Laravel SEO: metadata, sitemaps and rendering

Metadata in your layout

{{-- resources/views/layouts/app.blade.php --}}
<title>{{ $title ?? config('app.name') }}</title>
<meta name="description" content="{{ $description ?? '' }}">
<link rel="canonical" href="{{ $canonical ?? url()->current() }}">

Pass the title, description and canonical from each controller or view. Strip query strings from canonicals unless they change the content.

Checklist

• Generate an XML sitemap, with a package such as spatie/laravel-sitemap or a route that outputs one, and list it in robots.txt.
• Use named routes with readable slugs, such as /blog/{post:slug}.
• Use abort(404) or route model binding so missing records return a real 404.
• Return 301 redirects for changed URLs.
• For Inertia apps, enable SSR so pages render to HTML on the server.
• Cache rendered views and use a CDN for assets to keep responses fast.
• Output JSON-LD from Blade for the page type.

Laravel and AI search

• Check robots.txt allows the AI search crawlers you want: OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search), Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot. See the AI crawler list and the robots.txt generator.
• Check your host's or CDN's bot protection doesn't block them even when robots.txt allows them.
• Make sure the main text is in the HTML the server sends. AI crawlers don't run JavaScript.
• Avoid nosnippet and tiny max-snippet values on pages you want quoted; they also keep pages out of Google's AI Overviews.