SEO

SEO & GEO Knowledge Base

This is the umbrella SEO skill. It carries the core Next.js implementation patterns we ship on every site, a condensed summary of primary-source Google guidance, and a router to our specialist seo-* skills. For deep work in one area (technical audit, schema, content, hreflang, etc.) load the specialist — do not duplicate its depth here.

Specialist skill router

Load the right skill for the job instead of doing everything in one pass:

The falsifiability principle (apply to every recommendation)

An audit is findings synthesized into a strategy, not a checklist of complaints. Every recommendation we emit must carry:

1. First-principle observation it rests on (what did we actually measure?).
2. Dependency / unblock relationship to other recommendations (sequence it).
3. "How would we know this failed?" — an explicit falsifiability check.
4. Leading indicator the user can monitor without re-running the audit (e.g. impressions in Search Console, CrUX INP p75, indexed-page count).

Priority buckets — Critical (blocks indexing / triggers penalty), High (material ranking impact, fix within a week), Medium (opportunity, within a month), Low (backlog) — are the output of that validation, not a substitute for it.

robots.txt

Use Next.js MetadataRoute.Robots:

// src/app/robots.ts
import type { MetadataRoute } from 'next';

export default function robots(): MetadataRoute.Robots {
  const baseUrl = process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_URL || 'https://example.com';

  return {
    rules: [
      {
        userAgent: '*',
        allow: '/',
        disallow: ['/api/', '/admin/', '/_next/', '/tmp/'],
      },
      // Allow AI crawlers for GEO
      {
        userAgent: ['GPTBot', 'ClaudeBot', 'PerplexityBot', 'Google-Extended'],
        allow: '/',
      },
    ],
    sitemap: `${baseUrl}/sitemap.xml`,
  };
}

sitemap.ts

Use MetadataRoute.Sitemap with static + dynamic pages (CMS-driven):

// src/app/sitemap.ts
import type { MetadataRoute } from 'next';
import { getPosts } from '@/lib/cms';

const baseUrl = process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_URL || 'https://example.com';

export default async function sitemap(): Promise<MetadataRoute.Sitemap> {
  const posts = await getPosts();

  const staticPages = ['', '/chi-siamo', '/servizi', '/contatti'].map(route => ({
    url: `${baseUrl}${route}`,
    lastModified: new Date(),
    changeFrequency: 'weekly' as const,
    priority: route === '' ? 1 : 0.8,
  }));

  const dynamicPages = posts.map(post => ({
    url: `${baseUrl}/blog/${post.slug}`,
    lastModified: new Date(post.updatedAt),
    changeFrequency: 'weekly' as const,
    priority: 0.6,
  }));

  return [...staticPages, ...dynamicPages];
}

Root layout metadata

// src/app/layout.tsx
import type { Metadata } from 'next';

export const metadata: Metadata = {
  metadataBase: new URL(process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_URL!),
  title: {
    default: 'Brand Name | Main Keyword',
    template: '%s | Brand Name',
  },
  description: 'Persuasive description including main keywords (150-160 chars).',
  robots: {
    index: true,
    follow: true,
    googleBot: {
      index: true,
      follow: true,
      'max-video-preview': -1,
      'max-image-preview': 'large',
      'max-snippet': -1,
    },
  },
  alternates: {
    canonical: './',
  },
  openGraph: {
    type: 'website',
    locale: 'it_IT',
    siteName: 'Brand Name',
    images: [{ url: '/og-image.jpg', width: 1200, height: 630 }],
  },
  twitter: {
    card: 'summary_large_image',
    creator: '@brand_handle',
  },
};

Per-page metadata: export generateMetadata() from the route and pull copy from the CMS so titles/descriptions stay unique per page (Google requires unique, descriptive titles + meta descriptions per page).

Structured data (JSON-LD)

JSON-LD is Google's preferred format (over Microdata/RDFa). Always include @context and @type, only mark up content visible on the page, and validate with the Rich Results Test before shipping.

// src/components/seo/schema-org.tsx
export function OrganizationSchema() {
  const schema = {
    '@context': 'https://schema.org',
    '@type': 'Organization',
    name: 'Brand Name',
    url: process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_URL,
    logo: `${process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_URL}/logo.png`,
    sameAs: [
      'https://linkedin.com/company/brand',
      'https://twitter.com/brand',
    ],
    contactPoint: {
      '@type': 'ContactPoint',
      telephone: '+39-02-12345678',
      contactType: 'customer service',
      availableLanguage: ['Italian', 'English'],
    },
  };

  return (
    <script
      type="application/ld+json"
      dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: JSON.stringify(schema) }}
    />
  );
}

Deprecated / restricted schema types (don't recommend)

• HowTo — rich results removed (Sept 2023).
• FAQPage — Google retired FAQ rich results for all sites (no SERP feature). Keep existing FAQPage for AI/LLM citation benefit (flag at Info, not Critical); do not recommend new FAQPage for Google SERP gain. Use QAPage for genuine user Q&A.
• SpecialAnnouncement (deprecated 2025), ClaimReview, CourseInfo, EstimatedSalary, VehicleListing — retired. See seo-schema for the live status list before generating any markup.

