Over the years I have had to specify many hundreds of websites and I have always found it useful to include a specification for search engine friendly web design.

Below you will find a specification for website design with regard to Search Engine Visibility that I use as my basis in my proposals.

URL Structure:

• URLs and file names should include the page keyword(s). E.G. www.domain.com/keyword.htm or www.domain.com/keyword1- keyword2.htm and must not use “?” or “=” characters. Keywords are to be used in the file names and must be separated by “.” “:” or “-”. Never use the underscore “_” or spaces. Session IDs (or anything that looks like them) must never be used in a public area of the website.
• URL re-writing must be used to avoid the use of illegal characters in the URL string.
• 301 redirects should always be used in favour of 302 redirects.
• When using Windows servers it is essential that duplicate content is not created by IIS serving pages that aren’t case sensitive. All URLs and file names must be in lower case and any requests for pages with mixed case must be automatically re-written and served as lower case with a 301header. E.G. If an external site links to page thus www.domain.com/Page1.htm it must be re-written as www.domain.com/page1.htm and served with a 301 header.

Navigation:

• Page navigation should be by using simple text or graphic based html hyperlinks.
• CSS can be used to alter the look of the links.
• Navigation using Flash, JavaScript and Image Maps should not be used unless there is a simple html version available too.
• For small sites (up to 20 pages), a static link to each page should be available at the bottom of each page. Larger sites need to have a link to every main section of the site at the bottom of the page and each section should then have links to all other pages within that section.

1. Update: Although the above is good practice it is more important to have an XML site map in place and referenced in the page head section.

• Every page must have a link to the home page in short format. E.G. http://www.domain.com/. The link can be an image or text and must have the closing slash. Never mix trailing slash and absolute paths as this can cause duplicate content penalties.
• Canonicalisation. http://domain.com must be redirected by a 301 handler to http://www.domain.com so that only one version of the site is indexed by the search engines in order to avoid duplicate content issues.

Site design:

• Frames must never be used – the exception being where CSS is used to create inline frames that are visible to search engines.
• The use of Flash must be restricted to page elements only.
• <hn> tags must be used for page headings and sub headings.
• All code must validate to w3c standards – http://validator.w3.org/.
• Pages must be output as static html unless dynamic use is specifically required. E.G. A site selling a rapidly changing commodity such as Airline Seats.
• Acceptable technologies for database driven sites are .asp .php .net asp.NET and .jsp in conjunction with a re-writer. For static sites, html, html and variants are to be used.

Page Content:

• Every page must have at least 85% unique content.
• Keywords must be in the page copy at a density of between 1-10%, however, it must be noted that keywords should be included so as to read correctly. A general rule to follow is that if it reads well, the keyword density should be correct, but must be within the broad limits.
• Keywords must not be repeated in the copy more than 2 times in a row.
• Google’s algorithm now adds weight to “local search”. Therefore, the address and phone number needs to be prominent and preferably on each page. This can be in the footer or an easily accessible (one click from home) page.

Hidden text:

• No attempt should ever be made to hide text or keywords in a web page.

JavaScript and CSS:

• These must always be “off page”.

404 Error handling:

• A custom 404 page must be used. The should must have a copy of the sitemap and utilise a Meta refresh to the home page set at 5 seconds.

The following are preferred but not essential and are only applicable when dynamic content is used.

Meta Description Tag:

Should be dynamically generated from the first 250 characters of the page copy.

Title Tag:

Should be dynamically generated from the page <h1> heading.

The above would also need to be editable as an override.

Deviation from this specification is only acceptable if permission is given in writing.

CaptainSEO