Flexible SEO Hugo is a free, MIT-licensed Hugo theme that builds SEO-friendly static sites with interchangeable navigation, header, footer, and homepage layouts. It runs on the Hugo static site generator and outputs plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
What is Flexible SEO Hugo?
Flexible SEO Hugo is a Hugo theme built on Bootstrap 4. It allows site owners to swap the navigation bar, page header, footer, and homepage structure by setting parameters in config.toml or page front matter. The theme takes Hugo content files (Markdown or other formats) and renders a complete static website. It includes built-in SEO features such as auto-generated breadcrumbs with structured data, clean list pages that avoid auto-generated index pages, and integration with Google Analytics and Disqus.
Key Features
- Swappable layout parts — The theme ships with multiple nav, header, footer, and homepage styles. You can switch between a simple centered header and a full-width image header via the headerType parameter.
- SEO-friendly list pages — Instead of relying on Hugo's auto-generated lists, the theme lists Regular Pages on the homepage; you can restrict this to specific sections with homeSections.
- Automatic breadcrumbs — Every non-home page shows a visible breadcrumb trail and emits structured data for breadcrumbs; disable site-wide or per-page with showBreadcrumbs = false.
- Google Analytics support — Add your tracking ID to the googleAnalytics config parameter and the theme includes the GA script in every page.
- Disqus comments — Setting DisqusShortname enables Disqus on all regular pages; set comments = false in front matter to turn it off for individual pages.
- Custom partials — The theme looks for navs, headers, and footers in layouts/partials/navs/, layouts/partials/headers/, and layouts/partials/footers/, so you can drop in your own templates.
- Homepage section control — Use homeSections in site parameters to show only specific content sections (for example, only posts) on the homepage.
- Bootstrap 4 base — Styling builds on Bootstrap 4, with theme.css and an empty local.css for your own overrides.
Who is it for?
- Hugo developers who want a structured starting point with configurable layout parts rather than hard-coded themes.
- SEO-conscious site owners who need breadcrumbs, clean lists, and structured data without writing custom partials.
- Bloggers who want a Bootstrap-based blog with optional Google Analytics and Disqus and the ability to show only posts on the homepage.
- Designers who prefer to control every pixel: the bare homepage style gives you a blank canvas while the framework handles navigation and footer.
What can you do with Flexible SEO Hugo?
- Choose a hero layout — Set headerType = "image_header" on any page to display a full-width header image with title and subtitle.
- Curate the homepage — Configure homeSections to limit the homepage to posts only, or disable the generated list entirely with showGeneratedList = false.
- Add structured breadcrumbs — Let the theme generate visible breadcrumbs plus JSON-LD structured data automatically for better search engine understanding.
- Extend with custom partials — Create custom nav, header, or footer HTML files in the theme's partials directories and select them by name.
How does Flexible SEO Hugo work?
Install the theme as a git submodule (git submodule add https://github.com/pjbakker/flexible-seo-hugo.git themes/flexible-seo-hugo) and then set parameters in config.toml. The theme selects the corresponding partial templates for nav, header, footer, and homepage based on values like navType, headerType, and footerType (default "simple"). Content pages then render with those selected components.
License
Flexible SEO Hugo is released under the MIT license.
