Technical SEO for micro sites — Core Web Vitals, schema and speed concepts illustrated

Technical SEO for Micro Sites (CWV, Schema, Speed)

Q: Do micro sites need all the same plugins as a big blog?

No. Keep it lean—one performance plugin, one SEO plugin, optional image/CDN helper. Fewer plugins = faster Core Web Vitals gains.

Q: Should I use AMP?

No. Modern CWV-optimized pages usually outperform AMP while keeping your stack simple and consistent.

Q: Is a page-builder OK?

Use only if it outputs minimal markup. Prefer native blocks or custom HTML for best LCP and INP.

Ship a lightning-fast stack, pass Core Web Vitals, and add clean schema. This blueprint keeps a micro site lean, crawlable, and conversion-ready.

Core Web VitalsSchemaSpeedWordPress

Core Web Vitals: pass these thresholds

Metric	Good	Why it matters	Fast wins
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)	≤ 2.5 s	Perceived load speed of main content	Compress/resize hero, serve WebP/AVIF, inline hero CSS, preconnect CDN
INP (Interaction to Next Paint)	≤ 200 ms	Responsiveness to user input	Defer non-critical JS, reduce listeners, avoid heavy third-party widgets
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)	≤ 0.10	Visual stability	Set `width/height` (or aspect-ratio) on images/iframes; reserve ad space

Diagnostic

Test on a real phone with throttling (3G/Slow 4G). Use PageSpeed Insights for field data (CrUX) and Lighthouse for lab. Fix LCP → CLS → INP in that order.

Lean speed stack (WordPress micro site)

Hosting & cache

Use HTTP/2 or HTTP/3; enable Brotli/Gzip.
Server cache + page cache (full HTML). Keep plugin count low.
CDN for assets. Enable stale-while-revalidate.

Theme & plugins

Light base (Twenty Twenty-One + custom HTML blocks).
One performance plugin: cache, minify, defer, image lazy-load.
One SEO plugin for meta + XML; disable unused features.

Images, fonts & CSS

Images

Export at real display size. Serve AVIF (fallback WebP/PNG).
Add explicit width/height (prevents CLS).
Use loading="lazy" below the fold; fetchpriority="high" for the hero.
Provide srcset + sizes for responsive loading.

<img src="/images/hero.avif" width="1200" height="680"
     srcset="/images/hero-600.avif 600w, /images/hero-900.avif 900w, /images/hero-1200.avif 1200w"
     sizes="(max-width:700px) 100vw, 920px"
     alt="Micro site technical SEO hero" fetchpriority="high" decoding="async">

Fonts

Prefer system UI stack for zero downloads.
If using a webfont: subset, variable (1 file), display:swap, self-hosted.

/* System UI stack */
font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, Segoe UI, Roboto, Ubuntu, Cantarell, Noto Sans, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji";

CSS

Inline critical CSS (above the fold); load the rest deferred.
Minify. Avoid heavy utility frameworks on micro sites.

<link rel="preload" as="style" href="/assets/app.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/assets/app.css" media="print" onload="this.media='all'">

Scripts & third-party

Mark non-critical scripts as defer (or async when safe).
Delay third-party JS (widgets, embeds) until user interaction.
Replace heavy embeds (YouTube, maps) with click-to-load placeholders.

<script src="/js/app.js" defer></script>
<!-- Delay a third-party until interaction -->
<script>
  let loaded=false; function load3p(){
    if(loaded) return; loaded=true;
    const s=document.createElement('script'); s.src='https://example.com/widget.js'; s.defer=true;
    document.body.appendChild(s);
  }
  ['click','scroll','keydown','touchstart'].forEach(ev => window.addEventListener(ev, load3p,{once:true,passive:true}));
</script>

Schema pack (JSON-LD)

Ship clean JSON-LD inline (no theme bloat). Typical set: Article, BreadcrumbList, optional FAQPage and HowTo. (If Rank Math outputs the same types, disable duplicates for this post.)

Crawl, index & sitemaps

Robots & indexability

Do not block CSS/JS in robots.txt.
Only noindex thin tags, search results, paginated archives.
Canonicalize duplicates (UTM, sort params). Avoid tag bloat.

# robots.txt (safe baseline)
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php
Sitemap: https://incomeorbit.website/sitemap_index.xml

Sitemap & feeds

Use your SEO plugin XML sitemap. Keep only canonical content.
Ping GSC after major publishes/updates.

Monitoring & alerts

PageSpeed Insights (field data): track LCP/INP/CLS for top URLs.
Search Console: Core Web Vitals + Coverage (indexing).
Logs: 404 spikes, 5xx, crawl budget (weekly).
Uptime: external monitor with latency alerts (< 800 ms TTFB target).

Implementation order

Fix LCP (hero size/format, inline critical CSS, preconnect CDN).
Stabilize CLS (explicit sizes, reserve space, font fallback).
Lower INP (defer/delay JS, remove heavy widgets, reduce listeners).
Add JSON-LD (Article + Breadcrumb; FAQ only if content exists).
Lock caching/CDN and set up monitoring.

🚀 Get the Micro Website Starter Kit

Open the SEO Checklist
Hub-and-Spoke Linking

FAQ

Do micro sites need all the same plugins as a big blog?

No. Keep it lean—one performance plugin, one SEO plugin, optional image/CDN helper. Fewer plugins = faster CWV wins.

Should I use AMP?

No. Modern CWV-optimized pages usually outperform AMP while keeping your stack simple.

Is a page-builder OK?

Only if it outputs minimal markup. Prefer native blocks or custom HTML for best LCP/INP.

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