3. Site Architecture
Keep website as flat as possible.
Keep ALL content within a maximum of 4
clicks from the homepage.
Ensure cross linking between pages.
Benefits
Improved indexing
Improved Page & Domain Authority
(PageRank)
Improves long tail keywords and phrases.
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8. Semantic HTML
Using W3C compliant code is not an SEO must have, but validated code makes crawling
the site easier. HTML tags & attributes you should have.
<title> - Essential.
<Meta Description> - CTR, limited SEO benefit.
<h1> - 1 Per Page, primary keywords.
<h2> - Secondary keywords.
<a title=“”> <img alt=“”> - Descriptive & keyword rich.
Use CSS for Layout.
Remove ALL CSS & JS to minimise number of external files.
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11. Canonical Issues
Decide on www. Vs non-www; make sure one is 301 redirected to the other:
oxondigital.co.uk www.oxondigital.co.uk
www.oxondigital.co.uk oxondigital.co.uk
Canonicalise URLs by removing file extension.
www.oxondigital.co.uk/index.html --> www.oxondigital.co.uk
www.oxondigital.co.uk/events.html --> www.oxondigital.co.uk/events
Link to canonicalised URL throughout the website.
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12. Meta Directives
Rel=“canonical”
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/jackets/" />
<meta name=“robots” content=“index, nofollow”>
– Index page, don’t follow the links.
<meta name=“robots” content=“noindex, follow”>
– Don’t index the page, follow the links.
– To remove duplicate content but allow the search engine to follow the links.
<meta name=“robots” content=“noindex, nofollow”>
– Don’t index, don’t follow links.
– Used for print pages.
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14. HTTP Status
301 Redirects - permanent redirect.
Use for everything – expired pages, deleted content, canonicalised URLs, etc.
90% SEO benefit passed.
302 Redirects - temporary redirect.
No SEO benefit passed.
404 Page – error page.
Always use 404 pages for errors & not standard website pages.
Do not automatically 302 redirect an error page to homepage.
Customise the 404 page to make it user friendly.
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16. Sitemaps
Benefits
Helps improve site indexation & speed of indexing.
Webmaster controls the pages in the sitemap.
XML Sitemap
50,000 URLs.
Use sitemap Index for large websites.
HTML Sitemap
100 links per page.
– +100 links split by category – e.g. ecommerce.
Link from every page to help speed up indexation.
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17. Content
Do not embed content in images.
Do not make core pages image based.
Provide room for HTML text on every page.
– Minimum of 350 words per page.
Allow ability to create landing pages.
Provide UGC ability.
– Customer Reviews.
– Forums.
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