Ghost SEO checker: diagnose URLs and metadata

A Ghost SEO check should sample a public article, a custom-canonical post if one exists, and a member-restricted article. This separates configuration mistakes from deliberate editorial and access decisions.

Compare the canonical with post settings

Read the HTML canonical and compare it with the intended address. If another website is preferred, determine whether this reflects legitimate republication or an abandoned override. Inspect the sitemap after changing a custom canonical instead of manually adding the URL simply to increase submission counts. The canonical destination should work and correspond to the same material.

Find duplicate theme or injected metadata

Inspect two posts and count titles, descriptions, and canonicals while checking that values differ by article. Duplicate markup after a theme change warrants reviewing the head partial and injected snippets. Reproduce a fix on a copy before publishing a replacement theme. Confirm that social images and titles describe the article rather than falling back incorrectly to homepage information.

Read the anonymous article preview

Request a membership article without a session and record the text available publicly. An external checker cannot assess content behind authentication, so a short response needs context rather than an automatic thin-content conclusion. Do not remove paid access to improve an audit score. Retest public, republished, and member pages after changes so sitemap behavior, metadata, and permissions continue to match each article's publishing purpose.

A worked publishing scenario

Illustrative scenario: a new original article carries the partner canonical copied from a syndicated draft. Compare post settings with returned HTML, correct the new article, and inspect sitemap behavior afterwards. Request another original post to establish whether the theme injects the wrong value again. Preserve the original and corrected targets alongside the article address. A working preview is not sufficient evidence of the public result, especially when publication, theme changes, and code injection occur in the same release.

Run a check and interpret the evidence

Submit one representative public URL to the free SEO checker below. Record its status, title, description, and canonical alongside the exact address and time of the check. Group repeated issues by their responsible template or configuration so a single targeted fix can be retested on multiple pages. A missing field and an intentional exclusion need different decisions.

An HTTP/HTML audit observes public responses. It does not sign into the platform, inspect every administrative setting, reproduce every client-side rendering behavior, or prove that Google has indexed a page. For search-engine evidence, compare Search Console URL Inspection and subsequent crawl data. Recheck the original URL after publication and cache refresh instead of interpreting a changed score alone as proof that the underlying issue is resolved.

Tools and related guidance

• Read the Ghost configuration guide
• Check a public URL
• Inspect a redirect chain

Official references

• Ghost: built-in SEO
• Ghost: post settings