Technical SEO Decisions to Make Before Website Design and Build
(1) HTTP or HTTPS
Decide on whether to use HTTP or HTTPS. The thumb rule is that if you are considering secure services or priviledged access to data, then you need HTTPS on those pages at a minimum. This will help allay your customer's fears about providing information without worrying about identity theft or their card information being siphoned away.
(2) Decide unique URLs for each web pages
A developer should remember that each web page should be allowed to access via only one URL, and not just a unique ID. The search engines use URL to uniquely identify and locate web pages not unique IDs
(3) Site speed
There are two benefits of increasing the speed at which your site/web page loads: better user experience and better search rankings. Users don't like slow loading pages (remeber dial-up connection?). Slow site could mean users presssing the Back button to get out of your site with great speed. This also means lost visibility of your site and/or loss business. The other thing is, Google announced in 2010 that it uses site speed to rank sites/pages. If your site loads slow, it will be ranked lower consequently losing visibility and customers. Developers need to spend time to make sure they deliver web pages where all its components load pretty fast and completely.
(4) Location and Languages
If you are plan to target users from different countres, then you should adopt Internationalization standards to develop your web site. The site shoul be multi-lingual, multi-regional or both. This means having unique content by languages/region, flexible site designs, cascading style sheets, and additional infrastructure.
(5) Flexible platform to edit site
The platform that you are going to use to develop a web site should be flexible enough for you to publish latest changes and content quickly and regularly without having to spend too much time and effort. This will help you keep your site fresh and relevant.
(6) Logical roadmap
Besides being aethestically pleasing, a website has to be useful. Since Google considers the content and struvture of a site when it ranks for a seach, it would be very useful to map out and mock up a design for the site ("wireframing") and run it by few test users to make sure that it makes sense and is intuitive.
(7) Contact Information
Make sure that the contact information is visible and accessible (and not buried in sub pages). Make sure you have a number, email address and contact form available to easily contact someone.
(8) Social Media Integration
There are lot of social platforms and to gain visibililty it good to promote your business' presence on them on your website. Integrating these platforms into your website will help boost your SEO, improve your business' footprint on the social web and build your following across numerous social platforms.
(9) Mobile-Ready version
Since smartphones and tablets are driving an increasing amount of web traffic, and the numbers are only going to grow in the future, it makes sense to have a mobile version of the site available for the mobile device users. Responsive web design enables to use fluid widths, so that your website layout will adapt to the screen on which it is being browsed.
(10) FAQ
People have a lot of questions. Its nice to have a FAQ page that addresses most common questions and concerns. Questions related to materials, ingredients used, shipping info, cencellation policy and sizing are common and should be addresses as best as possible.
(11) Good web host
Make sure you get a mainstream provider to host your website. Cheaper platforms are usually not well maintained, crash often and slow. Bad hosting could mean frustrating user expereience. It can also result in lower Google search engine ranking.
(12) Somethings you don't need in your website
- Anything that autoplays, whether its music or video
- Flash
- Music
- Extra informaton and media
- Image-only objects for your navigational items
- Minimize use of tables
- Make your links descriptive and use your keywords in the link text
(13) Browser compatible
Make sure that users can use the browser of their choice to view your website. Find out which are the most popular browsers used to access your website, and make sure during testing that all those browsers and versions are used to test the website before deploying it for general users
This is based on article https://moz.com/blog/strategic-seo-decisions-before-website-design-build
(1) HTTP or HTTPS
Decide on whether to use HTTP or HTTPS. The thumb rule is that if you are considering secure services or priviledged access to data, then you need HTTPS on those pages at a minimum. This will help allay your customer's fears about providing information without worrying about identity theft or their card information being siphoned away.
(2) Decide unique URLs for each web pages
A developer should remember that each web page should be allowed to access via only one URL, and not just a unique ID. The search engines use URL to uniquely identify and locate web pages not unique IDs
(3) Site speed
There are two benefits of increasing the speed at which your site/web page loads: better user experience and better search rankings. Users don't like slow loading pages (remeber dial-up connection?). Slow site could mean users presssing the Back button to get out of your site with great speed. This also means lost visibility of your site and/or loss business. The other thing is, Google announced in 2010 that it uses site speed to rank sites/pages. If your site loads slow, it will be ranked lower consequently losing visibility and customers. Developers need to spend time to make sure they deliver web pages where all its components load pretty fast and completely.
(4) Location and Languages
If you are plan to target users from different countres, then you should adopt Internationalization standards to develop your web site. The site shoul be multi-lingual, multi-regional or both. This means having unique content by languages/region, flexible site designs, cascading style sheets, and additional infrastructure.
(5) Flexible platform to edit site
The platform that you are going to use to develop a web site should be flexible enough for you to publish latest changes and content quickly and regularly without having to spend too much time and effort. This will help you keep your site fresh and relevant.
(6) Logical roadmap
Besides being aethestically pleasing, a website has to be useful. Since Google considers the content and struvture of a site when it ranks for a seach, it would be very useful to map out and mock up a design for the site ("wireframing") and run it by few test users to make sure that it makes sense and is intuitive.
(7) Contact Information
Make sure that the contact information is visible and accessible (and not buried in sub pages). Make sure you have a number, email address and contact form available to easily contact someone.
(8) Social Media Integration
There are lot of social platforms and to gain visibililty it good to promote your business' presence on them on your website. Integrating these platforms into your website will help boost your SEO, improve your business' footprint on the social web and build your following across numerous social platforms.
(9) Mobile-Ready version
Since smartphones and tablets are driving an increasing amount of web traffic, and the numbers are only going to grow in the future, it makes sense to have a mobile version of the site available for the mobile device users. Responsive web design enables to use fluid widths, so that your website layout will adapt to the screen on which it is being browsed.
(10) FAQ
People have a lot of questions. Its nice to have a FAQ page that addresses most common questions and concerns. Questions related to materials, ingredients used, shipping info, cencellation policy and sizing are common and should be addresses as best as possible.
(11) Good web host
Make sure you get a mainstream provider to host your website. Cheaper platforms are usually not well maintained, crash often and slow. Bad hosting could mean frustrating user expereience. It can also result in lower Google search engine ranking.
(12) Somethings you don't need in your website
- Anything that autoplays, whether its music or video
- Flash
- Music
- Extra informaton and media
- Image-only objects for your navigational items
- Minimize use of tables
- Make your links descriptive and use your keywords in the link text
(13) Browser compatible
Make sure that users can use the browser of their choice to view your website. Find out which are the most popular browsers used to access your website, and make sure during testing that all those browsers and versions are used to test the website before deploying it for general users
This is based on article https://moz.com/blog/strategic-seo-decisions-before-website-design-build
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