absolute-seo

When this skill is activated, always start your first response with the 🔍 emoji.

Absolute SEO

Comprehensive search engine optimization covering technical foundations, content quality, structured data, performance, local search, link building, international targeting, e-commerce, programmatic scale, and AI search surfaces. This skill is a senior SEO consultant - it provides frameworks for decisions, current data for benchmarks, and actionable checklists for execution.

When to use this skill

Trigger when the user:

• Asks about improving search rankings, indexing, or crawlability
• Needs to implement or audit schema markup / structured data
• Wants to optimize Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS)
• Works on local SEO, Google Business Profile, or maps rankings
• Needs link building strategy or backlink audit
• Implements hreflang or multi-language/region targeting
• Optimizes e-commerce pages (products, categories, faceted navigation)
• Plans programmatic SEO at scale (location pages, comparison pages)
• Wants to optimize for AI search (Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity)
• Needs a comprehensive SEO audit or health check
• Asks about featured snippets, People Also Ask, or voice search
• Needs to configure robots.txt, sitemaps, or canonical tags

Do NOT trigger for:

• Keyword research workflows, difficulty scoring, gap analysis - use keyword-research skill
• Paid advertising (Google Ads, PPC campaigns)
• Social media marketing strategy
• General content writing without SEO focus

Key Principles

1. Crawlable before rankable - If search engines cannot crawl and index your pages, nothing else matters. Fix technical foundations first.
2. E-E-A-T is demonstrated, not declared - Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness come from first-hand evidence, credentials, citations, and transparency - not claims.
3. Match user intent - Every page must satisfy the search intent behind target queries. Mismatched intent means zero chance of ranking regardless of optimization.
4. One canonical URL per content - Every piece of content should have exactly one authoritative URL. Duplicate and near-duplicate content wastes crawl budget and splits signals.
5. Measure, iterate, re-audit - SEO is not set-and-forget. Track rankings, traffic, and indexation. Re-audit quarterly. Expect 90-day windows before results stabilize.
6. GEO supplements SEO, does not replace it - AI search optimization builds on traditional SEO foundations. 92% of AI Overview citations come from pages already ranking in the top 10.

Industry Detection

Detect site type to tailor recommendations: SaaS (/features, /pricing, /docs), E-commerce (/products, /cart, product schema), Local (phone, address, Maps embed, LocalBusiness schema), Publisher (/blog, article schema, author pages), Agency (/case-studies, /portfolio).

Technical SEO

The crawl-index-rank pipeline: Googlebot discovers URLs (sitemaps, links) -> crawls HTML -> renders JavaScript -> indexes content -> ranks against queries.

Crawlability Essentials

• robots.txt: Allow CSS/JS (required for rendering). Include Sitemap: directive. Never Disallow: / on production.
• XML sitemaps: Max 50,000 URLs or 50MB per file. Use sitemap index for larger sites. <lastmod> must reflect actual content change dates.
• Canonical tags: Self-referencing canonicals on every page. Point URL variants (www/non-www, http/https, trailing slash) to the chosen canonical.
• Redirects: Use 301 for permanent moves. Single-hop only - chains waste crawl budget and leak PageRank. Audit redirect chains quarterly.
• Meta robots: noindex prevents indexing. nofollow prevents link equity flow. Can combine: noindex, nofollow. HTTP header X-Robots-Tag works for non-HTML.
• IndexNow: Instant indexing protocol for Bing, Yandex, Naver (not Google). Push URL changes immediately instead of waiting for crawl.

Rendering Strategy

SSG (lowest risk) > SSR > ISR > CSR (highest risk - content invisible until JS executes). Serve canonical, meta robots, title, description, and structured data in initial server-rendered HTML. Never rely on JavaScript injection for SEO-critical elements.

AI Crawler Management

Key crawlers: GPTBot (OpenAI training), ChatGPT-User (real-time browsing), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), PerplexityBot (search + training), Google-Extended (Gemini training only), Bytespider (ByteDance). Blocking Google-Extended does NOT affect Google Search or AI Overviews (those use Googlebot).

Load references/technical-seo-deep.md for crawl budget optimization, rendering implementations, redirect audit patterns, and JavaScript SEO details.

On-Page & Content Quality

On-Page Hierarchy

| Element | Guidelines | |---------|-----------| | Title tag | 50-60 chars, primary keyword near start, unique per page | | Meta description | 120-160 chars, include CTA, unique per page | | H1 | One per page, contains primary keyword | | Headings | Logical hierarchy (H2 > H3 > H4), no skipping levels | | Images | Descriptive alt text (10-125 chars), width/height for CLS, fetchpriority="high" on LCP image, decoding="async", WebP/AVIF, lazy load below fold only | | Internal links | Descriptive anchor text (not "click here"), link to related content, distribute authority |

E-E-A-T Framework (Updated Dec 2025)

As of December 2025, E-E-A-T applies to ALL competitive queries, not just YMYL. Anonymous/generic authorship is penalized even for non-YMYL content.

| Signal | Weight | How to demonstrate | |--------|--------|--------------------| | Experience | 20% | First-hand testing, original photos/videos, case studies, specific examples | | Expertise | 25% | Author credentials, certifications, technical depth, author schema (ProfilePage) | | Authoritativeness | 25% | External citations, industry recognition, backlinks from authorities | | Trustworthiness | 30% | Contact info, privacy policy, HTTPS, reviews, date stamps, transparent corrections |

AI content: Acceptable if it demonstrates genuine E-E-A-T. Penalized if generic, no unique value, no experience signals, or contains factual errors.

Content Quality Gates

| Page type | Min words | Unique content | |-----------|-----------|----------------| | Homepage | 500 | 100% | | Service/Feature | 800 | 100% | | Blog post | 1,500 | 100% | | Product page | 400 | 80%+ | | Category page | 400 | 100% | | Location (primary) | 600 | 60%+ | | Location (secondary) | 500 | 40%+ | | FAQ page | 800 | 100% |

Word count is NOT a ranking factor (John Mueller confirmed) - these are topical coverage floors.

Image Size Targets

Thumbnails <50KB, content images <100KB, hero/banner <200KB. Format priority: AVIF (93.8% support) > WebP (95.3%) > JPEG > PNG.

Load references/eeat-content-quality.md for full E-E-A-T scoring framework, content freshness signals, and framework-specific implementations.

Schema Markup

Always use JSON-LD format (Google's explicit recommendation). Schema earns rich results but does not directly boost rankings. However, pages with structured data have 2.5x higher chance of appearing in AI-generated answers (Google & Microsoft, March 2025).

Active Types (Most Used)

| Type | Rich result | Key requirement | |------|------------|-----------------| | Article / BlogPosting | Article carousel | headline, datePublished, author | | Product | Shopping, price | name, offers with price/availability | | LocalBusiness | Local pack, maps | name, address, telephone | | Organization | Knowledge panel | name, url, logo | | BreadcrumbList | Breadcrumb trail | itemListElement array | | VideoObject | Video carousel | name, uploadDate, thumbnailUrl | | Event | Event listing | name, startDate, location | | SoftwareApplication | App info | name, offers, operatingSystem | | ProfilePage | Author info | mainEntity with Person | | P