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Lovable SEO Features: What's Built-In, What's Missing, and How to Optimize

12/15/2025·by Aki from LovableHTML

A complete guide to Lovable website builder SEO features and settings. Learn what's included, what's limited by the SPA architecture, and how prerendering unlocks full SEO potential.

Lovable AI website builder makes it easy to build apps and websites with a prompt. But when it comes to SEO, there are some things you need to understand before expecting your site to rank.

This guide covers what SEO features Lovable has built-in, their limitations due to the SPA architecture, and how to actually make them work for search engines.

Part 1: Built-In Lovable SEO Features

Lovable does have SEO capabilities. The catch is that most of them are rendered by JavaScript, which means crawlers may not see them unless you set up prerendering. Here is what you can configure.

Meta Tags and Page Titles

You can set per-page titles and descriptions using react-helmet-async. This allows each page to have unique metadata instead of sharing the same title across your entire site.

By default, Lovable sites fall back to whatever is in index.html, which means every page shows the same title and description in search results. Setting up per-page meta tags fixes this.

Limitation: These tags are rendered by JavaScript. Crawlers that do not execute JS will not see them.

Open Graph and Social Cards

You can configure OG title, description, and images for social media previews. Twitter cards are also supported. When someone shares your link on LinkedIn, Slack, or Discord, these tags determine what preview appears.

Limitation: Social platforms use bots to fetch previews. These bots do not execute JavaScript, so without prerendering your social previews will be broken or missing.

Sitemap Generation

You can create a sitemap.xml file in the /public folder. This file tells search engines which pages exist on your site. You can generate it manually, ask Lovable to create one, or use a script to generate it automatically from your routes.

This works without prerendering. The sitemap is a static file that crawlers can read directly.

For larger sites, Lovable tends to hallucinate URLs when asked to generate sitemaps. If you have more than 10-15 pages, consider using a script-based approach. See our guide on generating sitemaps reliably.

robots.txt

You can create a robots.txt file in the /public folder to control which pages crawlers can access. This is also where you point crawlers to your sitemap location.

This works without prerendering. Like the sitemap, it is a static file.

URL Structure and Routing

Lovable uses React Router for client-side routing. This gives you clean URLs without .html extensions. You can structure your URLs however you want, like /blog/my-post or /products/category/item.

Limitation: The routing is handled by JavaScript. Crawlers that do not execute JS will not be able to navigate between pages or discover internal links.

Structured Data (JSON-LD)

You can add structured data schemas to your pages. This includes Organization, Article, FAQ, Product, and other schema types. Structured data helps search engines understand your content and can enable rich snippets in search results.

Limitation: Like meta tags, JSON-LD is rendered by JavaScript. Crawlers need to execute JS to see it.

Heading Hierarchy

You have full control over your heading structure (H1, H2, H3, etc.). Proper heading hierarchy helps search engines understand the structure and importance of your content.

Limitation: Your headings are part of your page content, which is rendered by JavaScript. Crawlers may not see them without prerendering.

For copy-paste prompts to set up the above features, see our DIY Lovable SEO Tips guide covering meta tags, sitemaps, robots.txt, and more.

Part 2: How to Optimize Lovable SEO Settings

Here is how to configure each one and fix main Lovable SEO issues properly.

Step 1: Set Up Per-Page Meta Tags

First, you need to install react-helmet-async and create a reusable component for managing page metadata. Then use this component on every page with unique values.

After setting up per-page tags, remove any conflicting meta tags from your index.html file. If you do not do this, the static tags will override or conflict with your per-page settings.

Step 2: Configure Canonical URLs

Canonical URLs tell search engines which version of a page is the "main" one. This is important because Lovable generates a preview URL (like my-app.lovable.app) in addition to your custom domain.

Make sure all your canonical tags point to your custom domain, not the lovable.app subdomain. If you submitted your sitemap with the lovable.app domain, remove it from Search Console and resubmit with your custom domain.

Step 3: Generate a Reliable Sitemap

For small sites, you can ask Lovable to generate a sitemap. For larger sites, use a script that reads your actual routes and generates the sitemap programmatically. This prevents hallucinated URLs from appearing in your sitemap.

Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console after generating it.

Step 4: Add Structured Data

Start with an Organization schema on your homepage. Then add page-specific schemas where relevant. Article schema for blog posts, Product schema for product pages, FAQ schema for FAQ sections.

Test your structured data using Google's Rich Results Test tool to make sure it is valid.

