SEO / GEO / Social
Master Checklist

50–60 characters. Primary keyword near the front. Brand name at the end, separated by a dash or pipe. Never duplicate across pages.

120–160 characters. Written as a compelling call to action that includes the primary keyword naturally. Never duplicate across pages.

Self-referencing canonical on all pages prevents duplicate content issues. Must use the absolute, HTTPS URL including trailing slash consistency.

Main pages: index, follow. Legal/utility pages (privacy, terms, thank-you, admin): noindex, follow. Never accidentally noindex key pages.

Declare lang="en" (or appropriate locale). Critical for accessibility, translation tools, and voice search.

Required for mobile-first indexing. content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0"

Fonts, CDNs, analytics. Reduces connection latency for external resources that are loaded on every page. Add crossorigin for font origins.

Preload the above-the-fold image or critical web font so the browser fetches it immediately rather than discovering it during parse.

Mixed content (HTTP assets on an HTTPS page) breaks security indicators and can suppress ranking. All sub-resources must be HTTPS.

Pick one convention and enforce it sitewide with redirects. Inconsistency splits link equity and creates duplicate content.

301-redirect one to the other at the server level. Both should not be accessible independently.

Must appear before the title tag to prevent character encoding issues in older browsers and crawlers.

The H1 is the strongest on-page ranking signal for its keyword. One per page only. Should match or closely mirror the title tag.

Never skip heading levels. H2s define major page sections; H3s subdivide them. Headings also help screen readers and AI content parsers.

Early keyword placement signals topical relevance. Do not keyword-stuff — natural integration is essential for E-E-A-T signals.

Avoid "click here" or "learn more". Anchors like "AI-assisted hair transplant procedure" pass keyword context to the linked page.

Service pages: 600–1,200+ words. Blog/articles: 1,200–2,500+ words. Thin content (<200 words) may be devalued by Google.

Security best practice. rel="noopener noreferrer" prevents the opened page from accessing your window object.

Exact-match keyword density over ~3% can trigger spam filters. Write for humans first — Google's NLP understands synonyms and semantic variants.

Use hyphens (not underscores) to separate words. Avoid dates, IDs, or stop words in URLs. /hair-transplant-beverly-hills/ beats /page?id=142.

Improves user orientation and generates breadcrumb rich results in SERPs. Mark up with BreadcrumbList JSON-LD.

For evergreen pages, adding "Last updated: [Month Year]" signals freshness to both users and crawlers. Use dateModified in JSON-LD.

Can differ slightly from the <title> tag — can be more descriptive or punchy since character limits are less strict in OG context. 60–90 chars recommended.

2–3 sentences. Should be more conversational and compelling than the meta description. Approximately 200 characters.

Never use transparent PNGs or portrait images. Create a branded 1200×630 JPEG or PNG specifically for social sharing. File size under 8 MB (ideally under 1 MB).

Explicitly declaring dimensions prevents crawlers from having to download the image to discover its size. Always pair with an og:image.

Accessibility for screen readers viewing shared cards. Describe the actual image content, not just the brand name.

Must match the canonical tag exactly (protocol, www/non-www, trailing slash). This is what platforms use to deduplicate shares.

website for most pages, article for blog posts, product for e-commerce pages. Omitting defaults to website but explicit is better.

Shown in the card UI on some platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn) as a sub-header beneath the card. Should be consistent across all pages.

Used by Facebook and AI crawlers to understand the language/region of the content. Format: language_TERRITORY. Add og:locale:alternate if serving multiple languages.

Some platforms do not follow redirects when fetching OG images. Use the final destination URL. Test with Facebook Sharing Debugger and LinkedIn Inspector.

summary_large_image for content pages (shows a large image). summary for utility/legal pages without images. Required — without it, no card renders.

X truncates titles at 70 characters in most card layouts. If not specified, falls back to og:title, but explicit values are more reliable.

Under 200 characters. Shown beneath the title in the card. Falls back to og:description if absent.

Can reuse the OG image. Must be under 5 MB for summary_large_image. Use an absolute HTTPS URL. Twitter fetches this on first share and caches it.

Accessibility requirement for X. Should describe the image in 420 characters or less. Important for screen-reader users who encounter your shared links.

Your brand's X handle (e.g. @YourBrand). Attribution shown in the card footer. Builds social identity association with your domain.

After publishing, visit cards-dev.twitter.com/validator and enter your URL. Clears the cache and confirms your card renders correctly on X.

