Why Ghost blogs miss easy SEO wins
Ghost ships strong SEO defaults, which makes the gaps easy to overlook — they're usually per-post, not site-wide:
- Empty per-post excerpt/meta — Ghost uses the post excerpt as the meta description; leaving it blank lets Google truncate the first paragraph instead.
- Default social/OG images — Posts without a feature image fall back to a generic card, lowering click-through on social and search.
- Thin or short posts — Quick updates published as full posts can be too thin to rank for anything competitive.
- Un-optimized feature images — Large hero images shipped without resizing slow the post and hurt Core Web Vitals.
- Missing internal links — New Ghost blogs often publish posts in isolation, so link equity never flows between related articles.
The audit checks the rendered output of your site — the HTML Google actually receives — so it verifies what your platform really did, not what a settings page claims.
What the 18 checks cover
Title tag and meta description (presence + length), H1 and heading structure, canonical URL, indexability (noindex/robots), HTTPS, mobile viewport, image alt text, structured data, Open Graph and Twitter cards, robots.txt, XML sitemap, word count, link profile, language attribute, favicon and page-speed signals — each scored, with the per-post fixes — excerpt/meta, feature image, internal links, speed — listed first.
Common Ghost SEO issues the audit catches
- Blank post excerpts used as meta descriptions
- Missing feature/OG image on posts
- Thin posts below a competitive word count
- Large, uncompressed feature images
- Missing Article structured data
- Few or no internal links between posts
How to raise your Ghost SEO score
Write a custom excerpt and set a feature image for every post, expand thin posts, compress hero images, and interlink related articles. Our guides on meta descriptions, technical SEO, and fixing broken links help.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need an integration to audit my Ghost blog?▾
No. AuditSEO reads your live post the way Google does — paste the URL and get a scored report in about 30 seconds. No integration, no login, no signup.
What Ghost SEO problems does it catch?▾
Blank excerpts used as meta descriptions, missing feature/OG images, thin posts, oversized hero images, and missing Article structured data.
Does Ghost need extra SEO tools?▾
Ghost handles the basics well, so the wins are per-post: descriptions, feature images, internal links, and content depth — exactly what this audit scores.
Is it really free?▾
Yes. The audit is free with no signup, including the PDF report. You can also add free weekly monitoring for one URL, or AuditSEO Pro ($9/month) for daily monitoring of up to 50 pages.
Keep your Ghost SEO from regressing
On-page SEO drifts — the next theme or template change can quietly undo today's fixes. Set up free weekly monitoring and we'll email you a diff when anything on-page changes, or scan any tab instantly with the free Chrome extension.