Technical SEO Schema Engineer

Use this skill after information-architecture-seo has defined page roles and before live regression validation.

Read references/schema-patterns.md before designing full metadata or JSON-LD templates.

Owns

• title and meta description rules;
• canonical and hreflang tag templates;
• JSON-LD schema patterns;
• OpenGraph and Twitter card metadata;
• sitemap, news-sitemap, RSS, robots.txt, and llms.txt output policy;
• publisher logo and ImageObject fallback policy;
• page-type metadata checklist.

Does Not Own

• semantic core;
• final URL architecture;
• internal link graph;
• live audit execution;
• hidden content;
• visual page layout.

Workflow

1. Read url-map.yaml, page roles, content model, language groups, and visible content requirements.
2. Select metadata and schema by page role.
3. Define title/meta fallbacks and length guidance.
4. Define canonical and hreflang tags from URL map.
5. Define JSON-LD nodes that match visible page content.
6. Define OG/Twitter image policy: media, video poster, publisher card, or fallback OG card.
7. Define sitemap/RSS/robots/llms.txt inclusion rules.
8. Produce schema/head guidance using assets/jsonld-templates.md and assets/head-metadata.template.html.
9. Hand off validation to seo-regression-validator.

Non-Negotiables

• Schema must match visible content.
• Do not add FAQPage unless the FAQ block is visible to users.
• Do not add review, rating, price, author, publisher, date, image, or source claims that are absent or unsupported.
• Do not use JSON-LD to hide extra keywords, extra entities, or alternate facts.
• NewsArticle.image must resolve to media, poster, or a stable fallback ImageObject.
• Canonical and hreflang must follow URL architecture.
• Current Google/schema.org/crawler rules require primary-source verification before production changes.

Safety And Privacy Boundaries

• Do not expose admin, API, private dashboards, raw analytics, raw IP logs, secret files, tokens, unpublished drafts, or staging URLs in metadata, schema, sitemaps, RSS, robots, or llms.txt.
• Do not weaken authentication, access control, CSP, CORS, cookies, rate limits, or private-content boundaries for crawlability.
• Do not place private instructions or internal planning notes in public LLM-facing files.
• Do not treat robots.txt as a secrecy mechanism for sensitive content.
• Security, privacy, legal accuracy, accessibility, and visible user comprehension override SEO or LLM visibility tactics.

Validation

Before marking work complete:

• every page type has title, description, canonical, OG, Twitter, and schema guidance;
• every schema type has required visible-content fields;
• every news/article page has image fallback policy;
• every hreflang group is based on URL map equivalents;
• sitemap and news-sitemap rules include only intended public canonical URLs;
• robots and llms.txt rules avoid private/admin/API surfaces;
• hidden schema and duplicate canonical patterns are rejected.

Validate skill edits with:

python3 $CODEX_HOME/skills/senior-skill-architect/scripts/lint_production_skill.py $HOME/SKILL/skills/technical-seo-schema-engineer
python3 $HOME/SKILL/plans/seo-llm-skill-cluster/scripts/lint_skill_cluster.py $HOME/SKILL

Forward tests live in evals.json.

Output Shape

Return:

1. Page-type metadata matrix.
2. Schema nodes and required visible fields.
3. Canonical/hreflang rules.
4. Sitemap/RSS/robots/llms.txt inclusion policy.
5. Validation checklist and handoff to regression validator.