For a storefront, a restaurant, or a listing site, being discoverable IS the product. SEO designed in is cheap; SEO retrofitted is a rebuild. Build these signals from the first page.
1. Structured data (schema.org) — the biggest local lever
Emit JSON-LD matching the entity, validated against Google's Rich Results requirements:
- LocalBusiness (+ the specific subtype: Restaurant, HomeAndConstructionBusiness, RealEstateAgent) — name, address (PostalAddress), geo, telephone, openingHours, priceRange, url, sameAs (social). This is the single highest-impact local SEO signal.
- Product + Offer (storefront) — name, image, price, availability, aggregateRating.
- Menu / MenuItem (restaurant online-ordering).
- RealEstateListing / Residence (listings) — price, address, floorSize, numberOfRooms.
- BreadcrumbList on every deep page; FAQPage where there's Q&A.
Validate every type with the Rich Results test before shipping; invalid JSON-LD earns nothing.
2. NAP consistency + Google Business Profile alignment
Name / Address / Phone must be byte-identical across the site, the LocalBusiness JSON-LD, and the Google Business Profile. Inconsistent NAP fractures local ranking. State the canonical NAP once and reuse it.
3. Core Web Vitals are a ranking input (not just perf)
LCP / INP / CLS feed search ranking for these pages. Coordinate with performance-engineer,
but the SEO-driven minimums: optimized responsive images (AVIF/WebP + srcset — see
media-pipeline-engineer), no layout shift on load (sized media), fast TTFB. A slow local
page loses to a fast competitor regardless of content.
4. Crawl + index hygiene
- sitemap.xml auto-generated from the catalog/listings, with
lastmod; submitted. - robots.txt allows indexable pages, blocks app/admin/checkout-internal.
- Canonical on every page (self or the preferred variant) — kills duplicate-content loss from filters/pagination/UTM.
- noindex authenticated + thin/internal pages explicitly.
- Clean, stable, keyword-relevant URLs (
/menu/margherita, not/p?id=8842).
5. On-page + content signals
- One
<h1>per page; descriptive<title>+ meta description per page (templated from the entity, not duplicated site-wide). - Descriptive
alttext on every image (a11y AND image search). - Internal linking between related entities (product↔category, listing↔neighborhood).
- Location pages for multi-location businesses (one indexable page per location, unique content).
6. Syndication (where the product distributes)
For listings/storefronts that syndicate (MLS/IDX, Google Shopping, marketplaces), the canonical lives on our page; syndicated copies point back. Define the feed format + update cadence (coordinate the source-of-truth with integrations-engineer).
Output
When applied, contribute an SEO section to the architecture/design doc and a checklist the senior-dev build satisfies:
## SEO
- schema.org types: <LocalBusiness subtype + Product/Menu/Listing> · JSON-LD validated
- canonical NAP: <name/address/phone> (identical in JSON-LD + GBP)
- CWV minimums: LCP/INP/CLS targets (with performance-engineer)
- crawl: sitemap.xml (lastmod) · robots.txt · canonical on all · noindex app/admin
- on-page: 1×h1, per-page title/meta, alt text, clean URLs
- syndication (if any): canonical = our page; feed = <format/cadence>