Fornax.Seo

A SEO meta tag generator for Fornax

Goals

• promote adoption of the Really Simple Licensing (RSL) standard

• enhance the search engine visibility of Fornax-generated websites with:

  • structured data in JSON-LD format
  • OpenGraph <meta> tags
  • personalized social media links

• try to enforce some SEO best practises, e.g. requiring absolute URLs to all content items

Usage example

NOTE

The following requires fornax 0.15.1 or newer. Visit the wiki to learn how to use this package with earlier fornax versions.

• Change into a project directory and scaffold a new website

  fornax new
  

• Install and set up paket:

  dotnet tool install paket
  dotnet paket init
  

• Configure dependencies, e.g. at minimum:

  # paket.dependencies
  
  source https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json
  framework: net8.0, netstandard2.0, netstandard2.1
  generate_load_scripts: true
  storage: none
  
  # . . .
  nuget Fornax.Seo      >= 1.5.0  # pulls in the Fornax.Core package
  nuget Markdig
  #  . . .

• Install the packages:

  dotnet paket install
  

IMPORTANT

• Provide the root domain of your website:

  // loaders/globalloader.fsx
  #load @"../.paket/load/net8.0/Fornax.Seo.fsx"
  
  open Fornax.Seo
  open Fornax.Seo.Rsl.DOM  // include the RSL type library
  
  type SiteInfo = {
      title: string
      /// The root domain of your website - must be an absolute URL
      baseUrl: string
      /// RSL-specific terms and conditions for AI user agents
      robots: License
      description: string
      postPageSize: int
  }

• Add personal authorship details, e.g.:

  // loaders/globalloader.fsx
  
  // . . .
  
  let loader (projectRoot: string) (siteContent: SiteContents) =
      let siteInfo =
          { title = "Sample Fornax blog"
            baseUrl = "http://example.com"
            // Only search engine indexing allowed,
            // provided users comply with the CC BY-ND 4.0
            robots =
                License.FreeAndOpenSource(@"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/")
            description = "Just a simple blog"
            postPageSize = 5 }
  
      let onTheWeb =
          [ "linkedin.com/in/username"
            "github.com/username"
            "bitbucket.org/username"
            "facebook.com/username" ]
  
      let siteAuthor: ContentCreator =
          { Name = "Moi-même"
            Email = "info@example.com"
            SocialMedia = onTheWeb }
  
      siteContent.Add(siteInfo)
      siteContent.Add(siteAuthor)
  
      siteContent

Collect metadata from a content item (e.g., a blog posting)

// loaders/postloader.fsx
// . . .
type Post = {
    file: string
    link : string
    title: string
    /// Provide content for "og:image" and "twitter:image" tags
    image: string option
    author: string option
    published: System.DateTime option
    modified: System.DateTime option
    tags: string list
    content: string
    summary: string
}
// . . .

// generators/post.fsx
#load @"../.paket/load/net8.0/Fornax.Seo.fsx"
#load @"layout.fsx"

open Html
open Fornax.Seo

let generate' (ctx: SiteContents) (page: string) =
    let siteInfo = ctx.TryGetValue<Globalloader.SiteInfo>()
    let siteName = siteInfo |> Option.map (fun si -> si.title)

    let tagline =
        siteInfo
        |> Option.map (fun si -> si.description)
        |> Option.defaultValue ""

    let siteAuthor =
        ctx.TryGetValue<ContentCreator>()
        |> Option.defaultValue ContentCreator.Default

    let siteRoot =
        siteInfo
        |> Option.map (fun si -> si.baseUrl)
        |> Option.defaultValue ContentObject.Default.BaseUrl

    let post =
        ctx.TryGetValues<Postloader.Post>()
        |> Option.defaultValue Seq.empty
        |> Seq.find (fun p -> p.file = page)

    let postMeta: ContentObject =
        { Title = post.title
          BaseUrl = siteRoot
          Url = post.file.Replace(System.IO.Path.GetExtension post.file, ".html")
          Description = tagline
          Author = { siteAuthor with Name = defaultArg post.author siteAuthor.Name }
          SiteName = siteName
          Headline = Some post.summary
          ObjectType = Some "Blog"
          ContentType = Some "BlogPosting"
          OpenGraphType = Some "article"
          Locale = Some "en-us"
          Published = post.published
          Modified = post.modified
          Tags = Some post.tags
          Meta =
              Some [ ("Image", defaultArg post.image $"{siteRoot}/images/avatar.jpg")
                     ("Publisher", defaultArg siteName siteAuthor.Name) ] }

    ctx.Add(postMeta)
    // . . .

Render SEO metadata in your page layout

// generators/layout.fsx
#load @"../.paket/load/net8.0/Fornax.Seo.fsx"

open Html
open Fornax.Seo

// . . .

let layout (ctx: SiteContents) (active: string) (content: HtmlElement seq) =
    let siteAuthor =
        ctx.TryGetValue<ContentCreator>()
        |> Option.defaultValue ContentCreator.Default

    let seoData =
        ctx.TryGetValues<ContentObject>()
        |> Option.defaultValue Seq.empty

    let license =
        ctx.TryGetValue<Globalloader.SiteInfo>()
        |> Option.map (fun info -> info.robots)

    let pageMeta =
        seoData
        |> Seq.tryFind (fun p -> p.Title.Contains(active))
        |> function
        | Some info -> info
        | _ -> { ContentObject.Default with Author = siteAuthor }

    html [] [
        head [] [
            meta [ CharSet "utf-8" ]
            meta [ Name "viewport"; Content "width=device-width, initial-scale=1" ]
            // . . .
            yield! seo pageMeta
            rsl pageMeta license
        ]
        body [] [
            // . . .
            footer [] [ yield! socialMedia siteAuthor ]
        ]
    ]

    // . . .

Similar NuGet libraries (by framework)

.NET

• OpenGraph-Net

.NET Framework

• json-ld.net
• Wavenet.Umbraco8.Seo

ASP.NET

• Winton.AspNetCore.Seo

Contributing

A guide to building the project and making pull requests can be found here.

License

Distributed under the terms of the Mozilla Public License Version 2.0.