optimise-seo

name

optimise-seo

description

Optimises SEO and technical foundations for Next.js App Router apps, covering sitemaps, robots, meta tags, structured data, canonical URLs, redirects, indexing policy, hreflang and internationalisation, Core Web Vitals, programmatic SEO, security headers, privacy/consent, and error-page resilience. Use when asked to "improve SEO", "add a sitemap", "fix meta tags", "add structured data", "set canonical URLs", "set up redirects", "fix soft 404s", "add hreflang", "add security headers", "add cookie consent", "improve Core Web Vitals", "audit SEO", or "build SEO pages at scale". Performs no visual redesigns; for visual direction use ui-design, for page-level UI quality use ui-audit. Does not cover llms.txt or AI-agent readability; research current specs for that work.

Optimise SEO

• IS: crawlability, metadata, structured data, canonicals, redirects, hreflang, Core Web Vitals, programmatic SEO, security/privacy headers, and error-page status behaviour for Next.js App Router apps.
• IS NOT: visual redesigns or layout changes (use ui-design), or page-level UI quality review (use ui-audit). Making a site readable by AI agents (llms.txt, MCP discovery, WebMCP) is out of scope; research current specs rather than relying on static SEO guidance.

Allowed surface: metadata, structured data, semantic HTML, internal links, alt text, app/sitemap.ts, app/robots.ts, next.config.ts redirects and headers, error pages, performance tuning. Never touch component styling or layout.

Workflow

Copy and track this checklist:

SEO progress:
- [ ] Step 1: Inventory routes and decide index intent per route
- [ ] Step 2: Fix crawl/index foundations (sitemap, robots, canonicals, redirects, status codes)
- [ ] Step 3: Implement metadata + structured data
- [ ] Step 4: Improve semantics, internal links, and Core Web Vitals
- [ ] Step 5: Validate with references/seo-checklist.md and report evidence

Before writing code for steps 2-4, read references/nextjs-implementation.md: App Router patterns (Metadata API, generateMetadata, sitemap index, JSON-LD component, OG image generation, headers()/redirects() config).

Must-have on every site

• app/sitemap.ts lists all public URLs; app/robots.ts links to it
• Canonical URL set and consistent on every page (one host, one casing, one trailing-slash policy)
• Unique title and description per page via metadata or generateMetadata
• OpenGraph + Twitter Card tags with a 1200x630 image
• JSON-LD: Organization and WebSite on the homepage, BreadcrumbList on inner pages, plus Article/Product/FAQ where the content type matches. Define each entity once in a @graph with a stable @id (/#person, /#website, /#organization); reference by @id, don't duplicate. On articles keep Person as author, use an Organization (with a logo) as publisher
• One h1 per page with logical h2-h6 hierarchy
• Descriptive alt text, internal links between related pages, CWV in target (LCP < 2.5s, INP < 200ms, CLS < 0.1)

Programmatic SEO (pages at scale)

• Validate search demand for the pattern before generating pages
• Each page needs unique value backed by defensible data; templated text swaps are doorway pages
• Clean subfolder URLs, hub-and-spoke linking, breadcrumbs on every page
• Index only strong pages; noindex the long tail and monitor indexation and cannibalisation in Search Console
• Applies to single pages too: noindex a thin page and omit it from the sitemap until it carries unique content, then add an internal link and index it

SEO audit (triage order)

1. Crawl/index: robots, sitemap, stray noindex, canonicals, redirect chains, soft 404s
2. Technical: HTTPS, Core Web Vitals, mobile/desktop parity
3. On-page: titles/H1 uniqueness, internal links, remove or noindex thin pages
4. Orphans: indexable pages (metadata, canonical, breadcrumb) with no internal link or sitemap entry. Either give them a crawl path (nav/footer link plus sitemap) or noindex and drop from the sitemap

Redirects and indexing policy

• Permanent moves use 301/308, temporary use 302/307. Never chain; point straight to the final URL.
• A missing page must return a real 404, not 200 with a friendly message: 200-for-missing is a soft 404 and won't index.
• Give every route an explicit index decision: public pages default to index, follow; staging, admin, thin, or private routes get metadata.robots noindex (HTML) or X-Robots-Tag (non-HTML, whole environments).