Step 5: Optimize Images

Add descriptive alt text to all images. This helps search engines understand what the image contains and improves accessibility. Compress images before uploading and use WebP format where possible to improve page load times.

Step 6: Enable Prerendering

This is the step that makes everything else work for crawlers. All the optimizations above are rendered by JavaScript. Without prerendering, crawlers see an empty <div id="root"></div> and none of your carefully configured SEO settings.

With prerendering enabled, crawlers receive fully rendered HTML with all your meta tags, content, and internal links visible.

Part 3: Why Prerendering is needed to fix main Lovable SEO issues

Prerendering is not just a nice-to-have. It is what makes SEO actually work on Lovable sites. Here is what it fixes.

Social Previews That Actually Work

When you share a link on LinkedIn, Twitter, Slack, or Discord, those platforms send a bot to fetch your page and generate a preview. These bots do not execute JavaScript.

Without prerendering, your social previews show nothing or display broken metadata or metadata of your main page only (/). With prerendering, the bot receives complete HTML with your OG tags, and your previews display correctly.

Guaranteed Content Indexing

Googlebot does execute JavaScript, but it is slow and can be unreliable on large sites with heavy JavaScript. Google has a separate rendering queue for JavaScript pages, and your content may be rendered partially or incorrectly.

This causes what is known as "flaky indexing." Some pages get indexed fully, others get indexed partially, and the same page might appear differently on different crawl attempts. You have no control over what Google actually sees.

With prerendering, every crawler receives the same complete HTML every time. There is no ambiguity about what content exists on your page.

Crawl Budget Efficiency

Every site has a crawl budget, which is the number of pages Google will crawl within a given time period. SPAs waste crawl budget because crawlers spend time downloading and attempting to execute large JavaScript bundles before they can access any content.

Prerendered pages deliver content immediately. Crawlers can process more of your pages in the same time, which means better coverage of your site.

Faster Indexing

JavaScript-rendered pages go through a separate rendering queue at Google. This adds days or weeks to the indexing timeline. For time-sensitive content like product launches or announcements, this delay can hurt.

Prerendered pages are indexed like static HTML pages. They do not need to wait in the rendering queue. In practice, this means pages can appear in search results significantly faster. Some users report seeing pages indexed 5x faster after enabling prerendering.

Internal Link Discovery

Internal links are how crawlers discover pages on your site and how PageRank flows between pages. In SPAs, internal links are rendered by JavaScript through the router.

When crawlers do not execute JavaScript properly, they miss these links. Pages that are not linked in your static HTML may never be discovered, even if they are in your sitemap.

Prerendering exposes your full internal link structure. Crawlers can see how pages connect and follow links to discover all your content.

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)

AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude crawl websites to gather information for their responses. These crawlers do not execute JavaScript. So if your web pages are cannot be crawled when a potential customer, they fallback to search information about your site and since the result is from different sources, the narrative may not be what you want to show to a potential customer.

If you want your content to appear in AI-generated answers, it needs to be available as plain HTML. Prerendering makes your content visible to AI crawlers, which improves your chances of being cited in AI responses.

Quick Reference: Lovable SEO Settings

Getting Started with Prerendering

No-Code Option: LovableHTML

LovableHTML is built specifically for Lovable and other AI website builders. Setup requires only DNS changes, no code modifications. Your site continues to work in the Lovable editor after connecting.

Pricing starts at $9/mo with a 3-day free trial.

Technical Option: Framework Migration

You can migrate your site to a framework that supports server-side rendering, like Next.js or Remix. This requires development work and means you can no longer use Lovable to make changes. The Lovable editor will not work with SSR codebases.

For a detailed comparison of prerendering options, see our Prerender.io Alternatives guide.

Summary

Lovable has the SEO features you need. Per-page meta tags, Open Graph, structured data, sitemaps, clean URLs. The problem is that most of these are rendered by JavaScript, which means crawlers do not see them by default.

The two things that work without prerendering are robots.txt and sitemap.xml. Everything else requires prerendering to be visible to search engines and AI crawlers.

Once you enable prerendering, you get working social previews, reliable indexing, efficient crawl budget usage, faster discovery, full internal link visibility, and AEO support.

Set up your meta tags and sitemap first, then enable prerendering to make it all work.

Related Resources

• Is Lovable SEO Friendly? - Deep dive on SPA limitations
• DIY Lovable SEO Tips - Copy-paste prompts for setup
• How to Generate Sitemap on Lovable - Reliable sitemap generation
• Prerender.io Alternatives - Compare prerendering services