SEO Audit

SEO audit

Audit the code, and the live URL when one exists. Lessons from ~50 production sites built from this starter are folded in; the defects it used to seed (placeholders, localhost canonicals, a hidden page for non-JS crawlers, missing privacy route) are fixed upstream — check they stayed fixed. Rank findings by impact and fix them; do not hand back a lecture.

1. Indexability — nothing else matters if this is broken

• src/app/robots.ts — allows crawlers, points at the sitemap, no accidental disallow: /.
• src/app/sitemap.ts — every public route is listed. This is the one that rots: adding a route without a sitemap entry is the most common miss in this starter. Cross-check find src/app -name 'page.tsx' against the sitemap array.
• Canonical URL on each page; no duplicate content across trailing-slash or parameter variants.
• The origin. siteConfig.url = NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_URL → the host's production domain (VERCEL_PROJECT_PRODUCTION_URL) → localhost; set NEXT_PUBLIC_SITE_URL for a custom domain. origin-sync.ts (first in <body>) rewrites canonical / og:url / og:image to location.origin after hydration for JS-running readers on any other host — never before (React 19 matches head tags by URL and inserts a second copy; one site served two canonicals). Link-preview scrapers don't run JS, so the build-time origin decides their cards. Check on the deployed site: canonical is the real domain, and curl -sI of the og:image URL returns 200 — 11 of 12 live deploys once served http://localhost:3000 as canonical, og:image and every sitemap <loc>.
• No route accidentally opted out of static rendering. Any headers() / cookies() read — including await isBot() in a page or layout — forces dynamic rendering for every visitor. The UA is read in src/proxy.ts. Check: curl -sI <url>/ | grep -i 'cache-control\|x-vercel-cache' → PRERENDER/HIT.
• Crawlers see the whole page. curl -s -A "Googlebot/2.1" <url>/ and -A "GPTBot/1.0": the robot form (<meta name="x-robot-view">), the <h1> and the body copy present and not under a hidden ancestor. The starter's old empty app/loading.tsx wrapped the streamed page in <div hidden> — on most sites built from it, non-JS crawlers got no visible <h1>; it is deleted — never re-add an empty one. Streamed Suspense segments can still hide text from a non-JS reader; the robot form should stream nothing. (optimize-load/references/robot-path.md.)
• robots.ts disallows /robot-view (the robot form's own path is a duplicate — it is served under /). Never noindex the robot page itself.

2. Metadata

Every route exports metadata via generateMetadata in src/utils/seo/generate-page-metadata.ts (obsidian/frontend/seo-metadata.md).

No placeholder survives. src/lib/site.ts ships TODO: values that fail a production build — every site built from the old starter shipped "New Project" as its title, OG card and JSON-LD name, and Lighthouse still scored SEO 100 because a title existed. Fill every field from the site itself:

• name — the brand exactly as the logo writes it. If the copy and the logo disagree, ask; don't pick silently (a reviewer caught a wrong brand in a title).
• title — the brand + what it is, ≤ 60 chars (Acme — Industrial design studio); sub-pages %s · Acme, unique and specific per route.
• description — 120–160 chars from the site's own copy (no invention).
• author / creator / publisher = the brand, never the agency or a placeholder. twitterHandle = the site's real handle or undefined (the tags are omitted) — never an invented one, it tags a stranger.
• themeColor / backgroundColor = the brand ground (via generateViewport); keywords 5–8 phrases from the copy; openGraph.type/locale/siteName; twitter.card = summary_large_image.
• The brand kit. A square SVG mark drawn from the site's own logo that reads at 16 px (the logomark, or a monogram in the display face — never the full wordmark), then node tools/qa/brand-kit.mjs --url … --icon <mark.svg> renders icon.svg, favicon.ico, the PNG sizes, apple/maskable icons and a 1200×630 share image captured from the running hero (its wait must cover the loader and the entrance; dismiss the banner; hide a custom cursor). LOOK at the share image: hero composed, headline legible, no loader, no banner, no half-faded text. If the hero doesn't compose at 1200:630, build a designed card (app/opengraph-image.tsx: the brand large over the hero art) — it beat a plain capture twice. Look at the 32 px and 180 px icons too. og:image has an alt and its real size.
• lang on <html>; manifest (app/manifest.ts) names the brand.
• Check the rendered <head> of the build (curl -s localhost:3000/ | grep -oE '<(meta|link)[^>]+>') and of the robot form (-A Googlebot/2.1) — they must carry the same metadata.