SEOBOOST for Optimziely CMS: Absolute Canonical, hreflang, and Breadcrumbs

Legacy version: If you are using the newer Optimizely CMS version of SEOBOOST, see the updated post here: SEOBOOST for Optimizely CMS.

Last reviewed: July 24, 2026

SEOBOOST was originally created to improve how Optimizely sites output canonical links, hreflang alternate links, and breadcrumbs. The built-in HTML helpers made implementation easier, but they often rendered relative URLs, while many projects required fully qualified absolute URLs for stronger SEO consistency across multi-domain and multilingual setups.

To solve that gap, I created SEOBOOST as a lightweight open-source helper library for Optimizely. It takes website domain settings into account and generates SEO-friendly output more consistently for sites that need better control over canonical and alternate links.

What SEOBOOST provides

• Canonical link output
• hreflang alternate links
• Breadcrumb structured data support

Why this mattered

Many Optimizely projects needed absolute URLs for canonical and alternate links, especially in multi-site or multilingual environments. That made a small helper library like SEOBOOST useful for improving consistency and reducing repeated custom code.

Usage

Include the namespace at the top of your master page or view:

@using SeoBoost.Helper

For canonical tags, render:

@Html.GetCanonicalLink()

For hreflang alternate links, render:

@Html.GetAlternateLinks()

For breadcrumbs, render:

@Html.GetBreadcrumbItemList()

Legacy platform context

This post refers to the Optimizely 11-era version of SEOBOOST. If you are working on newer Optimizely solutions, the January 15, 2024 article covers the broader SEOBOOST feature set for Optimizely CMS 12.

Links

Updated SEOBOOST for Optimizely CMS 12 post
GitHub repository
Legacy CMS 11 repository
NuGet package

FAQ

Is this the current SEOBOOST version?
No. This post covers the older Optimizely-focused version. The newer Optimizely CMS 12 version is covered in the January 15, 2024 post.

Why use absolute canonical URLs?
Absolute URLs make canonical implementation more explicit and are still recommended by Google for long-term consistency.