SEO list for creating the *perfect* website

[MirandaP]

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!

[EGOL]

I agree.... my answer for NO CMS is based upon in-house work.  If I had clients this could be a huge briarpatch.

[RobertFisher]

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.

[AlanMosley]

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.

[Ben-HPB]

All Great Comments, and Don't forget the basics such as.

1. Setup a Google Account with marketing@domain.com
2. Setup Google Webmaster Tools
3. Setup Bing Webmaster Tools
4. Upload Google,  MSN verification HTML Code
5. Build a Google /sitemap.xml  file and upload then submit it to Google
6. Signup for Google Analytics and setup tracking code on each page for tracking
7. Setup Funnels within Google Analytics for tracking conversions
8. Run a Server Check to test headers to make sure that the server is not a virtual server, blacklisted server
9. Run Xenu for Broken Links, work to get any links fixed
10. Web page title, description and heading tags.
11. Develop a list for where the Company can improve content based upon the discovery of low hanging fruit “keywords”
12. Run Competitor Analysis Reports to help understand how to improve rankings
13. Build a robots.txt file to put in the root of the website
14. Run keyword list and find other opportunities for rankings
15. Run Reports to determine back links
16. Run Reports on competition back links and look for areas we can leverage for expansion of external linking
17. Add to Google Maps
18. Add to Bing Maps
19. Test with SEOMOZ Tools
20. Run a report to find possible industry related forums as well other sites to post on for driving more traffic and related links
21. Setup 301 redirect for website to go to www
22. Setup Twitter profile
23. Setup Facebook Page
24. Setup Youtube Channel
25. 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.

[AWCthreads]

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.

[AlanMosley]

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.

[EGOL]

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.

[AWCthreads]

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.

[AlanMosley]

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

[MirandaP]

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?

[RobertFisher]

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,

[AlanMosley]

#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.