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 [email protected]
- 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.
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
-
Advice on estate agent website SEO next steps
Hi everyone, I have been working on the SEO for this website for a while now and have had a good amount of success increasing the traffic and rankings. However our main hurdle is improving conversions on the actual website - we want to encourage more people to book a valuation. Does anybody have any suggestions on how we can improve this? The website is www.richardkendall.co.uk Thank you
Web Design | | sophiecrosby970 -
What are the most common reasons for a website being slow to load
I've been advised that too many requests are being sent (presumably to the server?), how can I reduce these and were else should I look to increase speed?
Web Design | | FBS1 -
Is having copy above the fold still beneficial for SEO
Many sites nowadays are approaching a section based approach with copy further down the page. Is it still valid to keep copy above the fold now for SEO. Will it impact on SEO if you have to scroll down the page?
Web Design | | vortexuk0 -
Lots of Listing Pages with Thin Content on Real Estate Web Site-Best to Set them to No-Index?
Greetings Moz Community: As a commercial real estate broker in Manhattan I run a web site with over 600 pages. Basically the pages are organized in the following categories: 1. Neighborhoods (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/neighborhoods/midtown-manhattan) 25 PAGES Low bounce rate 2. Types of Space (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/commercial-space/loft-space)
Web Design | | Kingalan1
15 PAGES Low bounce rate. 3. Blog (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/how-long-does-leasing-process-take
30 PAGES Medium/high bounce rate 4. Services (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/brokerage-services/relocate-to-new-office-space) High bounce rate
3 PAGES 5. About Us (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/about-us/what-we-do
4 PAGES High bounce rate 6. Listings (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/305-fifth-avenue-office-suite-1340sf)
300 PAGES High bounce rate (65%), thin content 7. Buildings (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/928-broadway
300 PAGES Very high bounce rate (exceeding 75%) Most of the listing pages do not have more than 100 words. My SEO firm is advising me to set them "No-Index, Follow". They believe the thin content could be hurting me. Is this an acceptable strategy? I am concerned that when Google detects 300 pages set to "No-Follow" they could interpret this as the site seeking to hide something and penalize us. Also, the building pages have a low click thru rate. Would it make sense to set them to "No-Follow" as well? Basically, would it increase authority in Google's eyes if we set pages that have thin content and/or low click thru rates to "No-Follow"? Any harm in doing this for about half the pages on the site? I might add that while I don't suffer from any manual penalty volume has gone down substantially in the last month. We upgraded the site in early June and somehow 175 pages were submitted to Google that should not have been indexed. A removal request has been made for those pages. Prior to that we were hit by Panda in April 2012 with search volume dropping from about 7,000 per month to 3,000 per month. Volume had increased back to 4,500 by April this year only to start tanking again. It was down to 3,600 in June. About 30 toxic links were removed in late April and a disavow file was submitted with Google in late April for removal of links from 80 toxic domains. Thanks in advance for your responses!! Alan0 -
Duplicate Titles for Large Lists
Our blog (www.cowleyweb.com/blog) has recently been given topic categories so we can utilize our old blogs. Otherwise, users would only see what's new and never look back (our blogs are organized by the month they were published) and all that hard work would kind of be a waste after a while. So we came up with a few topics (i.e. social media, internet marketing, etc.) and adding those as tags to blogs. Now, users can click the topics and get a results page on our blog of all the previously published blogs related to that topic. Sounds great. BUT, it's hurting our SEO crawl report. If the list goes beyond one page of search results, the 2nd and subsequent pages get dinged as "duplicate title" b/c they share the same title (i.e. "Social Media"). How can I fix this? I'm not the web designer but something tells me maybe some sort of tag that says "Page 2" or something would do the trick. We use Drupal which is good for customization. I assume tons of bloggers and websites have dealt with this problem. Please help. Want to give the web guy some solutions. Thank you.
Web Design | | JCunningham0 -
Best layout pages for SEO
Dear all, what would be the ideal layout of a webpage for SEO? How would a homepage and landingspage look like? Thanks in advance! Best regards, Ben
Web Design | | HMK-NL0 -
How do I learn how to build custom wordpress websites?
Is wordpress a good platform to build websites with? If so, what are some good resources to learn how to build custom websites using wordpress?
Web Design | | Lael0 -
Do you have an SEO 'plugin' recommendation for SharePoint 2007?
I'm not a programmer and our 200+ person company isn't going to change their CMS just because I asked them nicely. Do you know of any SEO plugin I can use on SharePoint 2007? I just don't want to have to keep going into each of 110 websites time after time.
Web Design | | DaveGerecht0