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Vincent Bakker
Vincent Bakker

Posted on • Updated on

Search Engine Optimization (MetaTags) for Ruby on Rails applications

The following code set's up the minimal required meta tags for Social Media and Search Engines using the MetaTags gem. ([https://moz.com/blog/meta-data-templates-123])

You can easily extend this with other properties. Setting this up with a couple of helper functions makes it easy to extend and maintain.

Installation

Add the "meta-tags" gem to your Gemfile.

gem 'meta-tags'
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And run bundle install command.

MetaTags Usage

First, add this code to your main layout:

<head>
  <%= display_meta_tags site: 'My website' %>
</head>
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Then, to set the page title, add this to each of your views (see below for other options):

<h1><%= title 'My page title' %></h1>
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When views are rendered, the page title will be included in the right spots:

<head>
  <title>My website | My page title</title>
</head>
<body>
  <h1>My page title</h1>
</body>
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Setting up default values

Let's add a helper function to setup default values

def default_meta_tags
    {
      site: 'Site Name',
      title: '',
      reverse: true,
      separator: '|',
      description: 'Site Description',
      keywords: 'your, key, words',
      canonical: request.original_url,
      noindex: !Rails.env.production?,
      icon: [
        { href: image_url('logo.png') },
        { href: image_url('logo.png'), rel: 'apple-touch-icon', sizes: '180x180', type: 'image/png' },
      ],
      og: {
        site_name: 'Site Name',
        title: '',
        description: 'Site Description', 
        type: 'website',
        url: request.original_url,
        image: image_url('social.jpg')
      }
    }
end
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Implement the helper function in your main layout

<head>
  <%= display_meta_tags(default_meta_tags %>
</head>
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Overriding the default values

The following example overrides the default values for a Post model. (Add this code to the show.erb for example)

set_meta_tags title: @post.title, 
  description: @post.intro, 
  twitter: {
   card: "summary",
   site: "@getSmart_NL"
 },
  og: { 
    title: @post.title, 
    description: @post.intro, 
    image: image_url(@post.header.attached? ? url_for(@post.header) : "social.jpg"), 
    type: "article" 
  }
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*Instructions based on MetaTags readme and tweaked to my personal usage.

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