Generative search results, AI overviews and tighter Core Web Vitals have changed the SEO playbook. This checklist is what we apply to every site we build.

Technical foundations

  • HTTPS everywhere, HTTP/3 enabled.
  • Core Web Vitals in the green for both mobile and desktop.
  • Clean, semantic HTML with structured data.
  • SEO-friendly URLs (no query-string spaghetti).
  • XML sitemap and robots.txt published and validated.

Content

  • Topic clusters, not random posts.
  • Original research, charts and quotes — AI cannot fake these.
  • FAQ schema on every key page.

Authority

  • Digital PR and guest posts on real publications.
  • Local citations cleaned up and consistent.