Technical SEO Requirements to Put in a Development Brief

Technical SEO requirements belong in the development brief as specific, testable statements, not as a line that says "the site must be SEO friendly". If a requirement is not written down with an acceptance test, it tends to be missed at build and found months later in Search Console. The sections below are written so you can copy them into a brief, adjust the details and hand them to any development team.

How to use these technical SEO requirements

Each requirement below has a short statement and a way to check it. Paste the ones that apply, delete the ones that do not, and ask the development team to confirm each item at the staging review and again before launch. Treat this as a working SEO development checklist rather than a wish list: every line should be something a tester can mark as passed or failed.

Two points make the brief more useful:

• Name an owner. Each requirement needs someone on the build side who signs it off, and someone on the marketing side who checks it.
• Agree the tools. State which crawler, browser tools and Google tools will be used for testing, so nobody argues about results later.

Crawlability and indexing

Crawlability is the foundation. If search engines cannot reach and read a page, nothing else in the brief matters.

Requirements to copy

• Every indexable page returns a 200 status code. Removed pages return 404 or 410. Moved pages return a permanent redirect. Test: crawl staging and production and review status codes.
• Navigation and in content links use standard anchor elements with an href attribute. Google's JavaScript SEO basics states that it discovers links only from anchor elements with an href. Test: inspect menus, filters, pagination and "load more" controls.
• robots.txt on production allows crawling of all public pages, CSS and JavaScript. Staging is blocked by authentication, not only by robots.txt. Test: check both files after deployment.
• Pages that must stay out of search use a noindex directive. Google's robots.txt documentation explains that robots.txt is not a mechanism for keeping a page out of Google; a blocked URL can still be indexed if linked from elsewhere.
• No noindex tags on production public pages. Test: crawl the live site on launch day and list every page with noindex. This is the single most common launch error.

XML sitemaps

• The CMS generates XML sitemaps automatically, containing only canonical, indexable URLs with a 200 status.
• URLs in the sitemap are absolute, including protocol and domain.
• Large sites split sitemaps by type (pages, posts, products) and link them through a sitemap index. Google's limit per sitemap is 50,000 URLs or 50MB uncompressed, according to its sitemap documentation.
• The lastmod value changes only when the main content changes, not on every deployment. Google uses lastmod only when it is consistently accurate and ignores priority and changefreq.

URLs, canonicals and duplicates

Duplicate URLs are usually created by the platform rather than by editors, which is why they belong in the development brief.

• One URL format. Lowercase paths, one trailing slash convention, HTTPS only, and one host (with or without www). All other variants redirect to it in a single hop.
• Self referencing canonical tags on every indexable page, output in the initial HTML, using the absolute final URL.
• Parameters for sorting, filtering and tracking do not create indexable duplicates. Agree which filter combinations, if any, should have their own indexable pages.
• Editable slugs in the CMS, with automatic redirect creation when an editor changes a published URL.
• Pagination uses real, crawlable URLs for each page of a listing.

For slug rules and the decision of when to change an existing URL, see our guide on writing SEO friendly URLs and fixing bad ones.

JavaScript rendering requirements

Modern frameworks such as React, Next.js and Vue can produce sites that look perfect in a browser but show search engines an almost empty page. JavaScript rendering needs explicit requirements, especially on headless builds.

Requirements to copy

• Primary content, title, meta description, canonical and structured data are present in the server response HTML for every indexable template, using server side rendering or static generation. Google still recommends server side rendering or pre rendering because not every bot can run JavaScript.
• Routing uses real URLs and the History API, not fragment based navigation such as /#/products.
• Not found states return a real 404, or, where client side routing makes that impractical, add a noindex directive to avoid soft 404 errors.
• Critical content is not hidden behind interactions such as clicks or scrolling that a crawler will not perform.

Test: compare the raw HTML (view source or a non rendering crawl) with the rendered page for each template, and use the URL Inspection tool in Search Console after launch. Headless sites carry extra risks covered in SEO risks specific to headless CMS websites.

Page templates and on page elements

Templates decide whether editors can do their job. Each requirement here is about giving the content team control without asking a developer.

• Editable title tag and meta description per page, with sensible defaults when left empty.
• Exactly one H1 per page, generated from the page title field, with a logical H2 and H3 structure available in the editor.
• Editable image alt text, and images output with width and height attributes.
• Open Graph and social preview fields per page.
• Breadcrumbs on deeper templates, output as crawlable links.
• Bilingual sites: a separate URL per language, a language switcher that links to the equivalent page, and hreflang annotations that reference each other correctly.

Structured data

Structured data helps search engines understand the page and can make it eligible for rich results, though eligibility is not guaranteed. Google's introduction to structured data recommends JSON-LD where the setup allows it.

• Schema is generated from CMS fields, never hard coded, so it stays accurate when content changes.
• Marked up content matches what is visible on the page.
• Test: run each template through the Rich Results Test before launch and monitor the Search Console reports after.

Performance and Core Web Vitals

Write performance targets as numbers the team can test. Google's published Core Web Vitals thresholds for a good experience are a Largest Contentful Paint of 2.5 seconds or less, an Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less, and a Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads.

• Every key template meets those thresholds on a mid range mobile device in lab testing before launch.
• Images are served in modern formats, sized for the viewport and lazy loaded below the fold. The main hero image is not lazy loaded.
• Third party scripts (chat, tracking, heatmaps) are listed in the brief, loaded after the main content, and approved before being added.
• Fonts are limited in number and loaded without blocking text display.
• Hosting and CDN choices are agreed with UAE visitors in mind. Our article on server location, latency and Core Web Vitals for UAE sites explains how to test this.

Launch and migration requirements

If the project replaces an existing site, add these items. Most ranking losses after a redesign come from missing redirects or launch settings left over from staging.

1. A full URL map from old to new, signed off before content migration starts.
2. Permanent redirects implemented server side, one to one, with no chains.
3. A pre launch crawl of staging compared with a crawl of the old site: titles, headings, canonicals, status codes and internal link counts.
4. A launch day check list covering robots.txt, noindex, sitemap submission, analytics and Search Console verification.
5. Monitoring for at least the first weeks after launch, with an agreed process for fixing 404s.

The full phase by phase approach is in redesigning without losing rankings.

Analytics and measurement

• Analytics and tag manager installed on every template, with consent handled as agreed.
• Key conversion events defined in the brief: form submissions, calls, WhatsApp clicks, purchases.
• Search Console verified for the production domain before launch.

Deciding which numbers to report on after launch is covered in SEO data that actually guides decisions.

Building technical SEO into your next project

Codeeo writes technical SEO requirements into the build from the first sprint on website development and Next.js projects, so search is tested alongside features rather than patched after launch. If you already have a site, a technical SEO review shows which of these requirements it meets today, and our Core Web Vitals service covers the performance side. Get in touch to discuss your brief with our Dubai team.