ASP.NET SEO

Helpers for handling the SEO-data for ASP.NET web-applications.

Provides a SeoHelper-class which is easily accessible in Controllers, Views and through ActionFilterAttributes.

SeoHelper

Properties

The SeoHelper-class exposes multiple properties to get or set multiple SEO-related data:

• LinkCanonical: Gets or sets the canonical link for web-page.

  • SiteUrl: Gets or sets the main URL for web-site. Used as base for the canonical link.

• MetaDescription: Gets or sets the meta-description for web-page.

• MetaKeywords: Gets or sets the meta-keywords for web-page.

• MetaRobots: Gets or sets meta-robots instructions web-page.

• OgDescription: Gets or sets the open graph description for web-page. Falls back on value in MetaDescription.

• OgImage: Gets or sets the open graph image for web-page.

• OgSiteName: Gets or sets the open graph site-name for web-page. Falls back on value in SiteName.

• OgTitle: Gets or sets the open graph title for web-page. Falls back on value in PageTitle.

• OgType: Gets or sets the open graph type for web-page.

• OgUrl: Gets or sets the open graph URL for web-page. Falls back on value in LinkCanonical.

• PageTitle: Gets or sets the title for a web-page.

  • SiteName: Gets or sets the name for the web-site. Used as base for DocumentTitle.

• DocumentTitle: Gets the document-title for a web-page. Combines PageTitle and SiteName.

  • DocumentTitleFormat: Gets or sets the format for the document-title. Default value is {0} - {1}, where {0} is the value from PageTitle and {1} is the value from SiteName.

Methods

• SetCustomMeta(string key, string value): Add any custom meta-tag.
• SetMetaRobots(bool index, bool follow): Specify the instructions for robots. Updates the value for MetaRobots.

Notes

LinkCanonical can be set as absolute URL (https://example.com/section/page.html), as a relative URL (/section/page.html) or using ASP.NET's app-relative URL-format (~/section.page.html). Relative URLs will automatically get converted to absolute URLs, either from provided SiteUrl or from the base of the requested URL.

ActionFilterAttributes

The properties exposed by the SeoHelper-class all have corresponding action-filter-attributes are available for Controllers and Controller-actions.

For example, [PageTitle] can be used for an action, if no logic is needed for the value, while [SiteName] can be used for a controller. Using another [SiteName]-attribute on an action will override the one used on the controller.

Examples of attribute-usage:

[SiteName("Website name")]
[SiteUrl("https://production-url.co/")]
public class InfoController : SeoController
{
    [PageTitle("Listing items")]
    [MetaDescription("List of the company's product-items")]
    public ActionResult List()
    {
        var list = GetList();
        
        if (list.Any())
        {
            Seo.PageTitle += $" (Total: {list.Count})";
            Seo.LinkCanonical = "~/pages/list.html";
        }
        else
        {
            Seo.SetMetaRobots(index: false, follow: true);
        }

        return View(model);
    }
}

ASP.NET Core MVC

Configuration

To register the SEO-helper as a service for Dependency Injection you just need to use the framework's provided extension-method in the ConfigureServices method inside Startup.cs:

public class Startup
{
    public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
    {
        services.AddMvc();

        services.AddSeoHelper();
    }
}

Accessing the SeoHelper-class

With the configured Dependency Injection you can access the SeoHelper-class through constructor-injection or by accessing the RequestServices-object in the HttpContext.

The framework provides an extension-method for IServiceProvider for getting the SeoHelper-instance:

public IActionResult Edit()
{
    var seoHelper = HttpContext.RequestServices.GetSeoHelper();
    // ...
}

Tag Helpers

Tag Helpers are available to render the values set through the SeoHelper-class. They also expose attributes to override or set the values on the fly in the markup.

Examples: <document-title /> renders the combined PageTitle and SiteName. <link-canonical /> renders the canonical URL for the page. <og-url /> renders the set URL for the page and falls back to value used in <link-canonical />.

Individual tags will not be rendered if there is no valid data provided for them, either through the SeoHelper-class or exposed attributes.

Setting default values

To set the webb-application’s default base-title and default base canonical link, which can be overridden if needed, the configuration during registering the service for Dependency Injection can be used:

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
    // ...
    services.AddSeoHelper(
        siteName: "Website name",
        siteUrl: "https://production-url.co/");
}

ASP.NET MVC

Support for classic ASP.NET MVC is deprecated.