Essential SEO guidelines for any web development

If a website is launched without SEO foundations, competing in search engines will be much more expensive and slower. This guide brings together the checklist we use at La Teva Web to ensure that every project -whether our own or for others- launches with the essentials well resolved.

When designing and developing a website, it's common to focus on the web design or immediate functionality. However, if the website does not meet basic SEO technical requirements, it will hardly be able to compete in search engines later on.

At La Teva Web, we see this every day: well-designed projects that later require costly corrections because SEO foundations were not considered from the beginning. To avoid this, we have prepared a practical checklist that summarizes the essential SEO guidelines for any web development. It’s a useful resource both for web developers with little SEO experience and for marketing teams who want to lead a digital project with a future vision.

Structure of the checklist (minimum requirements):

1. Basic technical aspects
2. Control over metadata
3. Performance and Core Web Vitals
4. Accessibility and usability
5. Analytics and monitoring
6. Link control and indexing
7. Blog and content generation

1. Basic technical aspects

The CMS must provide full control over the SEO foundations of the project.

• Clean URL structure and direct editing option from the CMS.
• Editable robots.txt without development intervention.
• Fine control of meta robots (index, noindex, follow, nofollow...).
• Management of 301 redirects from the CMS.
• Proper implementation of hreflang and consistency with canonical (no loops or conflicts).

2. Control over metadata

Metadata is the business card in the SERPs. They must be editable and consistent with the content.

• Titles and meta descriptions editable by URL.
• Editing of H1–H6 headers by template or page.
• One unique H1 per page and logical hierarchy from H2 to H6.
• Manual configuration of index/noindex and canonical by URL.
• Compatibility with SEO plugins (Rank Math, Yoast, or similar) without duplicating functionalities.

3. Performance and Core Web Vitals

Page experience is key. Optimize loading and monitor the most sensitive metrics.

• Loading optimization: Critical CSS inline, deferred/asynchronous JavaScript, and lazy loading for images and iframes.
• Compression (GZIP or Brotli) and browser caching properly configured.
• Periodic validation with Lighthouse / PageSpeed Insights, focusing on LCP, CLS, and INP.

Pro tip: Avoid unused CSS and JS, limit external fonts, and serve images in modern formats (AVIF/WebP) with srcset and sizes.

4. Accessibility and usability

A usable and accessible website improves user satisfaction and SEO performance.

• Responsive design and mobile-first approach.
• Editing alt and title attributes for each image.
• Clear, navigable, and traceable menus; customizable internal links.

5. Analytics and monitoring

Without data, there’s no improvement. Plan for measurement from day one.

• Manual insertion of Google Analytics 4 (avoid duplication with GTM).
• Access to Google Tag Manager to manage scripts and events.
• Complete setup of Google Search Console (property, sitemaps, coverage, and indexing).

6. Link control and indexing

The architecture must facilitate internal linking and avoid indexing what does not add value.

• Internal links manageable without automatic restrictions from the theme or template.
• Configurable external links with rel="nofollow" and target="_blank" when appropriate.
• Canonical editable by page.
• Clear strategy for filters and facets (parameters, combinations, and paginations without value: noindex).
• Automatic generation of XML sitemaps by content type.

7. Blog and content generation

The blog remains a key driver of organic growth if it is well integrated into the architecture.

• Blog integrated in the same domain (avoid subdomains or external platforms).
• Unique and editable URLs for each post.
• Support for enriched blocks (FAQs, HowTo, comparisons) and semantic markup (schema) from the editor.

Would you add anything else?

A well-developed website from an SEO perspective not only facilitates positioning but also saves time and costs in the future. Titles, metas, canonicals, robots, OG, schema, redirects, internal links… all these elements must be under control.

Moreover, speed, accessibility, and analytics are factors that make the difference between a project that remains half-done and one that climbs positions in Google.

At La Teva Web, we work with this checklist on all our projects. Because we know that, without solid foundations, it is impossible to build a winning SEO strategy. We hope you find it useful, and we are open to suggestions for expansion and improvement.