Framer SEO for Portfolios: What Is Built In, What to Set

Short answer: Framer handles the technical basics for you: it generates a sitemap and a robots.txt file, resizes your images and writes the canonical tag from your connected domain. You still set the page titles, descriptions, alt text and social images yourself. On October 26, 2026, redirects, a custom robots.txt and static files needed the Pro plan at $30 per month on yearly billing, not Basic at $10. No setting promises a ranking.

I make Framer templates, so I look at a lot of portfolios that were published with the demo titles still in place. This guide covers what Framer does by default, what I set on every portfolio, and which parts cost extra. I checked it against Framer’s help center and Google’s own SEO guide on October 26, 2026.

What Framer already does for you

Framer says its sites are optimized out of the box. In practice that means these things, which you do not have to set up.

Feature	What Framer does	Where it applies
Sitemap	Generates /sitemap.xml when you publish	Every published site
robots.txt	Generates /robots.txt for every published site	Every published site
Canonical tag	Writes it from the domain you connected	Every published site
Images	Resizes them, converts most to AVIF or WebP and lazy-loads the ones far down the page	Every upload
Per-page indexing	A page setting that keeps a page out of search	Page Settings
Custom robots.txt	You upload your own file under Static Files	Pro and Enterprise
Redirects	Rules for old URLs, with wildcards	Pro

Sources: Framer’s SEO guide, the help articles on the sitemap and robots.txt, image optimization and the pricing page, read on October 26, 2026.

Framer’s own wording matters here. It does not say your site will rank. Google’s SEO starter guide says plainly that no secrets automatically rank a site first, and that some changes show up in hours while others take several months.

The portfolio problem: pages with few words

A portfolio page is mostly images. A search engine has little text to read, so the text you do add carries more weight than it would on a blog.

On each project page I add four things in plain text:

• A title that names the project and the person
• Two to four sentences about the work
• Your role, the client, the year and the place
• A real heading, not text baked into an image

Google’s guide says content works best when it is easy to read, organized under headings and written for people first. A short, honest project description meets that.

Set these on every page

Open each page in Page Settings and fill in the title, the description and the social image. Site Settings holds the defaults, and every page can override them. Framer also notes that a path should use hyphens, not underscores.

A pattern that works, from my step-by-step portfolio guide:

Page	Title pattern
Home	Your Name, Product Designer in City
Work	Selected work by Your Name
Project	Project name for Client, Your Name
Photo series	Still life series, Your Name, Photographer

Google says a good title is unique to the page, clear and concise, and describes what is on it. A meta description is only sometimes used as the snippet, but it still helps to write one that is short and specific to the page. Framer uses 1200 by 630 pixels for social previews, so export your share image at that size.

Use one clear H1 per page. If an SEO tool warns about several H1 tags on a Framer page, Framer’s help center says that is usually harmless: Framer duplicates some elements for responsive layouts and hides them with CSS, and Google renders the page and ignores the hidden ones.

Set these once in the CMS

If your projects live in a CMS collection, you do not write a title for every project by hand. Add two plain text fields, one for the SEO title and one for the SEO description, and fill them for each project. Then open the CMS page settings and enter the field names with double curly braces, for example {{Title}} in the title and {{Description}} in the description. Framer’s help center describes this pattern, and it also allows static text next to the variable.

Add an image field for the social preview and pick it in the page images settings. My CMS gallery tutorial shows the full set of project fields.

Images and video without hurting speed

Framer says you can upload JPEG, PNG, WebP and GIF files as they are and leave the image resolution on Auto. It generates smaller versions and serves the one that fits the screen. I still trim huge originals before uploading, as a habit and not as a Framer rule. My photography portfolio guide gives the sizes I use.

Alt text is yours to write. Framer’s SEO guide says to make it descriptive, to avoid keyword stuffing and to end it with punctuation. Google’s guide says alt text helps search engines understand an image and how it relates to the page. Write what the picture shows, in a sentence.