Internationalisation (multi-locale sites)

One URL pattern for all locales; reciprocal hreflang with self-reference plus x-default; translate metadata, not just body; never auto-redirect by IP or Accept-Language. Full rules and the generateMetadata pattern: references/internationalisation.md.

Technical hardening (security, privacy, resilience)

Security headers (HSTS, CSP, nosniff, frame-ancestors, Referrer-Policy, Permissions-Policy), SRI, cookie flags, security.txt, privacy policy and opt-in consent, correct 404/500/503 behaviour, web app manifest. Read references/technical-hardening.md for header, cookie, consent, or error-page tasks.

Gotchas

• Don't over-generate thin or doorway pages: indexation drops and sitewide quality signals suffer.
• Don't let canonicals conflict across variants (trailing slash, www, uppercase): ranking signal splits between duplicates.
• Don't block crawlers via robots.txt, noindex, or auth walls on routes meant to rank; check before shipping, not after traffic drops.
• Don't rely on client-only JS rendering for indexable content; ship SSR/SSG HTML.
• Don't change URLs without 301/308 redirects: link equity and crawl budget are lost.
• Don't add JSON-LD that doesn't match visible content; Google treats it as spam and may demote the page.
• Don't return 200 for "not found" or error pages: soft 404s won't index and drag quality scores down.
• Don't ship hreflang that isn't reciprocal across every alternate; search engines ignore non-mutual sets.
• Don't serve a maintenance window with 200 or 404: return 503 + Retry-After so the site isn't deindexed.
• Don't add Strict-Transport-Security with preload/includeSubDomains before every subdomain is HTTPS; it's effectively irreversible.
• Don't set Person as publisher on articles: rich results expect an Organization publisher with a logo. Keep Person as author.
• Don't stop at required schema fields: Search Console flags missing recommended fields as rich-result warnings (e.g. Event wants endDate, offers, image, eventStatus, eventAttendanceMode, address, organizer.url). Clear warnings, not just errors.
• Don't hardcode the sitemap lastModified: it goes stale and signals dead content. Derive it from the most recent content date.
• Don't leave indexable pages orphaned: no internal link wastes crawl equity and the page may never be discovered or ranked.

References

• references/nextjs-implementation.md: App Router code patterns; read before steps 2-4
• references/internationalisation.md: URL strategy, hreflang, localised metadata; read for multi-locale sites
• references/technical-hardening.md: security headers, privacy/consent, resilience; read for hardening tasks
• references/seo-checklist.md: pass/fail validation checklist; copy during step 5

Related skills

• ui-design: visual direction, palettes, typography, landing-page CRO
• ui-audit: page-level UI quality and rendered i18n behavior (locale formatting, plurals, RTL); optimise-seo owns hreflang and localized metadata

Validation (step 5, evidence required)

Copy references/seo-checklist.md, mark every item pass/fail, then attach command evidence:

Check	Command/source	Expected result
Production build	npm run build or repo equivalent	exits 0
Response headers	curl -sI <url>	correct status, redirects, canonical host
Served HTML metadata	curl -s <url> | rg "canonical|og:|twitter:|application/ld\+json"	tags present in source
Robots	curl -s <origin>/robots.txt	expected allow/disallow and sitemap
Sitemap	curl -s <origin>/sitemap.xml	indexed routes, absolute URLs, fresh lastmod when used
Lighthouse	npx lighthouse <url> --only-categories=seo,performance --output=json --output-path=.lighthouse-seo.json	SEO and Performance >= 90, or blockers listed
JSON-LD	Google Rich Results Test URL/result	valid or documented unsupported schema
Search Console after deploy	Pages/Coverage and enhancement reports	no new warnings; indexed/excluded changes explained

Report remaining blockers with exact URLs and owner/action.