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Headlark vs writing SEO tags by hand
Checked 2026-10-20
In short: Libraries like astro-seo, next-seo and Next.js's Metadata API make it easy to render the tags, but you still write every title and description yourself and keep them current. Headlark writes them from each page's content on every build. For a handful of pages you care about word by word, write them by hand. For hundreds of pages, or content that changes often, Headlark saves the writing and the upkeep. They work together.
At a glance
| Headlark | By hand (astro-seo, next-seo, Metadata API) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who writes the text | Headlark, from the page's content, in its language | You, for every page |
| Keeping it current | Rewritten on the next build when a page's content changes | Manual |
| Cost | Free for 25 pages; paid plans from €39/month | Free; astro-seo and next-seo are MIT-licensed (npm, npm) |
| External service | Page HTML is sent to Headlark and its AI provider at build time | None |
| Control | Your canonical, robots and JSON-LD types win; title and description are Headlark's | Total |
Where writing by hand is the better choice
- A small site where every word in the title matters to you.
- You can't send page content to an outside service.
- You want zero cost and zero dependencies.
Where Headlark is the better choice
- Hundreds of pages, or content that changes every week.
- Pages in several languages: Headlark writes in each page's language.
- You also want JSON-LD and alt text filled in without writing them.
Using both
Keep rendering canonical, robots and structured data from your code; Headlark keeps them. Let Headlark write titles, descriptions, link previews and missing alt text. See the Astro and Next.js guides.
Sources
- astro-seo on npm (MIT), checked 2026-10-20
- next-seo on npm (MIT), checked 2026-10-20