Optimise SEO

No visual redesigns or layout changes. Allowed: metadata, structured data, semantic HTML, internal links, alt text, sitemap/robots, performance tuning.

Workflow

1. Inventory routes and index intent
2. Fix crawl/index foundations
3. Implement metadata + structured data
4. Improve semantics, links, and CWV
5. Validate with seo-checklist.md and document changes

Must-have

• Sitemap (app/sitemap.ts) and robots (app/robots.ts)
• Canonicals consistent on every page
• Unique titles + descriptions
• OpenGraph + Twitter Card tags
• JSON-LD: Organization, WebSite, BreadcrumbList (+ Article/Product/FAQ as needed)
• One h1 and logical heading hierarchy
• Alt text, internal links, CWV targets, mobile/desktop parity

Programmatic SEO (pages at scale)

• Validate demand for a repeatable pattern before generating pages
• Require unique value per page and defensible data
• Clean subfolder URLs, hubs/spokes, and breadcrumbs
• Index only strong pages; monitor indexation and cannibalization

SEO audit (triage order)

1. Crawl/index: robots, sitemap, noindex, canonicals, redirects, soft 404s
2. Technical: HTTPS, CWV, mobile parity
3. On-page/content: titles/H1, internal links, remove or noindex thin pages

Don’t

• Over-generate thin pages or doorway pages
• Omit or conflict canonicals
• Block crawlers unintentionally
• Rely on JS-only rendering without SSR/SSG

Resources

• nextjs-implementation.md — implementation patterns for steps 2-4
• seo-checklist.md — pass/fail validation during step 5

Validation

curl -I https://site.com
curl -s https://site.com/robots.txt
curl -s https://site.com/sitemap.xml | head -n 20
curl -s https://site.com/page | rg -n 'rel="canonical"|property="og:|name="twitter:'
lighthouse https://site.com --output=json --output-path=report.json

• Validate JSON-LD with Rich Results Test per URL.
• Report remaining blockers with exact URLs and owner/action.