The technical SEO checklist we run on every Next.js build

Sitemaps, structured data, metadata, redirects, Core Web Vitals and the crawl-budget details most teams miss.

Search engines reward sites that are fast, crawlable and unambiguous about what each page is. On a Next.js project we treat that as an engineering requirement, not a marketing task bolted on at the end.

Start with rendering. Every indexable page should return meaningful HTML on the first response — that means server components or static generation, not a client-only shell. We keep the critical content out of useEffect and make sure the <h1>, primary copy and internal links are in the initial payload.

Next, make the site legible to crawlers: a generated XML sitemap, a robots file that only blocks what should be blocked, canonical URLs on every page, and clean, stable slugs. Redirects for any moved URL go in next.config so link equity is preserved.

Then add structured data. Organization and WebSite schema site-wide, plus Service, Article, BreadcrumbList and FAQPage where they apply. This is what powers rich results and helps assistants cite you correctly.

Finally, tune Core Web Vitals: optimized images with explicit dimensions, a self-hosted font with font-display swap, minimal client JavaScript, and a check that Largest Contentful Paint is under 2.5 seconds on a mid-range phone.