When a site is slow or poorly indexed, the draft is rarely the first bug. The template is: a late hero image, a layout that moves, or a canonical tag pointing at the wrong host.
Three metrics, three causes
| Metric | Usual cause | First fix |
|---|---|---|
| LCP | Hero image or a blocking font | Give the image dimensions, a modern format, and priority |
| CLS | Images, ads, or embeds without a box | Reserve the height before the asset arrives |
| INP | Long tasks on click | Split the work, drop tags that do not earn their cost |
Measure the article template on a phone-sized viewport. A fast homepage with a slow post is still a slow site.
Indexing basics
- One canonical URL per page, on the hostname you want indexed.
- A sitemap that lists those URLs, linked from
robots.txt. robots.txtthat does not block CSS, the sitemap, or the posts by accident.- Titles and descriptions written for the page, not copied from the homepage.
Submit the sitemap in Search Console after the canonical host is stable. Changing the host later wastes the crawl you just asked for.
After each deploy
Check one article, the homepage, robots.txt, and the sitemap. If the custom domain and the default host disagree, fix DNS or cache before you add more content. Deployment steps are in Deploy on Cloudflare Pages.