Before you start
- Search Console URL Inspection
- View-source or DevTools access
View source vs rendered DOM
Critical text and links should appear in initial HTML when possible.
Use URL Inspection → View crawled page → HTML to compare what Google fetched.
Official: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/javascript/javascript-seo-basics
Limit heavy client-only tabs and accordions for key copy
FAQ accordions are fine if content exists in DOM; infinite scroll archives should still expose paginated static URLs.
Defer non-critical JS, keep LCP image in HTML
Page builders often add render-blocking scripts — measure INP and LCP after each major template change.
Use SSR or static HTML for primary templates when possible
Headless WordPress setups need explicit rendering pipelines; verify sitemap URLs match canonical rendered pages.
Avoid blocking Googlebot from JS bundles you need
robots.txt must not block assets required to render above-the-fold content.