A command that audits our own SEO

The work: 31 October 2026 · Written 1 November 2026 · Entry 16 of 17

On 31 October 2026 the project added a command, npm run seo, that checks a page for the things that matter to search engines and lists what is missing. It combines a static check of the HTML with the Lighthouse tool that Google also uses.

What it checks

• The title and description: length, and whether they exist.
• A canonical address, the page language, a mobile viewport and hreflang links to other languages.
• One heading of level one, and headings in a sensible order.
• Social sharing tags and structured data that parses.
• Image descriptions, link text and the amount of text on the page.

What it found

The first run showed problems that nobody had noticed. The pages linked to favicon files that did not exist, so every page load produced a failed request. Some guide screenshots declared the wrong height, which made the page jump as images loaded. The game pages had more than one top heading. Each was fixed, and a test now guards each of them.

Why it matters

A check that anyone can run keeps quality from slipping. Each page has a budget: the scores must stay at the level they reached, and a warning that the owner accepted on purpose is written down with the reason.

Looking at the live site

The command can also check a real address, such as the staging site. One finding there was a surprise: the preview address that Cloudflare gives a branch carries a header that tells search engines not to index it, so its search score is lower on purpose. The score that counts is the one on the real site.