Technical SEO basics for a new site

What should every homepage have?

Every homepage needs a unique title of 10 to 65 characters, a meta description of 50 to 160 characters, one h1, a canonical link and a viewport tag. These tell search engines and people what the page is. Each one takes minutes to add in most site builders and frameworks.

Search engines may rewrite titles and snippets, but a good source gives them a better starting point.

How do sitemap.xml and robots.txt work?

A sitemap.xml lists the pages you want crawled, and robots.txt tells crawlers what they may fetch and where the sitemap is. Publish both at the root of your domain, then submit the sitemap in Google Search Console. A single Disallow: / line blocks the whole site, so check it before launch.

What is structured data and which type should I use?

Structured data is JSON-LD in the page that states facts in a format machines read: who publishes the site and what the product is. Start with Organization and WebSite on the homepage, and SoftwareApplication if you sell software. Validate it with Google's Rich Results Test before you ship.

How fast should the page be?

Aim for a mobile Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds, which Google's web.dev guidance calls good. Compress images, serve fonts from your own domain, and delay scripts that the first screen does not need. Amplibee reads the score from Google PageSpeed Insights and reports the largest content time.