Declare your entity once with @id, name, url, logo, sameAs (social profiles), address, telephone. This creates your brand entity for the Knowledge Graph.

Enables the sitelinks searchbox in Google when users search your brand. Include potentialAction with a SearchAction pointing to your search URL.

At minimum: @type, @id, name, url, description, isPartOf (linking to the WebSite entity). Helps AI understand page purpose.

Each Q&A pair in an acceptedAnswer/Question structure. Can generate People Also Ask expansion in SERPs and AI overview citations.

Use on pages with numbered steps (e.g. "How a Hair Transplant Works in 5 Steps"). Can generate HowTo rich snippets with numbered steps shown in SERPs.

Display star ratings in SERPs. Requires ratingValue, ratingCount/reviewCount, and bestRating. Only mark up genuine ratings visible on page.

Individual reviews with author, reviewBody, reviewRating. Combined with AggregateRating to substantiate the aggregate score.

Name, jobTitle, image, url, sameAs (LinkedIn). Creates people entities that appear in Knowledge Panels and E-E-A-T signals for YMYL content.

Must match exactly what users see. Can generate breadcrumb trails in SERPs replacing the URL — improves CTR and navigation understanding.

Test every page with schema at search.google.com/test/rich-results. Fix all errors; review warnings. Revalidate after any structural change.

Google's spam policies prohibit marking up content that isn't visible on the page. Fake reviews, inflated ratings, or invisible content in JSON-LD can trigger manual actions.

Link your Organization entity to Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, X, Wikipedia, Crunchbase etc. Helps Google consolidate your entity across the web.

The hero image or headline is typically the LCP element. Never apply loading="lazy" to it. Use loading="eager" or no attribute (eager is default).

For above-the-fold images that are LCP candidates, add a preload link in <head> so the browser starts fetching before it reaches the img tag.

CSS in <head> blocks rendering. Inline critical (above-fold) CSS in a <style> tag; load the rest asynchronously.

Without dimensions, the browser can't reserve space before the image loads — causing layout shift. Set width/height to the intrinsic image dimensions; control display size with CSS.

font-display: swap prevents invisible text during font load (FOIT) — shows fallback font instead. Improves both CLS and LCP perception.

Banners, cookie notices, ads that push content down after page load are CLS offenders. Reserve space for these elements with CSS min-height before they load.

Tasks over 50ms block the main thread and delay user interaction responses. Use requestAnimationFrame, setTimeout, or Web Workers to split heavy work.

Third-party scripts (chat, analytics, social embeds) should load with defer or async. Audit with Lighthouse "Unused JavaScript" report.

Run pagespeed.web.dev on every key page. Focus on mobile — Google indexes mobile-first. CWV thresholds: LCP ≤2.5s, INP ≤200ms, CLS ≤0.1.

Describes the image content (not "image of..." or filename). Include relevant keywords naturally. Decorative images use alt="". Critical for accessibility (WCAG 1.1.1) and image search.

Defers loading of off-screen images until the user scrolls near them. Reduces initial page weight and improves LCP. Never apply to above-fold or LCP images.

WebP is ~30% smaller than JPEG at equivalent quality. AVIF is ~50% smaller. Use <picture> with <source> for format negotiation, with JPEG fallback.

A 4000px image displayed at 400px wastes 100× bandwidth. Serve appropriately sized variants. Use srcset for responsive images across device pixel ratios.

File names are indexed by Google Images. Use hyphenated, keyword-relevant names like hair-transplant-before-after-beverly-hills.jpg.

Adding <image:image> extensions to your XML sitemap helps Google discover images for Image Search, especially for e-commerce or medical before/after content.

Pure decorative images (dividers, textures, patterns) should be CSS backgrounds, not <img> elements. This keeps them out of the accessibility tree and reduces DOM size.

Run images through Squoosh, Sharp, or ImageOptim. Hero/banner images: ≤ 250KB. Gallery thumbnails: ≤ 80KB. Icons/logos: ≤ 30KB. Or use a CDN with auto-compression.

Located at /robots.txt. Must include Sitemap: directive. Disallow only private/utility pages (admin, staging, legal). Never accidentally disallow /.

Located at /sitemap.xml. Include all indexable URLs. Set <priority> and <changefreq>. Submit via Google Search Console → Sitemaps.

