Structure decides ranking before code ships.
Crawl paths, internal linking, and entity relationships are defined as engineering requirements — not handed to a content team after launch.
Three stages. No stage skips SEO.
Architecture & crawl strategy
01
Information architecture, URL taxonomy, and crawl-budget allocation are defined in the discovery sprint — before any front-end component exists. The sitemap is a search document first.
Ranking signals as build requirements
02
Core Web Vitals targets, structured data schemas, and canonical rules enter the codebase as acceptance criteria — the same way security or accessibility requirements do. They are never optional.
Conversion path wired to intent
03
Every page's UX hierarchy is mapped against the search intent that will land users there. Ranking without a conversion path is a traffic cost, not a business result.
Fixing structure post-launch multiplies the bill.
Schema errors, crawl blocks, and mis-routed link equity don't stay cheap. Every sprint that ships without a search constraint is interest accruing on technical debt.
Architecture defined in sprint one
Structured data shipped at build
Performance targets as acceptance criteria
URL taxonomy, crawl directives, and page-level intent mapping are locked before front-end development begins — not revisited after QA.
Schema markup for entities, breadcrumbs, and FAQs enters the codebase in the same pull request as the component — never as a post-launch patch.
LCP, CLS, and INP thresholds are written into tickets. A component that misses the target doesn't merge — the same rule that applies to broken tests.