SEO & Site Discoverability

Sticklight handles technical SEO automatically so your site is ready for Google, social platforms, and AI assistants from day one. This article covers what’s built in, what you can customize, and how to verify everything is working.

Quick Start

Do these three things for immediate impact:

Connect a custom domain
Submit your site to Google Search Console
Test your social previews with Facebook Debugger

What Sticklight Includes Automatically

Sticklight generates SEO settings based on your content. These provide a strong starting point – review them in your page settings and adjust to match your brand voice.

HTTPS & Secure Hosting – All sites are served over HTTPS with automatic SSL certificates. Google has used HTTPS as a ranking signal since 2014.

Page Title & Meta Description – AI-generated titles (under 60 characters) and meta descriptions (under 160 characters) based on your content. Example: “Clay & Co | Handmade Pottery from Portland” beats a generic “Home.” Review these in your page settings to ensure they reflect your brand.

Social Media Previews – Rich preview cards for Facebook, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and messaging apps using Open Graph and Twitter Card tags. Recommended image: 1200×630px, under 1MB, JPG/PNG. Always verify previews before sharing – use Facebook Debugger or OpenGraph.xyz.

Mobile-First Responsive Design – All sites adapt to phones, tablets, and desktops with proper viewport configuration, matching Google’s mobile-first indexing.

Fast Loading & Performance – Minified HTML/CSS/JS, optimized images, and clean code. Check your Core Web Vitals at PageSpeed Insights: LCP under 2.5s, CLS under 0.1, INP under 200ms.

Semantic HTML Structure – Proper use of header, main, nav, and heading elements for search engines, screen readers, and AI assistants.

Custom Domains

The most impactful SEO change you can make. See Connecting a Custom Domain for setup instructions. A custom domain builds independent search authority, earns direct backlinks, increases trust, and ensures portability.

Sites on the Sticklight subdomain can rank, but a custom domain accelerates authority significantly for competitive terms. After connecting, verify in Google Search Console and redirect the .sticklight.app subdomain to avoid duplicate content. If switching from an existing domain, set up 301 redirects and resubmit your sitemap to preserve built authority.

What You Can Customize

Ask the AI to adjust any SEO element. Review AI suggestions and personalize them – you know your audience best.

Titles & Descriptions – Unique per page to avoid confusion for search engines.

URL Slugs – Short, lowercase, hyphen-separated, keyword-rich (e.g., /handmade-pottery).

Images & Alt Text – Specific descriptions (“Blue ceramic mug with speckled glaze, 12oz”) instead of generic filenames. Compress images to under 200KB; use WebP format.

Heading Structure – One H1 per page with proper hierarchy.

Social Previews – Custom og:image, large Twitter cards, per-page descriptions.

Sitemap – Generate sitemap.xml, set priority levels, keep updated when adding pages.

Structured Data (JSON-LD) – Product, LocalBusiness, Article, FAQPage, or Organization schema to enable rich results like star ratings, FAQ dropdowns, and prices. Test at Rich Results Test. Valid schema doesn’t guarantee display – Google decides what to show.

Internal Linking – Connect related pages; ensure every page is reachable within 3 clicks.

Canonical Tags – Prevent duplicate content issues.

Redirects & Error Pages – 301 redirects for renamed/removed pages; custom 404 pages.

Sitemap & Robots.txt

Sitemap – Essential for multi-page sites. Generate via the AI, then submit in Google Search Console. Verify yours is accessible at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.

Robots.txt – Controls crawler access. All pages are crawlable by default. You can selectively allow or block AI crawlers: GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, Bytespider, Meta-ExternalAgent, and Amazonbot. Allow AI crawlers if you want visibility in AI-powered search.

AI Discovery (GEO)

AI-powered search is a major discovery channel. AI crawlers prioritize clear factual statements, structured headings, FAQ format, specific numbers/dates, and schema markup.

Write quotable content: Replace “world-class shipping solutions” with “We ship to 32 countries with 3-day average delivery.”

Consider creating an /llms.txt file (emerging convention) describing your site, and/or a factual /about page with company description, services, pricing, FAQs, and contact info.

Verifying Your SEO

Always verify your SEO settings are live and working correctly using external tools:

Social Previews:

Facebook Sharing Debugger – Test Open Graph tags, click “Scrape Again” after republishing
LinkedIn Post Inspector – Test LinkedIn previews
OpenGraph.xyz – Quick visual preview check

Technical SEO:

Google Search Console – Indexing status, errors, performance
PageSpeed Insights – Core Web Vitals and performance scores
Rich Results Test – Validate structured data

Or ask the AI: “Show me my current SEO settings.”

After Publishing

First-Day Checklist:

Set up Google Search Console and submit your sitemap
Request indexing for key pages
Test social previews – Facebook caches aggressively, so always use the Debugger’s “Scrape Again” after publishing
Verify your sitemap lists all pages

Build Backlinks:

Launch on Product Hunt, Hacker News, and relevant directories
Write guest posts and case studies
Create embeddable tools and resources others want to reference

Ongoing Maintenance:

Weekly: Check Search Console for errors and performance trends
Monthly: Refresh underperforming titles/descriptions (high impressions + low CTR = title problem), run PageSpeed, update sitemap
Quarterly: Full audit of links, structured data, mobile experience, and content freshness. Target page-2 rankings (positions 11–20) for quickest wins.

What Sticklight Does Not Handle

Sticklight does not submit your site to Google, guarantee rankings, manage off-page SEO (backlinks, social promotion, PR), or write your content strategy. The AI helps execute optimizations – topic selection and positioning are up to you.

FAQ

Can Sticklight sites rank well?
Yes – rankings depend on content quality, backlinks, and technical SEO, not the platform.

How long until Google indexes my site?
Days to two weeks. Speed up via Search Console submission and requesting indexing.

Do I need a custom domain?
Strongly recommended for authority and click-through rates.

Will AI assistants find my site?
Yes, if your content is clear, factual, structured, and robots.txt allows AI bots.

Wrong social preview image showing?
Set the correct og:image, republish, then click “Scrape Again” in Facebook Debugger.

Google shows a different description than mine?
Google may generate its own snippet if yours doesn’t match search intent. Write descriptions that closely match what users are searching for.

Site loading slowly?
Run PageSpeed Insights. Compress images, use WebP format, minimize fonts and scripts.

What’s structured data?
JSON-LD code that gives Google extra content details for rich results. Not required, but improves click-through rates when displayed.

Site not showing in Google?
Check Search Console for errors, verify robots.txt isn’t blocking crawlers, confirm your sitemap includes the page, and re-request indexing after two weeks.

Can I redirect old URLs?
Yes – 301 redirects preserve SEO value and prevent broken links.

How do I track which keywords I’m ranking for?
Google Search Console’s Performance report shows search terms, impressions, clicks, and positions.