8 CRITICAL SEO CHECKLIST ITEMS FOR WEBSITE DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT

1. Don’t Forget the SEO Basics

Consistent attention to basic SEO provides a solid foundation for any website. Accounting for details like alt tags and title tags strengthens content and makes your site more accessible to both search engines. The tags should be attached to every image and anchor text, accurately describing what’s on them.

Another long-time feature of SEO, the importance of metadata hasn’t diminished – it has new changes.

Metadata can best be described as a concise informative snapshot of other data, furnishing basic info about website content.

Well-structured meta titles and descriptions make it easier to find content, increases click-through-rate (CTR), and reinforces information organization. Creating metadata manually makes it more accurate and site-specific, driving better results than creating it automatically.

2. Use Proper Structure

Site structure contributes to consistent user experience, but a well-structured website can also enhance SEO. Users and Google are looking for some of the same things.

 Proper structure leads to site links, outlining your featured pages each time your website appears in search. The valuable SEO advantage makes it easier for visitors to navigate your site and points them to the information they came for.

Sitelinks are awarded by Google, recognizing websites with proper structure. If you present a messy website structure, you’ll likely be passed over, losing the SEO benefits of site links.

3. Link Internally for Better Crawling and Indexing

Google admittedly isn’t perfect, crawling and detecting all the content on websites. That makes it even more important to maximize the impact of your top pages. Linking internally helps support your site’s structure, in terms of ranking and indexing. The strategy is particularly effective when new content is linked to steady, evergreen pages Google already recognizes as relevant.

This goes double for using proper “no index” tags throughout your site. Certain pages like “tag” pages typically do better by not having them indexed, giving more power to your service and product pages. Each particular website structure is different, and your web developer needs to understand the site architecture extremely well to get this nailed down properly.

4. Understand Canonicalization

Strong canonicalization ensures every piece of content on your website has a unique URL. Done correctly, the process brings greater authority to your site, preventing the benefits of quality links and content from being diluted.

5. Ensure Proper Robots.txt and Sitemap.xml

You can’t blame Google for your website performance if you don’t send search engines the proper messages. If you’ve added a disallow directive to a Robots.txt file during development, make sure it is removed before the site goes live.

Both the Robots.txt and Sitemap.xml files should be properly formatted upon live launch and ready for your SEO professional to take the next steps. With the Sitemap.xml file, it should be submitted to Google Search Console.

6. Manage and Implement Structured Data

Including structured data from schema.org can elevate your game. It’s vital to make sure your structured data is coded properly. Automatic tools don’t always uncover structured data problems, so manually checking for coding errors is the best defense.

 

• Local Business Data
• Navigation
• Breadcrumbs
• Image Galleries

7. Speed up with Gzip and Browser Caching

Web development professional or website design company should understand how these concepts play into the final result.

Servers using Gzip compression perform best, particularly in today’s mobile-first environment, where fast speeds are paramount to positive user experience. The technology is standard on many servers, but when your site suffers performance shortfalls, a compression problem might be slowing you down.

8. Page Load Speed is Critical

Speed Update announcement is one huge reason to make sure your site loads fast, especially in mobile search. More importantly, you want your site to load fast on desktop as well.

Your web development professional needs to consider all areas where speed can be improved.