Core Web Vitals

Measured at the 75th percentile of real-user field data (CrUX). Field data is preferred over lab (Lighthouse) for assessment. CWV is a confirmed ranking signal since June 2021.

INP replaced FID on 2024-03-12; FID was removed from all Chrome tooling 2024-09-09 — never reference FID. Use next/script with strategy="lazyOnload" / worker for third-party scripts.

Falsifiability for a CWV fix: after deploy, the CrUX p75 for the targeted metric crosses the "Good" threshold within ~28 days; the leading indicator is the lab trace on the same route in CI before real-user data accrues.

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

Optimizing to be cited by AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, AI Overviews). Full playbook in seo-geo / ai-seo. Essentials:

• Direct answers: first 40–60 words answer the primary query outright.
• Q&A structure: H2/H3 as questions, concise paragraph answers.
• Data density: a concrete statistic every ~150–200 words raises citability.
• Authoritative outbound links and clear sourcing; bullets/tables over walls of text.
• Allow AI crawler user-agents in robots.ts (see above).
• Ship a public/llms.txt index: an H1 title, a one-line > summary, then ## Documentation / ## Core Concepts / ## Resources sections of [Label](/path): note links pointing to your key pages.

International SEO (hreflang)

With next-intl, emit per-locale alternates. Full audit/parity workflow in seo-hreflang.

// app/[locale]/layout.tsx
export const metadata = {
  alternates: {
    canonical: 'https://site.com/it',
    languages: {
      it: 'https://site.com/it',
      en: 'https://site.com/en',
      'x-default': 'https://site.com/en',
    },
  },
};

Mobile-first

Mobile-first indexing is 100% complete (2024-07-05) — Google crawls and indexes exclusively with the mobile Googlebot. Therefore:

• Touch targets ≥ 48×48px, body font ≥ 16px.
• Viewport: width=device-width, initial-scale=1.
• Content parity: mobile must contain the same content as desktop (hidden mobile content is the content Google sees).

Primary-source Google guidance (condensed)

A working summary of Google's own documentation. Treat this as the ground truth when a recommendation must be defensible; specialist skills expand each area.

How Search works

Three stages: Crawling (Googlebot discovers via links + sitemaps) → Indexing (content, metadata, signals stored) → Serving (ranked by relevance, quality, usability). A page must be crawlable and indexable to rank at all — verify this before optimizing anything downstream.

Technical requirements (Search Essentials)

• Reachable by Googlebot (not blocked by robots.txt / noindex).
• Returns HTTP 200 for indexable content; served over HTTPS.
• Content in a processable format — HTML preferred; JS-rendered content is supported but slower to index.

Content quality — E-E-A-T

• Experience — first-hand use (original media, lived examples).
• Expertise — relevant knowledge/credentials, accurate sourcing.
• Authoritativeness — recognized as a go-to source (citations, mentions).
• Trustworthiness — contact info, secure site, editorial standards.

YMYL topics (health, finance, safety, legal) face the strictest E-E-A-T bar. As of the Dec 2025 update, E-E-A-T evaluation extends to all competitive queries, not just YMYL.

Helpful-content & core updates

The Helpful Content System was merged into core ranking (March 2024); it is no longer standalone. Helpfulness is now judged inside every core update — low-value or unhelpful content at scale still gets demoted via core updates.

Spam policies to never trip

Cloaking, doorway pages, hidden text/links, keyword stuffing, link spam (buying/selling links), scraped or auto-generated content without added value, sneaky redirects, thin affiliate pages.

Penalties & recovery

• Manual actions — surfaced in Search Console (unnatural links, thin content, cloaking, UGC spam, structured-data abuse). Fix root cause → submit reconsideration.
• Algorithmic demotions — no notice; detected via ranking drops (core, spam, link-spam updates). Improve quality and wait for reassessment at the next update; monitor recovery in Search Console performance reports.

Verify against the source

PageSpeed Insights and CrUX (field CWV), Rich Results Test (schema), Search Console (coverage, manual actions, performance), Google Search Status Dashboard, and Search Central Blog for the current state of any feature or deprecation. Use your own crawler/tooling to gather page-level evidence; do not assume — measure.

Parts adapted from claude-seo (MIT, © 2026 agricidaniel).