Umbraco SEO & Content Strategy

Umbraco SEO is the practice of optimising an Umbraco CMS website for search engine visibility, but it goes beyond standard SEO because Umbraco's architecture requires technical decisions that directly affect crawlability, indexing, and structured data output.

Unlike WordPress, where SEO plugins handle meta tags and sitemaps automatically, Umbraco requires developers to implement canonical URLs, XML sitemaps, robots.txt directives, Open Graph tags, and JSON-LD schema markup through custom code in Razor views and route handlers. A developer who doesn't understand SEO will build an Umbraco site that's technically invisible to search engines despite looking great to users.

According to SparkToro's 2025 research, AI-powered search engines now drive over 527% more referral traffic year-on-year, and Google AI Overviews reach 1.5 billion users monthly. This means Umbraco sites also need to be optimised for AI citation, a discipline called Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) that most agencies aren't yet addressing.

Our SEO work is structured around three phases that reflect how search visibility actually works in 2026:

Technical foundation (Month 1) — We fix the infrastructure: XML sitemap generation, canonical tag implementation, robots.txt configuration for both traditional and AI crawlers, schema.org structured data (Organization, BreadcrumbList, Article, FAQ, Service), security headers (HSTS, CSP), and Core Web Vitals optimisation. For Umbraco specifically, this includes checking SSR rendering, output caching configuration, and media delivery via CDN.

Content optimisation (Months 2-3) — We audit existing content for AI citability, whether passages are structured in the 134-167 word range that AI systems prefer to cite. We add question-based headings, definitional opening statements, and source-attributed statistics. We create or improve llms.txt files that help AI systems understand your site structure.

Ongoing measurement (Monthly) — We track rankings, AI citation appearances, Core Web Vitals, and organic traffic using Plausible, Google Search Console, and manual AI platform checks.

We track three categories of metrics that together give a complete picture of search visibility:

Traditional SEO metrics — Organic traffic trends, keyword ranking positions, click-through rates from Google Search Console, and Core Web Vitals scores. We use Plausible Analytics for privacy-respecting traffic measurement, supplemented by Google Search Console for search-specific data.

AI visibility metrics — We manually check whether your brand and key pages appear in responses from ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, and Bing Copilot. We also monitor AI crawler access logs (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) to verify your content is being indexed by AI systems.

Content citability scoring — Using our proprietary GEO audit methodology, we score each key page on a 0-100 citability scale that measures passage structure, source attribution density, question-answer format usage, and self-contained answer block quality. This predicts how likely AI systems are to cite your content.

• Comprehensive Audits: A full review of your site’s SEO health, including technical issues, site speed, and keyword performance.
• On-Page Optimisation: Enhancing headings, metadata, images, and internal linking to boost search engine visibility.
• Content Creation and Optimisation: SEO-focused content tailored to your audience’s needs and search intent.
• Technical SEO Fixes: From crawl errors and broken links to schema implementation, we ensure your site meets search engine standards.
• Monthly Reporting and Analysis: Regular insights into your SEO performance, keyword rankings, and traffic trends to track success.

We offer three engagement models, each designed around the reality that SEO is a continuous process, not a one-off project:

Audit-only (one-off, from GBP 500) — A comprehensive technical SEO and GEO audit with a prioritised action plan. You implement the recommendations yourself or with your existing developer. Ideal if you have in-house technical capability but need expert direction.

Audit + implementation (project-based, from GBP 1,500) — We audit, then implement the technical fixes ourselves: schema markup, sitemap generation, robots.txt configuration, content restructuring, and Core Web Vitals improvements. Typical project duration: 2-4 weeks.

Ongoing SEO retainer (monthly, from GBP 500) — Continuous optimisation including monthly performance reporting, content citability improvements, schema updates, AI visibility monitoring, and proactive response to algorithm changes. No lock-in contracts, you stay because you see results, not because you're contractually obligated.