Mastering Meta Tags in Nuxt
Harlan Wilton Introduction
Meta tags are HTML elements that describe your page to machines. Search engines use them for rankings and snippets. Social platforms use them for link previews.
<head>
<title>My Page · My Site</title>
<meta name="description" content="What this page is about">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://mysite.com/og.png">
</head>
In Nuxt, you manage these with useSeoMeta() or useHead():
useSeoMeta({
title: 'My Page',
description: 'What this page is about',
ogImage: 'https://mysite.com/og.png'
})
What Meta Tags Control
| Meta Tag | Used By | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
<title> | Search engines, browsers | Page title in search results and browser tab |
<meta name="description"> | Search engines | Snippet text in search results (Google rewrites ~70%) |
<meta property="og:*"> | Facebook, LinkedIn, Discord, Slack | Link preview cards |
<meta name="twitter:*"> | Twitter/X | Tweet cards (falls back to OG tags) |
<script type="application/ld+json"> | Search engines | Rich results (stars, FAQs, recipes) |
Search Engine Tags
These affect how your pages appear in Google, Bing, and other search results.
- Page Titles - Your main call-to-action in search results. Keep under 60 characters.
- Meta Descriptions - The snippet below your title. Google rewrites most of them, but write them anyway for the 30% that stick.
Social Sharing Tags
These control link previews when someone shares your URL.
- Open Graph - The standard for Facebook, LinkedIn, Discord, and most platforms. Set
og:title,og:description,og:image. - Twitter Cards - Twitter-specific tags. Falls back to Open Graph if not set, so often you don't need them.
- Slack Unfurls - Slack uses Open Graph. Same tags, different quirks.
Structured Data
- Schema.org - JSON-LD markup for rich results. Overkill for most sites, but useful for recipes, products, FAQs.
Quick Setup
Most sites need just this:
// app.vue or layouts/default.vue
useSeoMeta({
titleTemplate: '%s · My Site',
ogSiteName: 'My Site',
twitterCard: 'summary_large_image'
})
Then per-page:
<script setup lang="ts">
useSeoMeta({
title: 'About Us',
description: 'We build things.',
ogImage: 'https://mysite.com/about-og.png'
})
</script>
That's it. Twitter falls back to OG tags. Slack uses OG tags. LinkedIn uses OG tags. Don't duplicate unless you need platform-specific content.
Priority Order
When tags conflict, here's what wins:
- Page-level
useSeoMeta()in your component - Layout-level
useSeoMeta()in your layout - App-level config in
nuxt.config.ts
Nuxt merges these automatically. Page tags override layout tags.
Common Mistakes
Forgetting absolute URLs for images
// ❌ Won't work - relative path
ogImage: '/og.png'
// ✅ Works - absolute URL
ogImage: 'https://mysite.com/og.png'
Setting the same description everywhere
Each page needs a unique description. Template descriptions like "Welcome to {page}" are lazy and hurt click-through rates.
Ignoring the preview
Test your meta tags before deploying:
Using Nuxt SEO
The Nuxt SEO module handles most of this automatically:
- Generates
og:imagefrom your pages - Sets canonical URLs
- Adds Schema.org markup
- Manages robots meta tags
export default defineNuxtConfig({
modules: ['@nuxtjs/seo']
})
Related Guides
- Controlling Crawlers - Manage how search engines access your site
- Routes and Rendering - How URL structure and rendering modes affect SEO