As search engines grow more sophisticated, web development and search engine optimization (SEO) become increasingly linked. As a result, professionals in each domains must have a fundamental grasp of the other.
I'm speaking to web developers today. While you may leave the details to the SEO professionals, the best practices I'll discuss in this article may help you interact with your team, improve your brand image, and give better services to your clients. Learn the 8 top SEO tactics for developers in this article.
What Should Developers Know About SEO?
If you're in charge of creating and managing a website, you're also in charge of ensuring that it can be found in search engines.
SEO is frequently divided into three categories:
- Technical SEO is concerned with how search engine bots crawl and index a website.
- On-page SEO refers to how effectively the site's content is optimized for target keywords and user experience.
- Off-page SEO is the process through which other websites connect to your website in order to increase its authority.
Naturally, developers play an important role in technical SEO, but this isn't the end of SEO for developers. They also contribute to a great user experience, which can aid in on- and off-page SEO.
Here are the top eight SEO tactics that developers may use to take their efforts to the next level.
1. Maintain Clean Code
Web developers can accomplish a lot of fantastic things, but it's best to keep things simple most of the time.
Consumers prefer convenience beyond virtually anything else. We expect instant access to information, and anything that comes in the way ruins the user experience. Greater intricate coding might cause more difficulties for site visitors.
One of the first stages in SEO for developers is to keep their code clean. When consumers arrive at a website, they make snap choices about whether it's worth their time.
2. Maintain quick load times
Continuing on the theme of intricate code, load speeds are critical for SEO.
Search engines strive to direct consumers to websites that respond to their queries fast and accurately.
If another website can give equivalent information twice as quickly as yours, Google will almost certainly prioritize it on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Even if load times were not a direct ranking factor, this would be a major concern.
The time it takes for a page to load has a direct influence on its bounce rate. Pages that take two seconds to load, for example, have a six percent bounce rate. At four seconds, that number climbs to 24 percent, and after six seconds, 46 percent of visitors have left.
When Google observes individuals returning to the search results, it assumes your page isn't useful and provides less ranking power to it.
3. Make Use of the Appropriate Redirects
Websites are always changing. Content is changed, pages are moved, and new elements are introduced, and developers ensure that everything runs well.
The end-user is the most important aspect in this equation since everything you do must benefit them. However, you must to consider how spiders perceive your website.
This is when understanding how redirects operate in SEO comes in handy.
The two most typical SEO redirects are 301 and 302 redirects.
A 301 redirect informs search engines that a website or pages have been permanently relocated. When you use a 301 redirect, the search engines will transfer the majority of the link equity from the original page to the new page.
A 302 redirect, on the other hand, indicates that a page has been temporarily relocated. This is useful if you're redesigning or changing your website but want to maintain the old page's link equity.
Using redirects correctly may appear to be a little detail, but it may make a significant impact in SEO terms.
4. Include a Sitemap
Search engines are extremely intelligent, but they do not interact with websites in the same way that humans do. They require you to offer them hints about how pages connect, and one way you may achieve this is through your sitemap.
Bots follow every link on your site to see where it leads. Adding a sitemap is one method you may assist with this process.
If you employ effective internal linking, Google and other search engines should be able to scan your whole site. However, huge sites may get confusing, so a sitemap makes things easy for search engines and guarantees your site is properly indexed.
Read Me: 10 SEO Guidelines For web developers Before the verge of 2022 (I mean it)
5. Ensure that the site is mobile-friendly.
54.8 percent of website traffic is generated by mobile devices. Because Google is aware of this, it prioritizes websites that provide an outstanding mobile experience.
Google now employs mobile-first indexing, which means that when its bots crawl your site, the mobile version is used. If your website does not run well on mobile devices, it is unlikely to rank high in search results.
Even today, far too many websites overlook this critical aspect.
Google's mobile-friendly test is a quick way to see how your website performs on mobile. It provides a rapid performance assessment and identifies areas for improvement.
If you want to go a little deeper, Google Lighthouse is another excellent choice for overall UX.
Read: A Starter Guide to Build an SEO Friendly Website (For 2022 SEO Noobs)
6. Examine the Robots.txt file
The robots.txt file specifies how web spiders should crawl various areas of a website. It's a simple bit of code, but it has a big impact.
A robots.txt file that accidentally prevents crawlers from accessing material may be disastrous for SEO. If the bots are unable to crawl the page, it will not be indexed, and so will not display in search results.
When a webmaster does not want a page to be indexed, a robots.txt file comes in handy. If your SEO team detects that a page that should be getting traffic isn't, look for a rogue robots.txt file.
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7. Make certain that follow/no follow links are used appropriately.
Links are the language of the search engine, therefore you must be fluent in it.
One thing to be aware of is the difference between follow and no-follow links.
Follow links, also known as do-follow links, are backlinks in which the person connecting to the website does not modify the HTML in order to prevent Google from associating their site with another. A crawler interprets a clean backlink with no alterations as one website vouching for the quality of another.
Crawlers continue to track no-follow links to see where they go, but they do not provide value to the link.
In terms of SEO, you want follow links from authoritative websites to yours. No-follow links, on the other hand, are still useful. Even if the link does not confer authority, it might nonetheless direct visitors to or from your website.
This implies that developers must ensure that they are utilizing the correct links to connect with the crawlers.
8. Recognize and Apply Structured Data
Structured data might be challenging for many SEO professionals...and here is where developers can truly shine. Developers are already familiar with how to style a page such that all of its components flow smoothly and can be read by both human and search engine searchers.
Structured data, when utilized correctly, tells Google exactly what's on every page of a website. It can also inform Google exactly what inquiries you're answering. In reality, the FAQ below employs structured data (schema) markup to tell Google that i am answering frequently asked questions.
Frequently Asked Questions About SEO: for Developers
1. How Do Developers Approach SEO?
Technical SEO and effective user experience should be familiar to developers.
2. Do Web Designers Perform SEO?
SEO is done to some extent by web developers. All of the developer's domain is a clean, functional website that provides a fantastic user experience, which is vital for SEO.
3. What Is the Definition of SEO Software Development?
The process of ensuring that software and online applications are SEO-friendly is known as SEO software development.
4. What Does an SEO Developer Do?
An SEO developer knows how development decisions effect search results and organic traffic on a website.
Conclusion of SEO for Developers
Most website owners want to increase organic traffic, thus SEO for developers is essential.
Good developers naturally help SEO by developing user-friendly websites, but it also helps to understand search engine optimization. Even learning the fundamentals might help you make better judgments and provide a better service to your clients.
SEO for developers does not have to be difficult, but it may make or break a website's success.
As a developer, how do you approach SEO?
Top comments (4)
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