SEO list for creating the *perfect* website
-
If you could build your website from scratch and have your developers do anything you want (within reason), what list of SEO requirements would you send them?
Does anyone know of any good articles on the perfect SEO wish list?
Happy Holidays!
-
I agree.... my answer for NO CMS is based upon in-house work. If I had clients this could be a huge briarpatch.
-
And, I think that was the point. If the world were perfect, I would have a sailboat that was very fast like a J Boat and was the perfect cruiser like a Pacific Seacraft. Everything is a tradeoff.
You and EGOL made great points around why no CMS. I agree. As an agency we just don't have that luxury for our clients and so we use them. Just two sides to a coin.
-
I am not saying you cannot rank using a CMS, but simply you can do better by hand. A road sweeper can clean the street, but sometimes you need to get out with a broom to get into the corners, or even bend down and pick something up by hand.
-
All Great Comments, and Don't forget the basics such as.
- Setup a Google Account with marketing@domain.com
- Setup Google Webmaster Tools
- Setup Bing Webmaster Tools
- Upload Google, MSN verification HTML Code
- Build a Google /sitemap.xml file and upload then submit it to Google
- Signup for Google Analytics and setup tracking code on each page for tracking
- Setup Funnels within Google Analytics for tracking conversions
- Run a Server Check to test headers to make sure that the server is not a virtual server, blacklisted server
- Run Xenu for Broken Links, work to get any links fixed
- Web page title, description and heading tags.
- Develop a list for where the Company can improve content based upon the discovery of low hanging fruit “keywords”
- Run Competitor Analysis Reports to help understand how to improve rankings
- Build a robots.txt file to put in the root of the website
- Run keyword list and find other opportunities for rankings
- Run Reports to determine back links
- Run Reports on competition back links and look for areas we can leverage for expansion of external linking
- Add to Google Maps
- Add to Bing Maps
- Test with SEOMOZ Tools
- Run a report to find possible industry related forums as well other sites to post on for driving more traffic and related links
- Setup 301 redirect for website to go to www
- Setup Twitter profile
- Setup Facebook Page
- Setup Youtube Channel
- Setup a Google + Page
This is just a Phase 1 List there are so many other things to think about, focus on your visitors and content, watch your visitors and tweak it based on behavior. Look at your bounce rates, Time on site, ETC.
-
Not everyone codes for different reasons. Dummies use html editors for dummies, so put me in that group. We use a CMS and have plenty of page 1 ranks. Sorry, but me and my kids don't live in an ideal world.
-
If someone has just created a site with a CMS, it is hard to tell them it may not be a good idea. Its like telling them their kids are ugly.
-
I agree with not using a CMS.... with the exception of a couple of blogs my sites are all hard-coded html.... it enables you to make finely-crafted arrows.
Some people might give the thumbs down for a comment like this.... they are using crooked sticks for their arrows.
-
If it is a local ecommerce site (doing primary business in metro/state), local SEO is critical at startup. It is a good way to generate sales quickly while you build links/page authority/domain authority for broader more competitive keywords.
-
He did ask for a perfect site, in that case yes, i would suggest hand coded with complete control. I agree with the trade of with cost of hiring a developer and the ease of DIY CMS, but to be perfect it should be bespoke no redirects, no html errors, no script or css mixed in html. well segmented with html5, described with microdata, prefect crawlability. You just can’t get all this done perfectly with CMS.
But i agree there are horses for courses
-
Okay, If using a developer to build a site from scratch, this is a list of considerations that I have got so far.
Site Architecture
Use keyword rich breadcrumbs
Internal Link structure
- Page Depth
- Quantity of Internal Links
- Quality of Internal links
- Index Canonicalization
XML Sitemaps
Page Optimisation
- Page Titles
- Meta Descriptions
- H1 Tags
- URLS
- Duplicate Content
- Robots.txt
- HTTP Status Codes
- Image alt attricbutes
- Textual Content
Anything else?
-
Good job Miranda,
This is a thought provoking question. When I first read Alan's response I thought, "wait a minute, Alan" and then realized he answered it perfectly for Alan. I am not a developer and the thought of providing a client a site that required them to have one available did not make sense. At the same time, I can tell you with several of the known CMS's available there are problems within the SEO that if not addressed are at least annoying.
So, I would say, to the developers:
Use a CMS that allows the client the most ease of use within the context of providing the best framework for their project.
Make the key on site/on page SEO pieces easy for someone with even a small amt of ability: Title tags (Alan would give us code that would not allow a duplicate as an example), You would be required to use an H1, etc.
I would tell them I wanted a url structure that was almost flat.
That an internal link had to go to something relevant.
But, before I went to them, I would be very clear what it was we desired the web site to do for us.
