SEO Bootstrap

Overview

Most solo founders ship a marketing site without a sitemap, without robots.txt, with no Open Graph image, and zero structured data. Google can crawl the site but doesn't know what it is. AI search engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews) skip it entirely because there's nothing structured to cite [1][2].

This skill ships the four files that move a site from "invisible" to "indexable" in one commit: sitemap.xml, robots.txt, a default 1200×630 OG image, and Organization + WebSite JSON-LD in the root layout.

Activation moment: "It opened a PR that fixed sitemap, robots, and schema in one commit."

When to Use

• New site just deployed, never had SEO touched
• Lighthouse SEO score < 100 with "Document doesn't have a meta description" or "no robots.txt"
• Site shows up in site:domain.com but no rich result, no favicon in SERP, no OG card on Twitter/iMessage
• Builder said "I just shipped, what's the bare minimum?"

Don't use for: sites that already have all four pieces (run auditing-technical-seo instead), or staging environments that should stay noindex.

Step 1 — Detect framework

Read package.json and check folder structure:

Also note: "site" field in astro.config.*, kit.paths in svelte.config.js, metadataBase in next.config.*. You need the canonical site URL for every template — if missing, ask the user once before generating.

Step 2 — Audit current state

Check for each of these. Report present vs missing as a table before writing anything:

Also confirm metadataBase (Next), site (Astro), or canonical URL (SvelteKit) is set. Without it, sitemap URLs will be relative and Google will reject the file.

Step 3 — Generate missing pieces

Use the framework templates in templates/{nextjs,astro,sveltekit}/. Rules:

• Only write files the audit flagged missing. Never overwrite.
• Wire imports: for Next, the metadata files are zero-config. For Astro, add @astrojs/sitemap to astro.config.* and run npm install. For SvelteKit, the +server.ts is auto-routed.
• JSON-LD goes in the root layout, not per-page at this stage. Per-page Article/Product schema is the next skill's job.
• Ship as one commit: feat(seo): bootstrap sitemap, robots, OG, and JSON-LD. Then open one PR.

Step 4 — Verify

After deploy (or npm run build && npm run preview):

curl -sI https://site.com/sitemap.xml | head -1   # expect 200
curl -s  https://site.com/robots.txt              # expect Sitemap: line
curl -sI https://site.com/og.png                  # expect 200, < 1MB

Then:

• Paste any page URL into Google's Rich Results Test [3] — confirm Organization + WebSite parse with zero errors.
• Run Lighthouse → SEO category → expect 100.
• Drop the URL into iMessage or Slack to eyeball the OG card.

Common Mistakes

• Sitemap includes private routes (/admin, /api, draft slugs). Filter explicitly in the generator.
• `robots.txt` blocks `/_next/` or `/assets/` — breaks rendering for Googlebot. Default-allow, only disallow /api/ and /admin/.
• OG image > 1MB or wrong dimensions. Google and Twitter both want 1200×630, < 1MB, JPG or PNG. The next/og ImageResponse template stays well under.
• `@type: "Website"` (capital W) instead of `"WebSite"`. schema.org is case-sensitive. Validators silently drop the wrong one.
• Leaving `noindex` from a staging template. Search the codebase for noindex after generation.
• Forgetting `metadataBase` / `site`. Sitemap URLs will be /about instead of https://site.com/about — Google rejects.

Quick Reference

What next

After bootstrap merges:

1. `auditing-technical-seo` — deeper checks: canonical tags, hreflang, internal linking, Core Web Vitals.
2. `setting-up-seo-measurement` — verify Google Search Console, submit the sitemap, wire up GA4/Plausible.
3. `finding-underserved-keywords` — the growth-phase loop, after ~90 days of GSC data.

Sources

• Next.js sitemap metadata file
• Next.js robots metadata file
• Next.js opengraph-image metadata file
• @astrojs/sitemap docs
• SvelteKit routing — +server endpoints
• Google Search Central — Sitemaps overview
• Google Rich Results Test