seolint
seolint

Quickstart

This guide lints a built site, reads the report, and adds a config file. It takes a few minutes.

1. Build your site

seolint reads the HTML that your site generator writes. Build your site first, so the output folder exists:

npm run build

2. Lint the output folder

Run seolint on the output folder, such as public or dist, and give it the URL of your site:

npx seolint public --host https://example.com

The --host tells internal links from external ones, and gives each page its URL, such as https://example.com/about/. Without it, only relative links count as internal.

3. Read the report

seolint prints each page that has problems, with one line for each problem:

 FAIL  public/about/index.html
         ✘  A "meta[name=description]" must exist       description.exists
    6:2  ⚠  Must not have less than 10 characters       title.content.length
  21:52  ⚠  Must describe the target, not "click here"  link.text.vague

 FAIL  Reported 1 error and 2 warnings!

Each line has four columns:

  1. The line and column of the element. A problem with no element, such as a missing tag, has no position.
  2. ✘ for an error, or ⚠ for a warning.
  3. The message.
  4. The rule name. Each rule has a page in the rules reference, such as title.content.length.

seolint exits with 1 when there is at least one error. Warnings do not fail the run.

4. Add a config file

Create seolint.config.ts in your project folder, so you do not need the options each time:

import * as config from "seolint/config";

export default config.define({
  host: "https://example.com",
  inputs: ["public"],
  rules: {
    "title.content.length": { max: 70 },
    "link.text.vague": false,
  },
});

Now run seolint with no options:

npx seolint

define() checks the rule names and options as you type. See Configuration for every field.

5. Run it in CI

Add seolint after the build step of your CI. With --format ci, each problem shows on its file and line in the pull request:

- run: npm run build
- run: npx seolint --format ci

See CI for a complete workflow.

Next steps