Sitemaps, robots, and redirects

A sitemap lists the pages that exist so a crawler does not have to discover every one through links. It matters most for a single-page app, where a crawler can see one page and stop.

On Next.js, add an app/sitemap.ts file and the framework generates it. Reference it from robots.txt and submit it once in Google Search Console.

http → https, then non-www → www, then a trailing slash added: three separate rules, three round trips before anything renders. Combine them so the first request lands on the final URL.

JSON-LD is what produces richer search results — ratings, prices, FAQ dropdowns, breadcrumbs. Optional, and one of the few remaining ways to occupy more of a results page than your ranking alone earns.

Check it with Google’s Rich Results Test before deploying. Invalid structured data is ignored rather than penalised, but it is also useless.