SEO Guidelines

Here’s a general, beginner-oriented mostly, common sense rules for SEO. It’s the first steps before and after purchasing a domain:

URLs

URLs should be keyword optimised and user friendly (avoid *+%! characters).
Use hyphens instead of underscores to separate words within the URL.
URL length should be under 100 characters.
Keep URLs lowercase.
Non-www versions of URLs should redirect to the www version (e.g. example.com should 301 to www.example.com).
Non-secure http versions of URLs should redirect to the secure https version (e.g. http://www.example.com should 301 to https://www.example.com).
/index.php or /index.html style URLs should rewrite to www.example.com.

Website crawlers & bots

Include both HTML and XML sitemaps to help users and crawlers discover your site’s structure and content (sitemaps should automatically update with the addition/removal/editing of pages).
robots.txt or meta robots tags should only block select directories/pages as required.
Content should load within HTML (crawlers can have trouble with JavaScript etc.).
An editable rel="canonical" tag should be implemented on every page.
Content should still be visible with JavaScript and CSS styles turned off in browser.

Semantic Web, Schema and Rich Snippets

Implement any structured data (Schema) elements relevant to your website including breadcrumbs, event, organization, local business, ratings/reviews, price, product, images for eCommerce etc.

Multi-platform & Multi-device

Cater for multiple devices including desktop, mobile and tablet.
Site should work across all browsers and major operating systems.
Ensure site conforms to Google’s Mobile SEO Best Practices.

User Tracking/Conversion

Implement Google Tag Manager across all pages incorporating Google Analytics and, optionally, Google Ads Remarketing codes as applicable.
Implement Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Redirect users to a “thank you” page after any form submission.

Note that, in 2021, web standards count more than ever. A well-formed web document will help your site rank better.

Ciprian Popescu

Technical SEO Specialist, JavaScript Programmer and Senior Full Stack Developer. On a quest to experiment with Canvas, WebGL, JavaScript, SEO and WordPress, among many other things. Founder of WPDublin and SpeedFactor, co-organizer of Dublin WordPress Meetup group.

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