Sections
This file defines all sections, their ordering, impact levels, and descriptions. The section ID (in parentheses) is the filename prefix used to group rules.
1. Core Web Vitals (cwv)
Impact: CRITICAL Description: Google uses Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS) as ranking signals. Pages that fail these thresholds rank lower and provide poor user experience. Optimizing CWV is the highest-impact technical SEO work.
2. Technical SEO (tech)
Impact: CRITICAL Description: Foundational SEO elements that search engines need to discover, crawl, and index pages correctly. Without proper meta tags, canonical URLs, sitemaps, and robots.txt, content cannot rank regardless of quality.
3. On-Page SEO (onpage)
Impact: HIGH Description: Content structure and HTML semantics that help search engines understand page topics and relevance. Proper headings, semantic markup, internal linking, and image optimization directly affect rankings.
4. Structured Data (schema)
Impact: HIGH Description: JSON-LD markup using Schema.org vocabulary that enables rich results in search (star ratings, FAQ accordions, breadcrumb trails, product prices). Structured data does not directly boost rankings but significantly improves click-through rates.
5. Performance SEO (perf)
Impact: HIGH Description: Page speed and loading optimization that affects both Core Web Vitals scores and user experience. Modern image formats, lazy loading, font strategies, and resource hints reduce load times and improve search ranking.
6. Social Sharing (social)
Impact: HIGH Description: Open Graph and Twitter Card meta tags that control how pages appear when shared on social media. Proper social meta tags increase click-through rates from social platforms and drive organic traffic.
7. React/SPA SEO (spa)
Impact: HIGH Description: SEO patterns specific to single-page applications built with React. SPAs require special attention to rendering strategy, meta tag management, and routing to be crawlable by search engines.
8. Mobile-First (mobile)
Impact: MEDIUM Description: Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily crawls and indexes the mobile version of pages. Mobile viewport configuration, content parity, and UX requirements directly affect how pages are indexed and ranked.