Using Cursor for SEO and Modern Web Dev: A Practical Guide
Thom Wilson
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Why Cursor?
Cursor helps you ship faster without sacrificing quality. It pairs AI with your editor to speed up content edits, schema, internal linking, and component tweaks.
High‑leverage workflows
- Mass meta updates: generate title/description variants and apply with consistent patterns.
- Schema additions: inject JSON‑LD (Article/FAQ) across posts; validate with Rich Results.
- Internal links: add related links at scale based on topic clusters.
- Core Web Vitals fixes: add sizes/lazy loading and defer scripts safely.
- Component edits: header/footer improvements with a11y and responsive checks.
Guardrails
- Always review diffs before saving.
- Keep a style guide and schema playbook in the repo.
- Track changes with GTM and GSC annotations to measure impact.
Prompt patterns that work
- Rewrite with constraints: “Rewrite the intro in 2 sentences, keep ‘Des Moines SEO’ in the first 120 characters, active voice.”
- Diff-aware edits: “Only add FAQPage JSON‑LD below the closing article tag; do not change existing content.”
- Internal link sweeps: “Suggest 3 contextual links from this post to these 6 targets with anchor text variants.”
Audit checklist in Cursor
- Title ≤ 60 chars, meta description 140–160 chars; primary keyword near the front.
- One H1; ordered H2/H3; scannable bullets.
- Article/FAQ JSON‑LD present and valid.
- Images have width/height, lazy/async; AVIF/WebP where possible.