Building Websites for SEO
Roman Efimov from Columbus, Founder / CEO
For a website to rank highly in the classic search results of Yandex and Google (excluding AI-generated answers), it needs to meet a set of technical and content requirements. Below is a 20-point checklist we use to build websites optimized for SEO in Columbus.
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What a website needs to rank highly in classic search: structure, clean URLs, unique titles and descriptions, speed, responsiveness, HTTPS and 14 more points.
Requirements for a website to rank highly in search
Search engines assess a site against hundreds of factors, but most of them come down to a few clear groups: structure and technical quality, speed and usability, content and markup. When we build a site for a business in Columbus, we factor in these requirements right at the design stage — addressing them later costs more.
- A well-thought-out site structure and page hierarchy.
- Clean, human-readable URLs and a consistent link format.
- Unique title, description and H1 for every page.
- Logical internal linking and navigation (menu, breadcrumbs, footer).
- An XML sitemap and a correct robots.txt file.
- Responsive design and usability on mobile devices (mobile-first).
- Fast page load speed and optimization of Core Web Vitals.
- Use of HTTPS and a valid SSL certificate.
- Image optimization (file size, format, alt attributes, file names).
- No broken links and proper handling of invalid URLs (404, 301, etc.).
- Configured 301 redirects from duplicate pages and domain mirrors.
- No duplicate pages and a correct canonical tag.
- Valid, clean markup with no critical HTML errors.
- Minimizing excess JS and CSS, with no content hidden from search engines.
- Properly structured H1–H6 headings in the correct hierarchy.
- Sufficient volume and uniqueness of text content on key pages.
- A logical structure of catalog sections, categories and filters.
- Minimizing unnecessary outbound links and technical "junk" in links.
- Correct language markup and, where needed, hreflang for multilingual sites.
- Connecting web analytics systems and search engine webmaster tools.
This checklist is a foundation, not a one-off task. Search algorithms change and competitors keep improving their sites, so meeting these requirements is something you have to maintain and develop. That's exactly why we don't just launch a website in Columbus — we keep supporting it afterward, from technical audits to growing your rankings.