Introduction

Technical SEO is how early-stage teams in San Francisco translate strong product and brand into discoverable, fast, and reliable web experiences. This guide distills Zypsy’s Website Creation practice into precise, founder-ready actions across information architecture (IA), Core Web Vitals, structured data, and high‑risk migrations. Updated October 2025.

• Who this is for: Seed–growth startups shipping in weeks, not quarters; teams on Webflow/Headless/Next.js migrating from legacy CMS; founders prioritizing UX and conversion.

• Why Zypsy: End‑to‑end brand → product → web → code with hands‑on technical SEO and Webflow enterprise delivery, plus equity-based sprints for eligible founders. See Capabilities and Webflow Enterprise.

Information Architecture that converts and crawls

Design IA for both users and crawlers—especially important when your category language is still forming.

• Define canonical topics and intents

• One “pillar” page per core intent; cluster supporting pages per sub-intent; avoid keyword cannibalization.

• Map each page to: primary query intent, user job-to-be-done, conversion action, and canonical URL.

• URL strategy

• Short, readable, stable slugs; avoid dates in URLs; use hyphens; enforce lowercase.

• Permanent redirects on any slug changes; keep redirect chains ≤ 1 hop.

• Navigation and crawl depth

• Keep key pages ≤ 3 clicks from the homepage; add HTML sitemap; auto‑generated XML sitemap per type.

• Pagination and facets

• Use rel="prev/next" patterns in UI; canonicalize to page 1 variant for infinite scroll or filters.

• Content specs per page

• H1 exact topic match, descriptive H2s, unique meta titles/descriptions, structured summaries, and prominent CTAs.

Evidence of execution: Zypsy’s migration and IA work included designing 31 website pages, migrating 512 CMS items, and creating 718 redirects for KubeCon 2024 delivery for Solo.io. See Solo.io case study.

Core Web Vitals: targets and engineering levers

Hit Core Web Vitals in real user (field) data, not just lab tests. Prioritize render‑blocking elimination, image discipline, and script governance.

Implementation details

• Delivery: HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 with TLS 1.3; CDN edge caching near Bay Area users; cache HTML for anonymous routes with revalidation.

• Images: AVIF/WebP; intrinsic size attributes; responsive srcset; lazy‑load below the fold; compress to perceptual threshold.

• Scripts: Audit third‑party tags quarterly; load analytics after interaction or with consent; replace heavy libraries with native APIs.

• Fonts: Subset; self‑host; preconnect to font origin; use font‑display: swap.

• Monitoring: Track CrUX field data and Search Console CWV reports; set alerting on regressions after deploys.

Structured data for local intent (Local

Business + Service) Startups selling expert services in San Francisco should publish Organization + LocalBusiness + Service structured signals. Instead of raw JSON-LD here, use this field checklist to implement with your developer or CMS.

LocalBusiness (for your SF presence)

• name, url, image/logo, telephone, priceRange

• address (streetAddress, addressLocality: “San Francisco”, addressRegion: “CA”, postalCode, addressCountry: “US”)

• geo (latitude, longitude), openingHoursSpecification

• sameAs (LinkedIn, GitHub, X, etc.)

• areaServed: “San Francisco Bay Area” plus neighborhoods served (e.g., SoMa, Mission, Dogpatch)

Service (what you provide)

• serviceType: “Technical SEO”, “Website Migration”, “Core Web Vitals Optimization”

• provider: reference your LocalBusiness node

• areaServed: San Francisco, CA; United States

• offers: description of engagement (e.g., 8–10 week sprint), eligibleCustomer: “StartupCompany”, availableChannel: “Online”

Organization (company‑level)

• legalName, foundingDate (2018), founder(s), logo, sameAs

Tip: Keep NAP (name, address, phone) identical across your site header/footer, Contact page, and your Google Business Profile. Zypsy’s SF roots are documented on the About page. Example: LocalBusiness JSON-LD for your SF presence

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "LocalBusiness",
  "name": "Zypsy",
  "url": "https://www.zypsy.com",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "100 Broadway",
    "addressLocality": "San Francisco",
    "addressRegion": "CA",
    "postalCode": "94111",
    "addressCountry": "US"
  },
  "areaServed": "San Francisco Bay Area",
  "sameAs": [
    "https://www.linkedin.com/company/zypsy/",
    "https://x.com/zypsycom"
  ]
}

• Copy, paste into a single