Static-site SEO that actually survives Cloudflare

A marketing site does not need a server to rank. It needs one URL per idea, a title that matches the search, and HTML that arrives before the crawler gets bored.

Ship HTML, not a handshake

Cloudflare Workers with static assets is a CDN with opinions. The winning shape is still boring:

1. One document per route.
2. A canonical tag that agrees with the sitemap.
3. No client render required to read the first paragraph.

Astro is useful here because the default output is HTML. If you add a framework island, keep it off the article body.

Canonicals without drama

Pick a host and a slash policy, then never invent a third version of the same page. This journal uses https://blog.registermysite.com with no trailing slash. The sitemap, Open Graph URL, and <link rel="canonical"> all print the same string.

Redirect leftovers at the edge (www to apex, HTTP to HTTPS, trailing slash to none). Do not leave that work to the HTML.

Core Web Vitals are a side effect

If the page is pre-rendered, the remaining work is fonts, images, and third-party scripts.

• Preload only the fonts you paint above the fold.
• Prefer SVG or compressed WebP. Always set width and height.
• Prefetch internal links on hover — Astro can do this without a bundle.

You should not need a tag manager on a 1,200-word essay.

Structured data that matches the page

Search engines are allergic to fiction. If the JSON-LD says BlogPosting, the visible headline, date, and author must match. This template prints Organization + WebSite on every page and BlogPosting + BreadcrumbList on posts.

A checklist you can reuse

• robots.txt points at the real sitemap.
• RSS exists for humans and a few machines that still care.
• llms.txt describes the site in one screen.
• 404 is an actual page, not the host default.
• Images have alt text that would still make sense if the file 404’d.

None of this is clever. That is the point.