ecbeing: SEO and AI Search Requirements to Write into the RFP

When an ecommerce site is built on a large package like ecbeing, the SEO requirement in the RFP sometimes ends with a single line: "must be supported."

What you should write are the items you can't change after the build. Rendering is the process by which the browser assembles the screen. On a large package, changing the URL design, the rendering method, or the way metadata is managed afterward is work on the scale of a site move. Content and individual meta tags, on the other hand, can be changed later. Whatever isn't in the RFP follows the package default. The default doesn't necessarily match the buyer's requirements.

This article lays out requirements for six areas, ordered by how hard they are to change after the build, in wording you can paste into the RFP.

Conclusion: Six areas, in order of what can't be changed. Always write the top three

Key idea: An RFP is not a document that says what you want done. It decides what will become unchangeable. Items that can't be changed after the build can only be decided before it. Write those items out first.

Area 1: URL design

Requirements to write in the RFP:

• Product, category, and content URLs use path format, not parameters

• A product URL identifies the product uniquely and does not change when its category changes

• Category URLs reflect the hierarchy, and redirects on hierarchy changes can be set from the admin panel

• Trailing slashes and letter case are standardized, and non-canonical forms redirect

• When migrating from the old site, 301 redirects from old to new URLs can be set in bulk from a mapping table

• The proposal must state the canonical rules for parameterized URLs (sorting, filtering, pagination)

Area 2: Rendering method

Requirements to write in the RFP:

Data point: A Korean ecommerce brand with roughly ₩40 billion (about ¥4 billion) in annual revenue set up its foundation in a separate rendering layer without changing the original code, and grew organic purchase revenue from about ₩92 million to about ₩166 million (+80%) in three months.(case study)

• Product name, price, stock, product description, breadcrumbs, and structured data must be included in the HTML response without executing JavaScript (server-side rendering or static generation)

• If client-side rendering is adopted, include a mechanism that returns equivalent HTML server-side for search engines and AI crawlers

• Attach to the proposal an HTML sample of a product page with JavaScript disabled

Most AI crawlers don't execute JavaScript. To AI, a client-side-rendered site looks like a page with nothing on it. This is the hardest item to change after the build, so the rendering requirement goes in at the RFP stage.

Area 3: Metadata and structured data management

Requirements to write in the RFP:

• title, meta description, canonical, noindex, and OGP can be set per product, category, and content item from the admin panel

• The template (auto-generation rule) used when nothing is set can be changed per page type from the admin panel

• Product, BreadcrumbList, Organization, and Article structured data are output dynamically from product data. The proposal must state which attributes are output

• Structured data output can be enabled and disabled from the admin panel without development

• The same structured data type is never output twice on one page

Area 4: Bot access control

Requirements to write in the RFP:

• WAF, bot protection, and rate limiting include the verified IPs of search engines and AI crawlers in the allowlist. The allowlist update procedure is included in the operations manual

• robots.txt can be edited from the admin panel or without a deployment

• Allowing or denying AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, etc.) can be set per crawler in robots.txt

Area 5: Sitemap and canonical

Requirements to write in the RFP:

• The XML sitemap is generated automatically, includes products, categories, and content, and excludes unpublished and discontinued items. lastmod reflects the update time

• Split at more than fifty thousand URLs and output a sitemap index

• Every page outputs a canonical, and parameterized URLs follow the rules in Area 1

Area 6: Log provision

Requirements to write in the RFP:

• The buyer can retrieve web server or CDN access logs in a format that includes User-Agent, response code, URL, and timestamp

• Log retention period and retrieval method are included in the operations manual

Only the logs tell you what bots are actually fetching. Without logs, you have no way to check how the site is doing in AI search. Write into the RFP that the buyer can retrieve logs themselves.

Acceptance conditions to attach to the RFP

For each area, write "at delivery, the buyer will verify by the following method." With acceptance conditions in place, there is less room for "we will handle it" to be read differently.

The work that remains after the build

An RFP can only guarantee the state at build time. Feature additions, package version upgrades, and WAF setting changes after that erode the state the requirements described. Check whether the maintenance contract includes maintaining the requirements and verifying them on every change.

Search OS continuously verifies the state corresponding to these six areas on sites built on large packages such as ecbeing. Items that have drifted since the build, and changes in what bots fetch, are organized as fixes to make. It is not the layer that does the build. Decide at the contract stage who keeps watching the requirements after the build.

Frequently asked questions

If I write this much into the RFP, will vendors stop submitting proposals?

An RFP with clear requirements is an easier document for vendors to estimate. If there are items they can't handle, the proposal shows an alternative. Leaving things unwritten causes disputes later.

Can I leave the rendering method to the vendor?

If you do, you get whatever method the vendor is best at. If AI search matters to you, write server-side rendering as a requirement.

Isn't log provision a given?

Depending on the operations contract, logs may sit on the vendor's side where the buyer can't retrieve them directly. Write it into the RFP.

Related reading

• How to Design URLs and Redirects for a Large-Scale ecbeing Renewal

• A Requirements Template for Briefing Your EC-CUBE Agency on SEO and AI Search

• SEO and AI Optimization for SI-Built Sites: How to Move Forward Without a Development Cycle

• ecbeing: 6 Things to Check First

References

• Google Search Central: JavaScript SEO basics

• Google Search Central: URL structure best practices

• Google Search Central: Ecommerce best practices

• Google Search Central: Verifying Googlebot and other Google crawlers