# SEO

> The foundations that get a site crawled, indexed, and shown well — per-page metadata, one canonical URL, a sitemap, honest robots rules, and structured data.

Source: https://gaitro.com/skills/seo

Search engines reward sites that are easy to crawl and clearly labelled. Get the foundations right before chasing anything clever.

## One page, one address, one title

- Every page has its **own** `<title>` and meta description — written for a person skimming results, specific, not boilerplate. Keep titles under ~70 characters and descriptions ~70–160.
- Each page declares **one canonical URL**. If the same content answers on two hosts, both name the same canonical. Duplicate URLs split your ranking.

## Tell crawlers the shape of the site

- A **sitemap.xml** listing every real page, kept current.
- A **robots.txt** that allows what should be indexed and disallows only what shouldn't (settings, APIs, sign-in plumbing). Don't accidentally block the whole site.

## Help the result look right

- **Structured data** (JSON-LD) for the things search engines render specially: organisation, FAQ, product/offer, breadcrumbs. Keep it truthful and in sync with the visible page.
- A share image and Open Graph/Twitter tags so a shared link looks intentional.

## Make it fast and stable

- Serve pages quickly (cache static content at the edge; avoid per-request work on public pages). Speed and stable layout are ranking factors and a better experience.

## Verify, don't assume

Fetch the live pages and check the actual titles, canonicals, sitemap entries, and robots rules — build-time intent and what's served can differ. Then submit the sitemap in Search Console and watch what gets indexed.