Thanks,
-
#1 i would not use a CMS, i would code it from scratch and make sure I got a prefect score using the Bing SEO toolkit, making sure the search engines can crawl your site perfectly is something that is hard to fix later on down the road.
#2 I would make sure I have a good linking structure to allow link juice to flow to the correct places.
#3 I would think long and hard on my user friendly URL’s from the start
That’s a good start, I will let others add or subtract from the list.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Non-wildcard SSL risky for SEO?
I have a potential client who doesn't seem to be using wildcard SSLs in a multi-site scenario (over 40 sites) - what I'm wondering is the scope of Google's inspection of a site's SSL in this case: https://www.domain.com (good to go) https://domain.com (certificate error) Will Googlebot/Google possibly consider the entire TLD insecure? Could the secured, www-version of the site end up with the "Site is not secure" message in the SERPs as well? Could this invisibly affect the client's rankings? PS: Yes, I know that the right thing to do is go wildcard, but I need an answer to this before recommending a large purchase to them.
Web Design | | scottclark0 -
Is there a way to host my website.com/BLOG URL PATH from a different host than my main website.com host?
Is there a way to host my website.com/BLOG URL PATH from a different host than my main website.com host? Is it accomplish-able with DNS settings or are there other considerations that might lead to complications doing this? Specifically, we are investigating install WordPress on a dedicated host, JUST to power the blog for our main website, but our main website is on an internal proprietary hosting and CMS. So basically we're trying to host: website.com --> OFF OF CURRENT INTERNAL HOSTING website.com/blog/ --> OFF OF THIRD PARTY HOSTING (USING WORDPRESS) I know this is a technical question beyond the scope of SEO, but I'm figuring there are members of the community that may have tried this already so I'm floating it here. Many thanks! Cheers.
Web Design | | AlexVelazquez0 -
Why is google still crawling my old website pages?
Why is google still looking at my old indexed pages and not my new index. ? Why are they crawling my old website links when none of them are available? How do I overcome these problems?
Web Design | | optimalspaces0 -
Website rankings drop significantly after moving to new hosting provider
My website - www.isacleanse.co.nz has dropped from being top10 rankings for all of my keywords to not even being in top 50 after just checking now. It used to be hosted on: www.1stdomains.nz
Web Design | | IsaCleanse
It got migrated to Sitground servers about a month ago See attached screenshot - would moving hosting provider cause such a huge drop? Or would there be anything else I should be looking at ? J2ahi0 -
Any alternative techniques to display tabbed content without using Javascript / JSON and be SEO Friendly?
John Mueller's input in the EGWMH hangout suggests that Google MAY ignore expandable content served by Javascript. Are there any alternative techniques to display tabbed content without using Javascript / JSON and be SEO Friendly? I do however view these as good for website interactivity and UX - and see many examples of websites performing well and ranking highly whilst using these techniques - are there any Google friendly ways to serve content on a page so that search bots can recognise and choose to crawl / consume the content as legitimate fodder?
Web Design | | Fergclaw0 -
Adobe "Muse" on SEO?
Anyone ever had any experience with this tool? Any feedback on how adobe muse does with SEO and markup is appreciated! update 1: Really? nobody has any comment on this?
Web Design | | Raydon0 -
Wordpress Blog Providing SEO to Main Site
Hi, I recently started a very much "learn on the job" SEO position, transitioning from a copywriting background. We currently have a wordpress blog up and running (and producing some decent quality content too I hope!) at example.com/blog/ and a sign up page located at example.com (sorry, can't put the address right now) for a site that is being custom built as it's got some nifty software linking to back end systems. My question is whether the content on the blog will bring SEO benefits to the main domain or whether it'll just be for the blog itself? If the latter, should we navigate the blog onto the a separate page of the main site? Thanks so much! I'm learning as much as I can as quickly as I can, but somethings still get me in a little bit of a tizzy.
Web Design | | LeahHutcheon0 -
Which Hat of SEO (Black/White) Goes with this Green Lace Dress?
Doing some research (honestly) I came across this page: http://www.modcloth.com/th/green-lace-dress That page ranks very well for the phrase "green lace dress" - #2 in Google for me. I'm sure there's a good amount of links coming into it, but on the surface there's only 1 mention of green on the page and 2 mentions of lace. Looking at the code, you can see ModCloth is using the Quick View links below the products to display a more detailed description of the product - wherein lies many more instances of green and lace. So I ask: Which color of SEO hat goes with this green lace dress - Black or White? Is it good SEO to only show the product descriptions when the user initiates the Quick View? Or is it shady SEO to hide so much text from the immediate view of the user? Please select one and explain why.
Web Design | | rball10