SEO is mostly a consistency problem. The fundamentals are not mysterious; they are simply scattered across titles, social previews, schema, crawl controls, and redirects. Forma puts those controls in one place and checks the result.
Use this pass before launching a new site or handing one to a client.
1. Set the canonical site identity
Open Settings → General and confirm:
- site title;
- concise site description;
- production URL with HTTPS;
- language and timezone;
- default author.
The production URL matters. Forma uses it to turn relative paths into canonical URLs for metadata, feeds, and the sitemap. Do not leave a preview domain here after launch.
2. Add the three brand assets
Under Settings → SEO → Branding & social, add:
- a favicon, preferably SVG for crisp browser rendering;
- a square touch icon for saved mobile shortcuts;
- a 1200×630 default social image.
The default image is the safety net for every page or post without its own artwork. Use the actual brand mark, readable contrast, and enough quiet space to survive social-network crops.
Then set the organization name and logo in Schema & local. Keep those assets on the production site instead of pointing at a staging host.
3. Configure the sitewide defaults
Choose a title separator and whether the site name should be appended to document titles. Enable the large Twitter card when the social image is designed for it.
Turn on WebSite and Organization JSON-LD. Add genuine sameAs profiles—official GitHub, LinkedIn, or social accounts—not random directory listings. If the business has a public phone, email, or physical address, add only information you actually want search engines to understand as authoritative.
4. Write unique metadata for the important pages
For the homepage and primary landing pages, write:
- a specific SEO title, usually under 60 characters;
- a useful description, usually 120–160 characters;
- an Open Graph title and description that read naturally when shared;
- a canonical URL when the automatic URL is not sufficient;
- the most accurate schema type.
Do not stuff variants of the same keyword into every field. Describe the page clearly, differentiate it from the other pages, and make the search result worth clicking.
Posts should have a short editorial description even when the opening paragraph is strong. Forma uses that description in archives, feeds, search, and metadata.
5. Check crawl controls
Enable automatic robots.txt and sitemap.xml. For a normal public site, allow indexing and following globally, then put private utility paths in the noindex list—typically /admin, /api, and /search.
Use per-document noindex for pages that must be reachable but should not appear in search engines. Forma leaves those documents out of the sitemap.
Remember that robots rules are crawl guidance, not authentication. Sensitive content needs real access control.
6. Preserve old URLs
If the launch replaces another site, create redirects before changing DNS. Map every valuable old path to the closest new destination. Forma writes redirects into Apache configuration so they happen before normal page routing.
Prefer permanent 301 redirects when the move is final. Use 302 only for genuinely temporary changes.
7. Run SEO health
The SEO health card catches the mistakes humans miss:
- missing or duplicate titles;
- missing, short, or long descriptions;
- absent social defaults;
- broken local favicon paths;
- sitemap configuration problems.
Treat the score as a checklist, not a ranking oracle. A perfect technical score cannot make thin content useful, and an excellent article does not excuse broken canonicals. You need both.
Finally, open the homepage source and test /robots.txt, /sitemap.xml, a blog post, and a social-card preview tool. Fifteen focused minutes here prevents weeks of wondering why the wrong logo, title, or preview URL escaped into the world.