Configure your Zorto site for search engine visibility and AI agent discovery.

Three layers:

  1. Content — title and description in every page’s frontmatter (you write this)
  2. Meta tags — Open Graph, Twitter Cards, canonical URLs (built-in themes handle this)
  3. Discovery — sitemap.xml, robots.txt, llms.txt, search index (Zorto generates these automatically)

Tip

If you use a built-in theme (zorto, dkdc, default, ember, forest, ocean, rose, slate, etc.), Open Graph tags, canonical URLs, and Twitter Card tags are already included. The sections below show how to set them up manually if you use custom templates.

Set title and description on every page #

Search engines use title and description directly in results.

+++
title = "Getting started with Zorto"
description = "Install Zorto and build your first static site in under five minutes."
date = "2025-01-15"
+++

Keep titles under 60 characters and descriptions under 160 characters.

Add Open Graph meta tags #

Add Open Graph tags in your templates/base.html <head>:

The built-in themes handle OG tags using page.permalink and section.permalink with conditional logic. Here’s the pattern for custom templates:

{%- if page %}
  {%- set og_url = page.permalink %}
  {%- set og_title = page.title %}
{%- elif section %}
  {%- set og_url = section.permalink %}
  {%- set og_title = section.title %}
{%- endif %}
<meta property="og:title" content="{{ og_title }}" />
<meta property="og:url" content="{{ og_url }}" />
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image" />

For pages with a description, add the og:description tag:

{%- if page.description %}
  <meta property="og:description" content="{{ page.description }}" />
{%- endif %}

Canonical URLs #

Zorto generates absolute canonical URLs using base_url from config.toml. Set it to your production domain:

base_url = "https://example.com"

Add a canonical link in your base template (using the same og_url variable from the Open Graph section above):

<link rel="canonical" href="{{ og_url }}" />

Sitemap #

Zorto generates sitemap.xml automatically. It is enabled by default — no configuration needed. The sitemap includes all non-draft pages and sections with their permalinks.

Disable it if needed:

generate_sitemap = false

Submit your sitemap URL to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools for faster indexing.

robots.txt #

Create static/robots.txt to control crawler access and point to your sitemap:

User-agent: *
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml

Replace https://example.com with your base_url. This is a plain file in static/, not a template — update the URL manually if your base_url changes.

llms.txt #

Zorto generates llms.txt and llms-full.txt by default. These files help AI agents understand your site’s content and structure. No configuration required.

Two files are generated:

FileContentsUse case
/llms.txtStructured index with links to every page, organized by sectionAgent reads one URL to understand the site
/llms-full.txtFull raw markdown content of every page in a single fileAgent reads all content without crawling

The llms.txt file includes the site title as an H1, the description as a blockquote, then each section as an H2 with its pages listed as links. Pages with descriptions include them inline.

Disable if needed:

generate_llms_txt = false

When generate_md_files = true is also set, llms.txt links point to the .md versions of each page instead of the HTML versions.

Zorto can generate a SQLite FTS5 search index for client-side search:

generate_search = true

This generates a search.db file in your output directory containing a full-text search index of all pages and sections. The built-in themes include a search UI that queries this database using sql.js (SQLite compiled to WebAssembly).

The search index supports:

  • Case-insensitive matching
  • Ranked results (title matches score higher than body matches)
  • Prefix matching for autocomplete-style queries

Search is disabled by default because the database file adds size to the output. Enable it for documentation sites, blogs, or any site where visitors need to find content quickly.

Add custom headers for caching #

Your static hosting provider serves files through a CDN with default caching. For custom cache-control policies, create a static/_headers file (Netlify) or configure headers in your provider’s dashboard. See the deploy guide for platform-specific details.