and page. If your content is republished elsewhere (or you are republishing content from elsewhere), you can override the canonical URL in post settings.

This tells search engines which version of the content is authoritative, preventing duplicate content issues.

Open Graph Tags

Ghost generates Open Graph tags for social sharing:

og:title: The post title (customizable)
og:description: The post excerpt (customizable)
og:image: The feature image
og:url: The canonical URL
og:type: article for posts, website for pages

You can customize the OG title, description, and image in the post settings sidebar under the social sharing tab. Use this to write social-optimized titles that differ from your SEO title.

Twitter Card Tags

Similarly, Ghost generates Twitter Card tags:

twitter:card: summary_large_image
twitter:title: Customizable per post
twitter:description: Customizable per post
twitter:image: The feature image

Customize these in the same social sharing section of post settings.

URL Structure

Ghost generates clean, readable URLs from post titles:

yourdomain.com/post-title/ for posts
yourdomain.com/page-title/ for pages
yourdomain.com/tag/tag-name/ for tag pages
yourdomain.com/author/author-slug/ for author pages

You can customize the post slug in post settings. Keep URLs short, descriptive, and keyword-relevant.

Content SEO

Internal Linking

Link between related posts to help search engines understand your content structure. Ghost’s editor makes linking easy — highlight text, press Ctrl/Cmd+K, and paste or search for the URL.

Effective internal linking strategy:

Link from newer posts to relevant older posts
Create hub pages (like tag pages) that link to all content on a topic
Use descriptive anchor text (not “click here”)
Follow a logical hierarchy: overview articles → specific topics → related articles

Image Optimization

Ghost handles basic image optimization, but you should:

Always set alt text for images (descriptive, keyword-relevant)
Use compressed images before uploading (Ghost does not compress on upload on self-hosted)
Include relevant captions
Use feature images consistently (they become og:image for social shares)

Content Freshness

Ghost tracks datePublished and dateModified automatically. When you update a post, the modification date updates in the structured data. Search engines use this signal to assess content freshness.

For evergreen content, periodic updates improve rankings. Update statistics, verify links, and add new sections to keep articles current.

Redirect Management

Ghost includes built-in redirect management. Create redirects in Settings → Labs → Redirects.

Upload a JSON or YAML file with redirect rules:

[
  {"from": "/old-url/", "to": "/new-url/", "permanent": true},
  {"from": "/category/(.*)", "to": "/tag/$1", "permanent": true}
]

Use redirects when:

Changing a post’s URL slug
Merging similar content
Migrating from another platform (redirect old URLs to new Ghost URLs)
Restructuring your site’s URL hierarchy

301 (permanent) redirects pass link equity to the new URL. Use these for content moves. 302 (temporary) redirects do not pass equity — use only for genuinely temporary changes.

What Ghost Does Not Include

For complete transparency, Ghost’s SEO toolkit has some gaps:

No built-in keyword research tools: Use Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or Semrush separately
No content optimization scoring: No Yoast-style green/red light system
No broken link checking: Use an external tool like Screaming Frog or Ahrefs
No A/B testing for titles: Test manually or use an external service
No native Google Analytics integration: Add GA4 via code injection (Settings → Code injection → Site Header)

These are tools that work alongside Ghost, not replacements for what Ghost already provides. Ghost handles technical SEO automatically; you handle content strategy.

Adding Analytics via Code Injection

Ghost’s code injection feature lets you add tracking scripts to every page:

Go to Settings → Code injection
Paste your Google Analytics 4 snippet in the Site Header field
Save

The tracking code is injected into the <head> of every page on your site. This also works for other analytics tools (Plausible, Fathom, Simple Analytics) and marketing pixels.

SEO and Ghost Themes

Your theme affects SEO through:

Page speed: Heavy themes slow load times (a ranking signal)
Semantic HTML: Well-coded themes use proper heading hierarchy and semantic elements
Structured data: Some themes add additional schema types beyond Ghost’s defaults
Mobile responsiveness: Google uses mobile-first indexing

Premium themes from established developers tend to prioritize SEO-friendly code. Free themes vary in quality — some load external libraries that slow performance.