Boost Your React App’s SEO with React Helmet

In this tutorial, we will explore how to use React Helmet library that helps manage the document head in React applications. We will discuss what type of problems it solves, its various real-world use cases, and the real-life advantages it brings to our projects.

We will create an example tutorial on how we can add the Open Graph and Twitter Card tags in our React app dynamically.

Let’s have a look at how React Helmet makes a difference in React app’s SEO performance…

 

 

Problem React Helmet Solves

React is primarily client-side rendered, which can lead to some SEO challenges, as search engine crawlers may not fully process JavaScript-generated content.

React Helmet addresses this problem by allows to easily manage meta tags, such as titles and descriptions, in our React application.

This makes your content more easily discoverable and indexable by search engines, improving your app’s SEO performance.

 

Use Cases

Handling header content plays a major role in application appearance in search engines. Lets have a look on how React Helmel can help in following ways to improve SEO:

  1. Managing page titles and descriptions for better search engine indexing.
  2. Adding Open Graph and Twitter Card tags to improve social sharing previews.
  3. Setting custom meta tags, such as viewport, theme-colour, or canonical URLs, to improve user experience and SEO.

 

Real-Life Advantages

Following are some of the important advantages which React Helmet brings to an application:

  1. Improved SEO performance: React Helmet helps search engines better understand your content, leading to higher search rankings and increased organic traffic.
  2. Enhanced social sharing: Customizing Open Graph and Twitter Card tags ensures that your content looks great when shared on social platforms.
  3. Better user experience: React Helmet enables you to set custom meta tags that can improve accessibility, browser compatibility, and overall user experience.

 

Let’s start implementation process in our React application:

 

Step 1 – Create React App

Before creating the React app, make sure you have create-react-app installed on your system. You can install it globally using npm (Node.js package manager) or npx (which comes bundled with npm):

npm install -g create-react-app

 

Next, use the create-react-app command followed by the name of new app to generate a new React project:

npx create-react-app my-react-helmet-app

 

Step 2 – Install React Helmet

Now, you need to install the React Helmet in the project. You can execute the following npm command to install the package:

npm install react-helmet

 

Step 3 – Using React Helmet

Import React Helmet in your React component:

import { Helmet } from 'react-helmet';

 

Next, wrap the content you want to manage in a Helmet component:

import React from 'react';
import { Helmet } from 'react-helmet';

const HomePage = () => {
  return (
    <>
      <Helmet>
        <title>Home Page | My FreakyJolly.com React App</title>
        <meta name="description" content="Welcome to the home page of My Awesome React App!" />
      </Helmet>
      <h1>Home Page</h1>
      <p>Welcome to My Awesome React App!</p>
    </>
  );
};

export default HomePage;

 

Step 4 – Adding Open Graph and Twitter Card tags

Here we will discuss one of the most popular use cases for using React Helmet for adding open graphs and Twitter card tags.

React Helmet makes it easy to add Open Graph and Twitter Card tags for better social sharing previews. Simply include the desired tags within the Helmet component as shown below:

import React from 'react';
import { Helmet } from 'react-helmet';

const BlogPost = ({ post }) => {
  return (
    <>
      <Helmet>
        <title>{post.title} | My FreakyJolly.com React App</title>
        <meta name="description" content={post.description} />
        <meta property="og:title" content={post.title} />
        <meta property="og:description" content={post.description} />
        <meta property="og:image" content={post.imageUrl} />
        <meta name="twitter:title" content={post.title} />
        <meta name="twitter:description" content={post.description} />
        <meta name="twitter:image" content={post.imageUrl} />
        <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image" />
      </Helmet>
      <h1>{post.title}</h1>
      <p>{post.content}</p>
    </>
  );
};

export default BlogPost;

 

Step 5 – Setup Dynamic Meta Tags

React Helmet also supports dynamic meta tags, which can be useful when rendering content that is fetched from an API or a CMS. You can update the tags based on the component’s state or props for dynamic rendering:

import React, { useEffect, useState } from 'react';
import { Helmet } from 'react-helmet';

const BlogPost = ({ postId }) => {
  const [post, setPost] = useState(null);

  useEffect(() => {
    // Fetch post data from API or CMS
    fetchPostData(postId).then((data) => {
      setPost(data);
    });
  }, [postId]);

  if (!post) {
    return <p>Loading...</p>;
  }

  return (
    <>
      <Helmet>
        <title>{post.title} | My FreakyJolly.com React App</title>
        <meta name="description" content={post.description} />
        <meta property="og:title" content={post.title} />
        <meta property="og:description" content={post.description} />
        <meta property="og:image" content={post.imageUrl} />
        <meta name="twitter:title" content={post.title} />
        <meta name="twitter:description" content={post.description} />
        <meta name="twitter:image" content={post.imageUrl} />
        <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image" />
      </Helmet>
      <h1>{post.title}</h1>
      <p>{post.content}</p>
    </>
  );
};

export default BlogPost;

 

Step 6 – Server-Side Rendering (SSR) with React Helmet (Optional)

If you’re using a framework like Next.js for server-side rendering (SSR) or static site generation (SSG), you can further improve SEO performance by using react-helmet-async. This is a fork of React Helmet that supports asynchronous rendering. To use it, simply replace react-helmet with react-helmet-async in your project:

First, install react-helmet-async:

npm install react-helmet-async

 

Next, update your imports and usage in your components:

import { HelmetProvider, Helmet } from 'react-helmet-async';

// Wrap your application or page component in the HelmetProvider component
const App = () => {
  return (
    <HelmetProvider>
      <HomePage />
    </HelmetProvider>
  );
};

// Use the Helmet component as before
const HomePage = () => {
  return (
    <>
      <Helmet>
        <title>Home Page | My FreakyJolly.com React App</title>
        <meta name="description" content="Welcome to the home page of My Awesome React App!" />
      </Helmet>
      <h1>Home Page</h1>
      <p>Welcome to My Awesome React App!</p>
    </>
  );
};

export default HomePage;

 

Conclusion

React Helmet is an invaluable tool for managing the document head of your React applications, providing a range of benefits, including improved SEO performance, enhanced social sharing, and better user experience. By following this tutorial, you’ll be well on your way to creating React apps that rank higher in search results and provide a more enjoyable experience for your users.

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