Video needs more care. Framer says uploaded videos are served at their original resolution, and it recommends YouTube or Vimeo for adaptive quality. Give every video a poster image of at least 60 by 30 pixels, and avoid autoplay.

One more portfolio trap: content inside an overlay is not crawled. Framer’s help center says text and links that exist only inside an overlay are not indexed, and pages linked only from an overlay may not be discovered. If your whole menu is an overlay, repeat the key links in the footer or in the page body.

Domain, indexing and Search Console

Connect your own domain first, because the canonical tag follows the domain you connect. Framer says a custom canonical setting is only needed when the site is served through a reverse proxy. My custom domain guide covers the DNS steps.

Then submit your sitemap. In Google Search Console, open Sitemaps and enter sitemap.xml. Use the URL Inspection tool on your home page and one project page to see how Google reads them.

Keep utility pages out of search with the per-page setting that hides a page from search engines, which Framer lists in Page Settings. That fits a thank-you page or a draft.

Google’s guide gives a quick test for whether you are indexed at all: search for site: followed by your domain. If nothing shows up, check the technical requirements before changing any copy.

Redirects when you replace an old site

If your old portfolio had URLs that people or other sites linked to, redirect them. In Framer you add rules under Site Settings, Hosting, Redirects. Wildcards work, so a rule for /blog/* can cover a whole folder. Rules are ordered by priority, and Framer warns that renaming a path in the canvas or CMS does not update an existing rule.

On October 26, 2026, the pricing page listed site redirects on Pro, not on Basic. Framer also says you can only redirect paths inside your current domain. Redirecting a whole old domain happens at the old domain’s host. Plan details are in my Framer pricing guide.

Structured data

You can add JSON-LD with Custom Code in Project Settings, placed in the head. On CMS pages you can reference fields, and the json filter formats values safely. This is Framer’s own example for a journal post:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "BlogPosting",
  "headline": {{Title | json}},
  "datePublished": {{Created | json}},
  "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": {{Author_Name | json}} }
}
</script>

I trimmed it from Framer’s structured data article. It is optional, and I would add it only if you keep a journal.

AI search without myths

Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode beyond being indexed and eligible to show a snippet. It also says you do not need new machine-readable files, AI text files or special schema. Framer lets you host an llms.txt file with Static Files on Pro, but I would not expect it to change your ranking. Clear text and real facts on the page are the part you control.

Check your site before you publish

• Every page has its own title and description
• No demo name or placeholder text is left
• Each project page has an H1 and a few sentences of text
• Images have descriptive alt text
• Videos have posters
• The social image is set and 1200 by 630
• Key links are not only inside an overlay
• Your own domain is connected and loads over https
• sitemap.xml opens in the browser
• The sitemap is submitted in Search Console

After publishing, open the live page, view its source and look for the title and canonical tag. Then run site: on your domain a few days later.

If you want a head start, Kaspar, Maël Blanc and Fiber list SEO titles and descriptions among their features, and Halvor suits photographers. All are free. For a set-up done for you, see Customization.

FAQ

Is Framer good for SEO?

Framer covers the technical basics, including a sitemap, a robots.txt file and image optimization. Rankings still depend on your content, links and competition, and nobody can promise a position.

How do I add a meta description in Framer?

Set a site-wide description in Site Settings, then override it in each page’s settings. For CMS pages, bind the description to a CMS field.

Does Framer create a sitemap and robots.txt?

Yes. Framer generates both for every published site, at /sitemap.xml and /robots.txt, and you can submit the sitemap to Google Search Console.

Can I edit robots.txt in Framer?

Only on Pro or Enterprise. You upload your own file under Static Files, and it replaces the generated one.

Do I need a paid Framer plan for SEO?

The pricing page lists built-in SEO on the Basic card. Redirects and a custom robots.txt are on Pro, so a portfolio replacing an old site with linked URLs may need Pro.

Do multiple H1 tags hurt a Framer site?

Framer says they usually do not, because the duplicates are hidden with CSS for other screen sizes and Google ignores hidden elements.