Website SEO requirements

1. System Requirements1.1. Hosting account have to be located where the website is geographically targeted1.2. The domain extension should be country based unless the website is targeted for US. For

example: website targeted for Russia should be .RU, for England - .co.uk. For USA it can be .COM.

2. Website characteristics2.1.Technologies to avoid:

2.1.1. Frames should be avoided. In rare cases iframe can be used, if necessary.2.1.2. Flash technology should never be used for navigation or content.2.1.3. AJAX generated pages for textual content.

2.2. UTF-8 encoding for website is preferred.2.3. Validation. It’s recommended to have W3C validation but not necessary. Still the websites

code and CSS errors should be reduced to minimum. Preferred website DOCTYPE is XHTML 1.0 Transitional.

2.4.Non existing pages2.4.1. If page was moved the website has to redirect the request to it new address.2.4.2. If the page was removed – the request has be redirected to websites homepage.

2.5.Friendly URL’s2.5.1. A page that requires search engine visibility must have friendly URL. 2.5.2. In case page has dynamic URL internal links have to point only to friendly URL’s. This

includes navigation bars, sitemaps and links from within genuine text.2.5.3. Friendly URL for webpage should include main keyword for that page with no added

text in small case letters,2.5.4. If the main keyword is a phrase an minus “-” sign should replace space between the

words.2.5.5. Friendly URL preferably should be ending with “/”, but not with extension.

For example:Domain : russianparent.comMain Keyword for selected page: “Indigo Children”Most preferred friendly URL is: http:// russianparent.com/indigo-children/

2.6. Robots.txt file: even if robots.txt is not required, empty robots.txt should be placed in websites root folder.

2.7. Special page for website sitemap page should be created. It should have all website links (friendly URL’s only) and be accessible from the home page.

2.8. A dynamic XML sitemap should be generated each time a web page added or removed. In case dynamic address has friendly URL – sitemap has to point to friendly URL only.

2.9.Homepage2.9.1. Homepage address should not be served wit it’s default file or inside internal

directory. It housld only be served as a complete addres to websites root.Right way: http://www.wowwhatsavings.com/Wrong way: http://www.wowwhatsavings.com/index.php http://www.wowwhatsavings.com/Home

http://www.wowwhatsavings.com/index.htm 2.9.2. If the website is available in many languages, each language should be available via

separate domain with the relevant cc-TLD extensions.http://www. thecmoclub.com - for content in Englsihhttp://www.thecmoclub.ru – for Russian version of the sitehttp://www.thecmoclub.com.ua – for Ukrainian version

2.10. WWW. The domain should be accessible only in one way: with www. in the beginning or without www. for all pages. Preferred way with www. in the beginning.

3. Header elements3.1.META Title

3.1.1. META Title must be targeted to be from 50 to 80 characters long3.1.2. META Title must be unique for every page3.1.3. META Title must contain main keyword for the page. Keyword preferred to be

mentioned in the beginning of the tag.3.1.4. For similar content elements it is recommended to have template for META title.

For example: < title >[product name] | [category name]< /title >3.2.META Description

3.2.1. META Description must be targeted to be from 120 to 160 characters long3.2.2. META Description must contain main keyword for the page. Keyword preferred to

be mentioned in the beginning of the tag.3.3.META Keywords

3.3.1. Must include all keywords of the page3.4. Other META tags should be used only if necessary

4. Other important elements4.1.Navigation

4.1.1. Navigation is preferred to have text based links.4.1.2. If images are used for navigation it is mandatory to have ALT attribute for the image

and TITLE attribute for the link that will have navigation text.4.2.Pictures and images

4.2.1 Each image should have ALT attribute.4.3. No inline CSS or scripts should be used. Inline JavaScripts only if necessary.4.4. Adding code site statistics: it should be added just before < /body > tag.4.5.< H1 > tag

4.1. There must be only one < H1 > tag on the page.4.2. There should not be any other headlines (< h2 >, < h3 > etc. ) before < H1 > tag.4.3. < H1 > tag should content main keyword for the page

4.6. Other headlines (< h2 >, < h3 > etc. ) should be used in hierarchical structure4.7. The logo should link to website root. Ordinary href linking with ALT attribute that contain

main keyword for the home page inside IMG.

5. Content5.1. Tables should be used only for table data5.2. On the page there should be no hidden text or very small fonts usage – website can be

penalized because of that5.3. Images size must be reduced to minimum, if possible.