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In this 2021 article, I discuss common traps in outsourced SEO website projects. The day before I wrote it, a close friend had asked me to review whether a site delivered by an agency was suitable for SEO. Its overall design looked good, but the build had not accounted for SEO at all; it was simply a website framework. I will use that case to explain what to check when outsourcing an SEO service that includes a website build.
1. Review the Layout
When I first received the site, I began with its overall layout and settings. My usual layout preferences at the time were as follows:
- I used a 30-pixel heading in the default font for the H1 title.
- I kept 55–75 pixels of space between sections.
- I used 20 pixels around the title and description area.
- I used different colors to distinguish sections and create a clearer visual hierarchy.
2. Check the H1, Meta Description and Alt Text
After reviewing the layout, check whether the page has an H1, a meta description and alt text. In my delivery checklist, each page had one clear H1 containing the topic assigned to that page. That was my acceptance preference, not a universal Google limit. I regarded the meta description as less important for ranking, but still worth adding for a complete page and to help search engines understand its subject.
Alt text is often overlooked. Without a useful description, a search engine may find an image harder to understand, and the image may lose an opportunity to appear in image search. The source also linked missing alt text to slower article indexing, but current official guidance does not establish that causal rule. Alt text does not guarantee indexing or ranking, but it deserves attention. The basic form is: <img src="/html5_blue/images/4.jpg" alt="SEO tutorial">.
Developers frequently forgot these three elements, and few treated them as part of the handoff. In the case I reviewed, I asked the developer to add an H1 to every page, but several H1s were added to each page instead. Only after a long discussion did the intended requirement become clear. An outsourced build therefore needs explicit technical SEO acceptance checks, including a review for missing or misused page elements.
3. Review the Article Template
For content marketing, the article template matters most, whether it is called a blog or news center. A typical website agency may provide only a basic post display, which I considered insufficient. If a page contains only the main article and no supporting paths, readers have fewer ways to discover related material. The 2021 source also argued that search engines would regard such a page as less substantial and rank it lower; treat that as the author's historical view, not a disclosed ranking rule. I therefore asked for recommended-article and latest-article modules alongside the main content. The source further argued that a latest-article module could refresh the page, encourage crawler revisits and reduce the HTTP 304 responses seen in logs. Treat those outcomes as project observations, not guarantees.
If you also want people to share the article on social media, add suitable sharing buttons and an acknowledgment link at the end for anyone who republishes it.
4. Review URL Rewriting and Keep URLs Concise
What did the source mean by a pseudo-static
site? It linked to this explanation: https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E4%BC%AA%E9%9D%99%E6%80%81/2234695?fr=aladdin. In simple terms, it meant rewriting a dynamic URL so that it looked static, which the 2021 article described as more SEO-friendly. Current Google guidance does not require static-looking URLs; the durable requirement is that URLs be crawlable, simple and descriptive.
Shorten URLs and avoid unnecessary directory depth. The original rationale was that crawlers spend limited time on each site and might not reach every item when the hierarchy is too deep, leaving some content harder to index. There is no universal depth cutoff, but a clear site structure and concise URLs still make navigation and crawling easier to manage.
5. Decide How the Mobile Site Will Work
Many companies are unsure which type of site to commission, especially when choosing between one responsive site and separate desktop and mobile sites. The 2021 article preferred responsive design for SEO. Google currently recommends responsive design because it is generally easier to implement and maintain. Correctly configured separate mobile URLs remain supported.
The concern in the original article was that some suppliers might recommend two separate sites because delivering two builds costs more. A responsive site can also demand more planning from the technical team; if the layout is not designed carefully, responsive behavior can fail later. Those commercial and implementation pressures may explain why an agency recommends separate sites, so the client should ask for the technical reasoning and total cost rather than accept the recommendation without review.
For a responsive mobile site, I thought WordPress was a practical choice. Many WordPress themes already included responsive editing, and visual front-end editing made the work convenient. The specific theme still needs to be tested rather than assumed to be responsive.
If the agency has already delivered a separate mobile site and you do not want to replace it, test it in different browsers. In my friend's case, the home page loaded smoothly in Chrome but stalled badly in other browsers. That usually points to incomplete compatibility work across browsers or devices.
6. Test Website Speed
The source made an absolute claim that a site taking more than three seconds could not rank well in Baidu or Google and said official documents supported that cutoff. Current Google documentation does not define a universal three-second ranking threshold, and good performance scores do not guarantee rankings. The practical point still stands: a slow site frustrates visitors, can make them leave quickly, may contribute to a high bounce rate and creates a poor experience.
I recommended two website-speed testing tools:
1. Google's page-level testing tool: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
2. GTmetrix, which the source described as a whole-site testing tool: https://gtmetrix.com/
For these projects, our house acceptance threshold was a test score of at least 75. That was a working benchmark, not an official Google ranking threshold or a universal guarantee of usability. Free CDN services and CDN features bundled with hosting were also available, and the technical team needed to configure and verify them after the site was set up.
Summary
Before outsourcing, decide what kind of site you actually need and sketch its approximate layout. Complete keyword research so that the topic assigned to each page is clear. After launch, conduct a site audit and revisit the SEO delivery checks described above.