Polavaram, Harika | v1.0 | June 21, 2016

SEO Checklist for Marketing Websites

1. Add robots.txt file for all the prelaunch sites,Dev, Stage, tst.

This would help the sites from NOT getting crawled and also wouldn’t result in duplicate page results when site is launched.

2. Kentico SettingsMake sure below Kentico settings are done at site level,

1. Setting for Mixed case urls make everything either go to upper or lower case.When we have mixed case urls, crawlers treat them as two different pages.

2. Settings to include trailing slash. (If needed)

3. Canonical Tags:Canonical URL allows you to tell search engines that certain similar URLs are actually one and the same. Sometimes you have products or content that is accessible under multiple URLs, or even on multiple websites.

 Kentico has a module for Canonical tags. It is built on version Kentico 8.2 but, we can import into Kentico9 as the libraries work with Kentico9 too.https://devnet.kentico.com/marketplace/web-parts/canonical-link-web-part

Once you import the module , go to the master template and set the below value,{% AddCanonicalLink(true) %}

4. Conversion Pages:1. This are the pages that are seen on the site when a form is submitted.

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Go to pages settings and Exclude them from Google search console and sitemaps.This will automatically add noindex meta tag to the header of the page making searching engines not to be crawlable.

2. 1. Thank you Page after submitted contact us form.3. Thank you for signing up after registering.

5. Pagination on the site: Whenever you are enabling pagination on the site, make sure it has rel=Prev/next tags.

Example: www.localhost.com/test?page=2

External links on the sites:When you are linking to external sites from your site, make sure that pages have canonical tags

6. Content worthy of Rich snippets:Whenever you have a list of items on the site, make sure to make use of list tags like <ol>,<ul>, <li>This will help crawlers to pull the information in structured way when searches are made on the site.

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7. Redirects:If you are redirecting from one domain to other or any redirects from other sites, make sure all the redirects are in place and they are 301 and not 302.

Google treats 301 and 302 redirects differently and are ranked differently.Preferred redirect is 301.Please confirm with Network team to make sure you are doing correct redirects.

301 is permanent and 302 is temporary.

8. Site Performance:1. Reduce and optimize the size of the images as much as possible.2. Reduce the number of JS calls being made in other words HTTP

requests being made.3. Try to load the file references at the bottom of the page depending

on the content you are loading.4. Remove 404 errors on the site.5. Having Header tags(H1) on the pages will be very helpful.6. Alt tags for Images ( More of SEO/Accessibility scenario)

9.Page URL Structure:If you are using query string parameters at the end of the urls, make sure to include them into the url.

Give the url of the stage site to the SEO vendor in advance during development to make sure the url structure aligns with SEO needs.

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