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SEO TODO checklist for client and server

25 September 2017 Estimated reading time: 2 minutes SEO 

There are a LOT of operations to do to be in a good situation for search engines, especially if your website generates dynamic web pages. Every page can be linked and promoted so you must be ready to serve the web page in the best way you can. I ensure it's not easy so here I try to create a list of recommendations and operations to do for your web pages. Here is the long list from technical hints to optimizations and contents.

    HTML

    If you follow HTML accessibility rules, your site will be much better in terms of correct HTML code and markup. Here is a list of things to check and do on your website or web app:

    • Use the doctype
    • Minify HTML output code
    • Reduce the included widgets, third parts frames, code blocks
    • Create a skip to main content link
    • Create XML sitemaps: for the website, Google News and Image sitemap
    • Create a web page with a sitemap (sitemap for the users)
    • Use the title attribute for links
    • Use Accesskeys
    • Use Open Graph meta tags
    • Use Twitter meta tags 
    • Use the canonical link markup
    • Use semantic HTML to mark the various sections of the page
    • Use AMP HTML
    • Validate HTML following the W3C standard.
    • Create a responsive layout and test if the page is mobile friendly
    • Add structured data

    CSS

    CSS are ignored from search engines but they have an important role when we view and load the page. Let's see what we can do to improve 

    • Minify CSS files. Compress all files in only one file
    • Delete unused CSS parts, classes, or included files
    • Use media queries and responsive web design to let your app \ website layout to scale for every device or screen size

    Images

    • Optimize images
    • Set a responsive size for your images
    • Use the alt attribute to describe the image
    • Choose the right format: gif, jpg, or png

    Javascript

    • Minify Javascript code
    • Merge and compress all js files in a single file
    • Avoid including unused javascript code or files

    Web server and benchmarking

    • Use browser caching
    • Use Nginx instead of Apache if possible
    • Use htaccess files
    • Specify if you prefer the www or the domain without www redirecting the user to your preferred domain format
    • Enable the Gzip extension
    • Enable browser caching
    • Remove unused headers
    • Use ETag header
    • Use If Modified since
    • Structure your URLs to be pleasant for search engines

    Online Tools and Links