A common staging mistake left in production. Audit every page's meta robots tag and HTTP X-Robots-Tag header. Use Google Search Console to detect any noindexed pages.

Verify ownership via HTML file, DNS record, or meta tag. Monitor Index Coverage, Core Web Vitals, Manual Actions, and Search Performance reports weekly.

Crawl your site monthly with Screaming Frog or Sitebulb. Fix all 4xx errors. Redirect moved pages with 301s — never leave link equity orphaned.

For paginated content (blogs, galleries), either canonicalise all pages to page 1, or use rel="next"/prev to signal the sequence to Googlebot.

Pages with no internal links are rarely crawled or ranked. Every indexable page should be reachable within 3 clicks from the homepage.

A helpful 404 keeps users on the site. Include the main nav, a search bar, and links to key sections. Returns HTTP 404 status (not 200).

Regular full crawls catch redirect chains, duplicate content, missing meta tags, and new broken links before they compound. Schedule quarterly at minimum.

AI systems extract and link named entities (people, places, products, organisations). Consistent naming — never varying "Dr Smith" / "Doctor Smith" / "Smith MD" — strengthens entity recognition.

For YMYL content (health, finance, legal), Google's E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) requires demonstrable expertise. Author schema with credentials is essential.

AI systems cite "About" pages when building entity profiles. Include: founding date, key personnel, qualifications, awards, professional memberships, physical address.

Being mentioned by news outlets, professional bodies, Wikipedia, or industry sites creates corroborating signals that AI uses to validate claims about your entity.

AI Overview citations often pull from FAQ content because they answer questions directly. Write FAQ answers in 2–4 sentences that stand alone without surrounding context.

AI models prefer citable, verifiable content. Linking to peer-reviewed studies, official statistics, or regulatory bodies significantly increases the chance of being cited in AI responses.

AI search engines reward comprehensive content that pre-answers follow-up questions. Structure pages to address the full question space around a topic, not just the primary query.

AI systems cross-reference business data across sources. Inconsistent NAP (e.g. different phone numbers on your site vs. Google Business Profile) undermines entity confidence.

NLP systems index text, not images. Your full brand name should appear as text multiple times per key page, not only in logo images, for AI entity extraction.

Wikipedia and Wikidata are primary entity sources for Google's Knowledge Graph and large language models. If your brand/founder meets notability criteria, a Wikipedia entry dramatically strengthens GEO.

Category, description, hours, photos (interior, exterior, team), services, products, Q&A, posts. 100% profile completion correlates with 3-pack visibility. Add a booking link if applicable.

Include GeoCoordinates (latitude, longitude), openingHoursSpecification, hasMap (Google Maps link), areaServed.

Yelp, Bing Places, Apple Maps, Healthgrades, Zocdoc, Angi, and 50+ other directories. Use a citation management tool (BrightLocal, Whitespark) to audit and correct inconsistencies.

Each location page should have unique content (not templated), an embedded Google Map, local staff bios, local reviews, and local schema. Avoid thin pages that are just address + phone number.

Review velocity, average rating, and response rate are local ranking factors. Respond to every review (positive and negative) within 48 hours. Never incentivise or fabricate reviews.

"Hair Transplant Beverly Hills" outranks "Hair Transplant" for local intent. Location modifier in the title is the single strongest local on-page signal.

An embedded map confirms physical presence and improves user experience. Use the "Embed a Map" iframe from Google Maps. Adds a trust signal for both users and crawlers.

Links from local news, chambers of commerce, local business associations, and area directories are strong local authority signals that national links can't replicate.

Semantic landmarks help screen readers navigate and help crawlers understand content hierarchy. Avoid using <div> and <span> when a semantic tag is appropriate.

Tab through every interactive element: menus, modals, forms, accordions. Focus indicators must be visible. This is WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance and affects engagement metrics.

Test with the Chrome DevTools accessibility panel or Colour Contrast Analyser. Low contrast text increases bounce rates and excludes vision-impaired users.

Placeholder text is not a substitute for a label. Every <input>, <select>, and <textarea> needs a visible or aria-label-associated label.

Hamburger menus, social icons, search buttons, close modals — any interactive element without visible text needs aria-label="..." to be usable by screen readers.

Google uses mobile-first indexing. All content visible on desktop must be equally accessible on mobile. Test at search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly.

A visually-hidden "Skip to main content" link as the first element in <body> allows keyboard users to bypass the navigation on every page load. Small effort, high accessibility impact.