SEO Core

SEO Core — Audit & Technical Analysis

Quick Reference

Industry Detection

Detect business type from homepage before analysis — drives quality thresholds:

• SaaS: pricing page, /features, /integrations, /docs, "free trial"
• Local Service: phone, address, service area, Google Maps embed
• E-commerce: /products, /cart, "add to cart", Product schema
• Publisher: /blog, /articles, author pages, Article schema
• Agency: /case-studies, /portfolio, client logos

Scoring — SEO Health Score (0-100)

Priority Levels

• Critical: Blocks indexing/penalties (fix same day)
• High: Significant ranking impact (fix within 1 week)
• Medium: Optimization opportunity (fix within 1 month)
• Low: Nice to have (backlog)

Quality Gates

See references/quality-gates.md for thin content thresholds.

• WARNING at 30+ location pages (enforce 60%+ unique content)
• HARD STOP at 50+ location pages (require user justification)
• Never recommend HowTo schema (deprecated Sept 2023)
• FAQ schema only for government/healthcare sites
• All CWV references use INP, never FID (deprecated March 2024)

Reference Files (load on-demand)

• references/cwv-thresholds.md — CWV thresholds and measurement
• references/schema-types.md — Schema types with deprecation status
• references/eeat-framework.md — E-E-A-T evaluation criteria (Dec 2025)
• references/quality-gates.md — Content length minimums, uniqueness thresholds
• pdf/google-seo-reference.md — Google SEO quick reference

Full Audit Workflow

Step 1 — Fetch Homepage

WebFetch homepage HTML. Extract: title, meta desc, H1, internal links, tech signals, business type signals.

Step 2 — Detect Business Type

Classify from homepage signals (see Industry Detection).

Step 3 — Crawl Site

Follow internal links up to 500 pages. Config: respect robots.txt, max 3 redirect hops, 30s timeout/page, 5 concurrent, 1s min delay. Collect per page: status, title, meta desc, H1, canonical, robots meta, links, word count, schema, images.

For SPAs: fetch raw HTML first to see what Googlebot sees without JS.

Step 4 — Delegate to Subagents (Parallel)

Step 5 — Aggregate Scores

Combine using weighted scoring (see Scoring above).

Step 6 — Generate Report

Write FULL-AUDIT-REPORT.md and ACTION-PLAN.md. Structure: Executive Summary (Score, Type, Pages, Top 5 Issues, Top 5 Quick Wins), then each category with score, then full issues list by priority.

Technical SEO Checklist

1. Crawlability

• robots.txt: exists, valid syntax, not blocking important resources
• XML sitemap: exists, in robots.txt, valid XML, no 4xx/5xx URLs
• Noindex: distinguish intentional from accidental
• Crawl depth: important pages within 3 clicks
• JS rendering: verify critical content not behind JS
• Crawl budget: for >10k pages, prioritize important ones

Critical signals: Disallow: / (Critical), sitemap 404 (High), key pages depth >5 (Medium)

AI Crawler Management

See references/ai-crawlers.md for full table. Key distinctions:

• Blocking Google-Extended does NOT affect Google Search or AI Overviews
• Blocking GPTBot does NOT prevent ChatGPT citing via OAI-SearchBot

2. Indexability

• Canonical tags: self-referencing, no conflicts with noindex
• Duplicate content: parameter URLs, www/non-www, HTTP/HTTPS, trailing slash
• Thin content: pages below minimum word counts
• Pagination: proper rel=next/prev or load-more
• Index bloat: tag/category/filtered pages consuming crawl budget

3. Security

• HTTPS with 301 from HTTP; valid SSL; no mixed content
• Headers: HSTS (High), CSP (Medium), X-Content-Type-Options (Medium), X-Frame-Options (Medium), Referrer-Policy (Low)

4. URL Structure

• Clean, descriptive, hyphenated; no query params for canonical content
• No redirect chains >1 hop; no loops; consistent trailing slashes; lowercase; <100 chars

5. Mobile

Mobile-first indexing 100% complete (July 2024). Mobile IS your site.

• Responsive + viewport meta; touch targets 48x48px/8px spacing
• Font min 16px; no horizontal scroll; content parity; no intrusive interstitials

6. Core Web Vitals

INP replaced FID March 12, 2024. See references/cwv-thresholds.md for subparts and bottlenecks.

7. Structured Data

JSON-LD preferred. See seo-assets skill and references/schema-types.md.

8. JavaScript Rendering (Dec 2025 Google clarifications)

1. Raw HTML vs JS-injected canonical: Google may use either — must match
2. noindex in raw HTML may be honored even if JS removes it
3. Google does NOT render JS on non-200 pages
4. JS-injected structured data faces delayed processing

Best practice: Serve critical SEO elements in server-rendered HTML.

9. IndexNow

Key file at site root; supported by Bing, Yandex, Seznam (not Google). Low effort, measurable Bing indexing speed improvement.

Technical Output Format

Issues by Priority: Critical > High > Medium > Low

Priority Matrix