SEO

Own organic search discoverability for public websites. For audits or plans, return evidence and prioritized changes. For authorized implementation, make and verify the requested changes. Keep deployment, account changes, and search submissions within the user's authorized scope.

Use ui-design for visual and accessibility work, react-best-practices for measured React/Next performance, and app-store-connect for App Store optimization. Broad marketing, paid ads, backlink outreach, and mass content generation are separate work.

Scope the request

Match the investigation to the job. A local metadata change needs its owning template and relevant regression checks; a site audit needs representative URL families and states. For a new site, establish the intended discovery and indexing behavior without inventing an existing failure.

Identify the production or intended canonical origin, affected pages, audience, search engine, and requested outcome. Inspect the framework/CMS, hosting configuration, and available Search Console or analytics evidence. Before changing indexing controls, distinguish pages intended for search from staging, private, duplicate, and other intentionally excluded URLs.

For an existing-site diagnosis, sample affected templates and relevant working, failing, redirect, duplicate, or excluded states where available. Record URLs, observation time, response evidence, and coverage. A sample supports conclusions about the observed scope, not a whole-site pass.

Finish with the intended search behavior, affected templates, available access, and evidence gaps identified. Continue repository and public-response checks when account access is unavailable.

Diagnose

For a reported problem, locate the failing stage: discovery, crawling, rendering, indexing, search appearance, or traffic/conversion. For traffic changes, compare the same URLs, queries, countries, devices, and date windows where data permits. Distinguish indexing failures from changes in demand, rankings, or click-through.

Consult official search-engine and framework documentation relevant to the selected checks and the project's versions. Open only the sections needed to resolve uncertainty or verify current behavior. Google-specific guidance does not establish another engine's behavior. Choose the checks that address the requested outcome:

• Discovery and indexing. Check internal links, sitemaps, actual status codes, robots.txt, hosting/CDN access, robots meta tags, and X-Robots-Tag. Preserve intentional exclusions. Google must crawl a page to see noindex; robots.txt blocking alone does not ensure removal from search. Technical requirements, indexing controls.
• JavaScript rendering. Compare response HTML with rendered content, links, metadata, and resource failures. Google renders JavaScript; choose server rendering or prerendering for an observed need, accounting for other target crawlers. JavaScript SEO.
• Duplicate URLs and redirects. Trace hops and final destinations; compare canonicals, sitemap entries, and internal links. Align signals with the intended equivalent URL. A declared canonical is a preference, not proof of Google's selection. Canonicalization.
• Metadata and content. Map search intent to useful pages. Use descriptive titles, relevant descriptions, clear headings, and crawlable internal links. Preserve factual claims and authorship; add substantive information rather than keyword repetition or arbitrary length targets. SEO Starter Guide.
• Structured data. Select a currently supported feature appropriate to the page and visible content. Validate required properties and eligibility, not just JSON syntax; a passing test does not guarantee a rich result. Structured data policies.
• Page experience. Measure the affected workload before changing it and compare the same conditions afterward. Use field and lab evidence for their respective purposes; a performance score is not proof of indexing or ranking. Page experience.
• Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. Apply existing SEO and snippet eligibility. Google requires no special AI files or schema for these features. Check other providers' current requirements separately. AI features.

Finish with each finding tied to an observed URL/template, its likely cause, impact, proposed change, and acceptance check. Label hypotheses and prioritize access/indexing blockers before appearance refinements. Avoid turning an audit into an unconditional checklist of edits.

Apply supported changes

Fix the owning template, route, CMS setting, header rule, or hosting layer. Keep public URL and redirect changes consistent with existing links and search traffic. Use the project's metadata and sitemap facilities instead of a second competing implementation. Check the affected variants, including locale or pagination behavior when relevant.

Apply changes supported by the intended search behavior or diagnosis. Check current feature support before adding markup; Google's documentation updates record retirements as well as new features. Use tests for meaningful routing, metadata generation, or indexing-control regressions; a build alone does not establish search discoverability.

Verify the deployed result

After changes reach the target deployment, crawl the affected URL families. Check new pages against the intended behavior and existing pages against the baseline. Use the project's crawler or available HTTP and rendering tools; set a bounded URL set and crawl rate suited to the site. Verify:

• Actual GET responses, redirect hops and final URLs, status codes, and indexing headers through the public hosting/CDN path.
• Relevant robots.txt and sitemap responses; intended indexable URLs and preserved exclusions.
• Response HTML and rendered content where JavaScript matters: important text, crawlable links, titles/descriptions, canonicals, and applicable structured data.
• Discovery paths and template variants affected by the fix, including links that were previously broken or orphaned.

Use Search Console's URL Inspection when access exists. Distinguish its live fetch test from Google's stored indexed version and selected canonical. A local browser render or a spoofed Googlebot user agent does not prove Google's indexing behavior.

For an audit, report observed deployed behavior without making changes. For fixes not yet deployed, report code/local checks separately and name the pending deployment and live checks; do not claim deployed verification. Unavailable production or account access leaves an explicit evidence gap, not an inferred pass.

Handoff

Return the prioritized findings or implemented changes with affected URLs, checks and results, crawl scope, remaining gaps, and any follow-up observation. Separate technical eligibility, observed indexing, and measured search outcomes. Indexing, rich results, rankings, and traffic gains are not guaranteed; report later outcomes only from actual observations.