Free Gatsby SEO Audit
in 8 seconds.
Paste any Gatsby URL. Get 70+ ranking signals scored — schema, Core Web Vitals, mobile-first, AEO (ChatGPT & Perplexity visibility). AI Coach generates the exact fix. No signup. No credit card.
Or try a sample — audit www.gatsbyjs.com
Gatsby pre-renders pages to static HTML at build time, which gives it a genuinely strong SEO foundation — crawlers get fully-formed content, fast first paint, and clean URLs. But Gatsby's React-and-GraphQL architecture introduces its own SEO failure modes: an SEO component that exists but was never added to a page template, a large JavaScript bundle that hydrates over the static HTML and hurts interactivity, image components misconfigured so they ship oversized assets, and structured data left out entirely. Gatsby gets you 80% of the way for free with static rendering; the gaps are in the React layer you control. Our audit reads your built, deployed pages and tells you which templates are missing meta, dropping schema, or shipping a hydration cost that's failing your Core Web Vitals.
The 5 most common SEO issues
on Gatsby sites.
Our audit is tuned to spot the patterns that show up over and over on Gatsbysites. Here's what to look for — and how to fix each one.
SEO component missing from page templates
Most Gatsby sites have a reusable <SEO> (react-helmet) component, but it only sets titles and meta on templates where it's actually rendered. A blog-post template that forgot to include it ships every post with the site default title — duplicate, generic, and keyword-thin.
Fix: Render your SEO/Helmet component in every page and template, with title/description driven by the page's GraphQL data. The audit lists pages with missing or duplicated titles and descriptions so you know which templates dropped it.
JavaScript bundle hydration hurting interactivity
Gatsby ships static HTML, but then hydrates it with a full React bundle. On content-heavy pages with large component trees or many plugins, that hydration consumes main-thread time and degrades INP (interactivity) on mobile — even though first paint is fast.
Fix: Audit your bundle size, lazy-load below-the-fold components, and prune unused plugins. The audit's Performance category reports your interactivity metrics and identifies heavy main-thread work.
gatsby-image / static images misconfigured
Gatsby's image plugins (gatsby-plugin-image) produce responsive, optimized images — but only when used correctly. Raw <img> tags or misconfigured StaticImage components ship full-resolution assets that blow past your LCP budget on mobile.
Fix: Use gatsby-plugin-image's GatsbyImage/StaticImage with proper sizing and WebP/AVIF formats for above-the-fold images. The audit's Performance category names the specific image delaying your largest paint.
No structured data on pages
Gatsby has no built-in schema. Unless you've added JSON-LD (via Helmet or a plugin), your site ships zero structured data — no Article, BreadcrumbList, FAQ, or Organization markup for rich results and AI citations.
Fix: Add JSON-LD through react-helmet's <script type='application/ld+json'> in your SEO component, driven by page data. Our Schema Generator outputs valid blocks for Article, FAQPage, and Organization.
Missing canonical tags and trailing-slash drift
Gatsby can serve a page at both trailing-slash and non-trailing-slash URLs depending on your host config, and without explicit canonicals, search engines may index both versions and split signal.
Fix: Set canonical URLs in your SEO/Helmet component and standardize trailing-slash behavior in gatsby-config + your host's redirect rules. The audit checks canonical tags and flags duplicate-path patterns.
When you outgrow the free tier.
Gatsby sites are template-driven, so an SEO gap in one template repeats across every page built from it — miss the SEO component on the blog-post template and every post inherits the bug. Pro's full-site crawl audits up to 25 pages per scan, letting you sample each template (home, blog post, tag, landing) to find systemic issues in one pass. The AI Coach writes the Helmet meta and JSON-LD you drop into your SEO component, and the weekly monitor catches the regressions that ship when you upgrade Gatsby, swap a plugin, or refactor a template — before they cost you rankings.
Gatsby SEO — answered.
Long-tail questions we hear from Gatsby site owners.
- Is Gatsby good for SEO?
- Yes — Gatsby pre-renders pages to static HTML at build time, so crawlers receive fully-formed content with fast first paint, which is excellent for indexing. Its weaknesses are in the React layer: forgotten SEO components on some templates, heavy hydration hurting interactivity, and no schema by default. The static foundation is strong; the gaps are things you control. Run the audit to find which templates have issues.
- How do I add meta tags in Gatsby?
- Most Gatsby sites use react-helmet (or the newer Gatsby Head API) wrapped in a reusable SEO component, with title/description pulled from each page's GraphQL data. The key is rendering it in every page and template — the audit flags pages with missing or duplicated meta so you know which templates skipped it.
- Why is my Gatsby site failing Core Web Vitals despite being static?
- First paint is fast because the HTML is static, but Gatsby then hydrates with a full React bundle, which consumes main-thread time and hurts interactivity (INP) on mobile. Large unoptimized images also hurt LCP. Trim your bundle, lazy-load below-the-fold components, and use gatsby-plugin-image correctly. The audit's Performance category pinpoints the bottleneck.
- How do I add schema markup to a Gatsby site?
- Add JSON-LD via react-helmet (or the Gatsby Head API) with a <script type='application/ld+json'> entry in your SEO component, driven by page data so each page type gets the right schema. Gatsby includes none by default. Our Schema Generator produces valid JSON-LD for Article, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList, and Organization.
- Does the audit work on Gatsby Cloud, Netlify, and Vercel deployments?
- Yes — the audit fetches your deployed live page, so it works identically regardless of where your Gatsby build is hosted (Gatsby Cloud, Netlify, Vercel, or any static host). It reads the rendered output crawlers actually receive.
- Does this work for Gatsby v4 and v5?
- Yes. The audit reads rendered HTML, so it's version-agnostic. The meta API differs (v4 commonly uses react-helmet, v5 favors the Gatsby Head API), but the audit checks the resulting tags, and the AI Coach can give you the right syntax for your version and setup.
Audit your Gatsby site
right now.
Free forever for any URL. 8-second audit. AI Coach generates the fix.