Project Vera Advanced

A faster, deeper 10-week website course for an 11-year-old who can handle double the workload.

Week 4: SEO, Useful Content, Sitemaps and robots.txt

Goal: Cover the original Week 7 and Week 8: optimise pages and create search engine files.

Build this week: Optimise the calculator pages and create sitemap.xml and robots.txt.

Skills: SEO titles, Meta descriptions, Headings, Alt text, Internal links, sitemap.xml, robots.txt

What she should understand

SEO is not just about search engines. It is about making pages clearer and more useful. A good page tells visitors what it is about, answers real questions, has clear headings and links to related pages.

Step-by-step build

  1. Open the lemonade calculator page.
  2. Add a strong page title and meta description.
  3. Add an explanation section before or after the calculator.
  4. Add an example calculation.
  5. Add a FAQ section.
  6. Add internal links from the homepage and tools page.
  7. Create sitemap.xml.
  8. Create robots.txt.
  9. Upload and test both files in the browser.

Good SEO head example

<title>Lemonade Stand Profit Calculator for Kids</title>
<meta name="description" content="A simple lemonade stand profit calculator that helps kids learn about sales, costs and profit.">

Useful content sections

<h1>Lemonade Stand Profit Calculator</h1>

<h2>What This Calculator Does</h2>
<p>This calculator helps you work out whether your lemonade stand made money.</p>

<h2>Example</h2>
<p>If you sell 20 cups for $2 each, your sales are $40. If your lemons and cups cost $12, your profit is $28.</p>

<h2>Frequently Asked Questions</h2>
<h3>What are sales?</h3>
<p>Sales are the money you receive from customers.</p>

<h3>What are costs?</h3>
<p>Costs are the money you spend to make or sell something.</p>

<h3>What is profit?</h3>
<p>Profit is the money left after you subtract costs from sales.</p>

sitemap.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="https://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url><loc>https://example.com/project-vera-practice/</loc></url>
  <url><loc>https://example.com/project-vera-practice/about.html</loc></url>
  <url><loc>https://example.com/project-vera-practice/tools.html</loc></url>
  <url><loc>https://example.com/project-vera-practice/dog-years-calculator.html</loc></url>
  <url><loc>https://example.com/project-vera-practice/lemonade-calculator.html</loc></url>
</urlset>

robots.txt

User-agent: *
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://example.com/project-vera-practice/sitemap.xml

SEO checklist

  • Each page has a unique title.
  • Each page has a unique meta description.
  • Each page has one clear H1.
  • Useful pages have H2 sections.
  • Images have alt text.
  • Important pages are linked from another page.
  • Sitemap URLs match the real live URLs.

Extension task

Ask AI to create five FAQ questions for the lemonade calculator page, then choose only the best three and rewrite them in her own words.
Previous week Next week