Next.js is capable of excellent technical SEO because it gives full control over rendering, metadata, and routing. That control is also why gaps are easy to miss: nothing about App Router enforces good SEO by default.
Migrating an existing site's SEO setup into Next.js? See how we handle metadata, redirects, and schema parity during the cutover.
See the Next.js SEO migration serviceMetadata and canonicals
Every route needs explicit, correct metadata. Relying on defaults across dozens of pages is how duplicate titles and missing descriptions happen.
Sitemap and robots
The sitemap and robots file are the two signals crawlers trust most. They need to stay in sync with what actually exists on the site.
Rendering and crawlability
How a page renders determines whether Google sees the same content a user does. Client-only rendering for primary content is still a real risk.
- Use server components or static generation for primary content so it is present in the initial HTML.
- Avoid gating important text or links behind client-side data fetching with no fallback.
- Verify rendered output with a raw HTML fetch, not just the browser DevTools view.
Structured data
Schema markup should describe what is actually on the page. Mismatched or copy-pasted schema is a common source of manual actions and lost rich results.
- Add `Organization` and `WebSite` schema site-wide, and `Article`, `Service`, or `Product` schema per relevant page type.
- Validate every schema change with a structured data testing tool before deploying.
- Keep schema output generated from the same data as the visible page content.
