SEO Optimization
Control titles, descriptions, and meta tags for search engines and social previews. Jamdesk auto-generates sitemaps and Open Graph images.
Optimize your docs for search engines and social previews by setting titles, descriptions, and metadata in frontmatter.
What Jamdesk Does Automatically
Optimizing Your Content
Write Effective Frontmatter
---
title: User Authentication # Under 60 characters
description: Set up OAuth, JWT, and session-based authentication # 120-160 characters
---Front-load keywords. "Authentication setup" is better than "How to set up authentication."
Page Titles
- Keep under 60 characters to avoid truncation in search results
- Include your primary keyword near the beginning
- Make each title unique across your docs
Descriptions
- Aim for 120-160 characters
- Summarize what the reader will learn
- Include relevant keywords naturally
Auto-generated fallback. When description is missing from frontmatter, Jamdesk automatically extracts the first prose paragraph from your page content (up to 155 characters). Headings, code blocks, images, and MDX components are skipped. This is used for <meta name="description">, Open Graph, and Twitter cards. Writing an explicit description is still recommended for best results.
Controlling Indexing
Site-Wide Settings
In your docs.json, configure default robot behavior:
{
"seo": {
"metatags": {
"robots": "index, follow"
}
}
}Per-Page Control
Override indexing for specific pages in frontmatter:
---
title: Internal Notes
noindex: true
---Use noindex for:
- Draft or work-in-progress pages
- Internal documentation
- Deprecated content you're keeping for reference
Canonical URLs
If your docs are accessible at multiple URLs, set a canonical:
---
title: Getting Started
canonical: https://docs.example.com/getting-started
---Open Graph Customization
Override the auto-generated social image:
---
title: API Reference
og:image: /images/api-social-card.png
---Sitemap & Robots.txt
Every Jamdesk site generates sitemap.xml and robots.txt automatically on each build.
| File | Purpose |
|---|---|
sitemap.xml | Lists all pages with last-modified dates for search engines |
robots.txt | Allows all crawlers and points them to the sitemap |
Where to find them
The URLs depend on whether your docs live at a root domain or under a /docs subpath:
If your docs are at the root of your domain (e.g., docs.acme.com or acme.jamdesk.app):
https://docs.acme.com/sitemap.xml
https://docs.acme.com/robots.txtWhat's included in the sitemap
- All published pages (excluding those with
noindexorhiddenfrontmatter) - Last-modified dates from frontmatter when available
- Weekly change frequency
Excluding pages from the sitemap
Add noindex to frontmatter to exclude a page from both the sitemap and search engines:
---
title: Internal Notes
noindex: true
---Pages with hidden: true are also excluded automatically.
JSON-LD Structured Data
Every page automatically includes schema.org structured data as a <script type="application/ld+json"> tag with two schemas:
- WebSite — Your site name, URL, and description (from
docs.json) - BreadcrumbList — Navigation path from Home to the current page, derived from your
navigationconfig
No configuration needed. Search engines use this for rich results like breadcrumb trails in search listings.
Verify your markup. Paste any page URL into Google's Rich Results Test to confirm the structured data is detected.
IndexNow
After each build, Jamdesk automatically submits changed page URLs to IndexNow for faster search engine indexing. This notifies Bing, Yandex, and other participating search engines about your content changes without waiting for their next crawl cycle.
- Fires after every successful build
- Only submits pages that actually changed
- Non-blocking — never delays your build
- No configuration required