Optimise SEO

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

Workflow

Copy and track this checklist:

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

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):

  // app/sitemap.ts
  import type { MetadataRoute } from "next";
  export default function sitemap(): MetadataRoute.Sitemap {
    return [{ url: "https://example.com", lastModified: new Date() }];
  }
  

• Canonicals consistent on every page
• Unique titles + descriptions via metadata or generateMetadata
• OpenGraph + Twitter Card tags
• JSON-LD: Organization, WebSite, BreadcrumbList (+ Article/Product/FAQ as needed):

  <script type="application/ld+json" dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: JSON.stringify({
    "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Organization",
    name: "Example", url: "https://example.com"
  }) }} />
  

• 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

Gotchas

• Don't over-generate thin or doorway pages — indexation drops and quality signals suffer.
• Don't omit canonicals or let them conflict across variants (trailing slash, www, uppercase) — search engines split ranking signal.
• Don't block crawlers unintentionally via robots.txt, noindex, or auth walls on routes meant to be indexed.
• Don't rely on JS-only rendering without SSR/SSG for indexable content.
• Don't change URLs without 301 redirects — link equity and crawl budget are lost.
• Don't add JSON-LD that doesn't match visible page content — Google treats this as spam and may demote the page.

Resources

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

Validation

• Check HTTP response headers for correct status codes and redirects
• Confirm robots.txt has correct crawl directives
• Confirm sitemap.xml lists all indexed routes with valid URLs
• Verify pages include canonical, OpenGraph, and Twitter Card tags in source HTML
• Run a Lighthouse audit and confirm performance scores meet targets
• Validate JSON-LD with Rich Results Test per URL
• Report remaining blockers with exact URLs and owner/action