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SEO Guidelines for web apps

Introduction​

Zapp offers a robust set of features to create a new web application or to ensure a smooth SEO transition from your existing web application, helping you preserve search rankings, maintain link equity, and improve your overall organic visibility. Successful migration requires a strategic, collaborative approach, particularly concerning URL changes and analytics continuity.

Features​

URL Structure: Preservation and Mapping​

Preserving link equity is critical. One of the biggest risks during a migration is losing the SEO value (link equity) built up on your old URLs. Our platform offers features to help manage the inevitable URL structure changes, but meticulous planning and a complete URL map are essential.

Zapp's URL Structure​

You have full control over the URL path for any page on your site. The default structure for Zapp's dynamic pages is designed to be both descriptive and unique: /<SCREEN_TYPE>/<UNIQUE_ID>/<OPTIONAL_TITLE> For example, a movie page URL would look like mysite.com/movies/12345/the-big-movie.

Key Transition Considerations:​

  • URL Mapping: Before migration, you must create a comprehensive 1:1 map of all high-value old URLs (from your existing web app) to their corresponding new Zapp URLs. High-value pages are those with significant traffic, backlinks, or conversions.
  • Unique Paths: It's crucial to note that two different screen types cannot share the same URL structure. Including the screen type in the URL (e.g., /movies/ vs. /series/) ensures that each page has a unique and clearly defined path, which is fundamental for both Zapp's routing and search engine indexing.
  • Internal Links: Once the new Zapp site is live, ensure all internal links within the content and navigation are updated to point directly to the new Zapp URLs, avoiding unnecessary reliance on redirects.

Redirects are the mechanism that tells search engines and users that a page has permanently moved. This is arguably the most important step in an SEO migration.

  • Handling Redirects: Currently, redirect rules are not managed directly within the Zapp web application. These must be handled at the hosting or server level by your hosting provider or CDN (Content Delivery Network).
  • The 301 Priority: For all old URLs that have existing traffic, backlinks, or rankings, implementing a 301 permanent redirect to the new Zapp URL is vital. A 301 redirect passes on the maximum amount of "link juice" to the new page, preserving your SEO value.
  • Share Your Map: To ensure a smooth transition and better understand your specific needs, we strongly suggest sharing your existing URL map and redirect rules with our team as part of the migration process. This allows us to ensure your hosting environment is correctly configured for the new Zapp application.

Page Metadata & Markup​

All of your existing website's page titles, meta descriptions, and header tags should be migrated to the Zapp platform to maintain organic performance.

Our platform allows you to manage key page metadata, including the title, description, and social sharing image.

  • Migration Plan: Plan to export all existing high-value metadata from your current system. This can then be implemented in Zapp by adding a screen feed to the page with the relevant information.

Example of feed data (The data is taken from the first feed entry)

{
    "entry": [{
      "title":"Screen Title",
      "Summary": "Screen Summary",
      "media_group": [{
      "type": "image",
      "media_item": [
        {
          "src": "https://example.com/images/big-brother-thumb.png",
          "key": "base_url"
        }
       ]
     }]
   }]
}
  • Dynamic Generation: This feature also supports dynamic screens, allowing for automated metadata generation on a large scale, which can be configured to mimic or improve upon your existing system's logic.

Semantic Markup​

You can set semantic tags (e.g., h1, h2, h3) for cell labels within your content. This helps search engines understand the structure and hierarchy of your page content, which is key for improving search rankings and rich snippet eligibility.

Crawl Control & Indexing​

Sitemaps and robots.txt​

These tools are essential for guiding search engine crawlers (like Googlebot) to efficiently discover and index your new Zapp pages while avoiding unnecessary crawling of non-essential content.

  • Robots.txt: We support the creation of a robots.txt file, which tells search engine crawlers which parts of your site to access or ignore. This needs to be correctly configured for the new Zapp environment.
  • Dynamic Sitemap: We provide a dynamic sitemap that helps search engines efficiently discover and index all the new Zapp pages. Ensure you submit this new sitemap to Google Search Console immediately after launch.

Google Analytics & Google Tag Manager (GTM)​

To prevent a data black hole during migration, you must ensure your analytics tracking is configured on the new Zapp platform before launch.

Utilizing Google Analytics and GTM​

  • GTM Implementation: We can provide a single-line integration for the Google Tag Manager Container Snippet into the Zapp application's code. This allows all subsequent tracking (GA4, Google Ads, other third-party tags) to be managed through the GTM interface, without requiring further code changes in Zapp.
  • Tracking Continuity
    • Dual Tracking (Recommended): For a smooth transition, you can implement a new GA4 property in your GTM setup that tracks both the existing web app (leading up to the launch) and the new Zapp application immediately after launch. This provides a clean start with GA4's data model and allows for an immediate comparison of new vs. old data.
    • Event Migration (Aligning with Zapp's Closed Set): Zapp operates with a closed, predefined set of events designed for standardized data reporting. This means you cannot implement arbitrary event names. Your primary task is to audit all important Events and Goals from your existing web application's analytics (e.g., Universal Analytics) and map them to the closest corresponding Zapp event within your Google Analytics 4 (GA4) property setup in GTM. This is a critical step to maintain data continuity. You must focus on translating the intent of your legacy events (e.g., a specific 'Form Submission' or 'Video Play Complete') to the appropriate pre-defined Zapp event, using GA4 parameters to carry any necessary custom data.
    • Testing: Use the GTM Preview Mode and the GA4 DebugView to rigorously test that all pageviews, events, and conversions are firing correctly on the Zapp staging environment before the live migration.