As search engines get more sophisticated, web development and search engine optimization (SEO), become more interconnected. Experts in each field need to be familiar with the other.
Today I am speaking to web developers. You can leave the SEO details to the experts. However, I believe the best practices I will discuss in this article could help you communicate better with your team, improve your brand image and offer better service to your customers. Learn the top 8 SEO best practices for developers in this post.
What Developers Need To Know About SEO?
You are partially responsible for ensuring that a website ranks in search engines if you are responsible for its construction and maintenance.
Three categories are often used to describe SEO:
- technical SEO how search engine bots crawls and indexes a website
- on page SEO how well the site's content is optimized for user experience and target keywords
- Off-page SEO ? How other websites link to your site to increase its authority
While developers are a key part of technical SEO, this is not the end of their role. Developers can also ensure positive user experiences, which can be beneficial for both on-page and off-page SEO.
These are the eight most effective SEO practices that developers can use to elevate their efforts.
1. Keep Your Code Clean
Although web developers are skilled at doing complex things, it is better to keep things simple.
Convenience is what consumers value more than anything. We value quick access to information and anything that hinders the user experience is unacceptable. Site visitors may encounter more obstacles if they are faced with complex code.
Clean code is a key step in SEO for developers. People make quick decisions when they land on a website.
2. 2. Keep your load times fast
Let's not forget the important point about complex code. SEO is all about loading times.
Search engines want users to find websites that answer their questions quickly and accurately.
Google will prioritize websites that can provide comparable information twice as quickly as yours on search engine result pages (SERPs).
This would be an issue, even if load times were not a ranking factor.
The bounce rate directly affects the page's loading time. Pages that load in under two seconds have an average bounce rate six percent. After four seconds, the bounce rate jumps up to 24 percent. Once six seconds pass, 46 percent of visitors have gone.
Google will likely give you less rank power if it sees people clicking back to search results.
3. Make sure you use the correct redirects
Websites change constantly. Developers ensure that websites are constantly evolving. Content is updated, pages move and new elements are added.
Because everything you create must be useful to them, the end-user is the most important factor. You also need to consider how crawlers see your website.
It is crucial to understand the workings of redirects in SEO.
SEO is affected by 301 and 302 redirects.
Search engines will recognize a 301 redirect as indicating that a website/page has been permanently removed. Search engines will transfer the majority of the link equity from the original page to the new page when you use a301 redirect.
A 302 redirect on the other side means that a page has been temporarily moved. This might be used when redesigning or updating your website, but you still need to preserve the original page's links equity.
Although it may seem small, correctly using redirects can make a huge difference in search engine optimization terms.
4. Create a sitemap
Although search engines can be very sophisticated, they are not able to experience websites like humans. You must give search engines clues about the links between pages. Your sitemap is one way to do this.
Bots track every link when indexing your website to determine where they are. A sitemap can be helpful in this regard.
Google and other search engines should be capable of crawling your entire site if there is good internal linking. Sitemaps are useful for search engines as they make it easier to index large sites.
5. Mobile-Friendly Sites
54.8 percent of all website traffic comes from mobile devices. Google is aware of this and prioritizes websites with a great mobile experience.
Google now uses mobile first indexing. This means that when Google crawls your website, it will use the mobile version. Your website won't rank well in SERPs if it doesn't work on mobile devices.
This vital fact is still being overlooked by many websites today.
Google's mobile friendly test allows you to check the performance of your website on mobile devices. This quick test gives you an overview of your website's performance and lets you know where you can improve.
Google Lighthouse, a great tool for UX overall, is available if you are looking to dig deeper.
6. 6.
Robots.txt is a file that describes how web crawlers should crawl various parts of a website. Although it is a small piece of code, it can make a big difference.
Unintentionally blocking crawlers can cause SEO problems. The bots won't be capable of crawling the page and it won't show up in search results.
Sometimes webmasters don’t want pages indexed. A robots.txt is a useful tool. If your SEO team finds a page not getting traffic, be sure to check for a robots.txt file.
7. Use Follow/No Follow Links in a responsible manner
Links are the language of search engines, so you need to know it.
It is important to distinguish between follow and no-follow links.
Do-follow backlinks, also known as follow links, are links where the person linking does not modify the HTML to prevent Google from associating their site with another. A crawler considers a clean backlink that has not been modified to be one page attesting to the quality of another.
Although crawlers still use no-follow links to find out where they are, they don't assign any value to them.
SEO is all about following links from authoritative websites that are similar to yours. You should consider no-follow links still valuable. Although the link doesn't confer authority, it can drive traffic to your site.
This means developers have to ensure they are using the correct links to communicate with crawlers.
8. Understanding and Implementing Structured Data
Many people involved in SEO can find structured data difficult. This is where developers really shine. Developers are familiar with how to structure a page in a way that is easy for search engine and human searchers to read.
Structured data can be used to give Google a complete picture of every page. It can also tell Google exactly what questions you are answering. The FAQ below uses structured data (schema markup) to show Google that we are answering common questions.
Developer SEO: Commonly Asked Questions
How Do Developers do SEO?
Developers need to be proficient in technical SEO and user experience.
What do web developers do with SEO?
SEO is something that web developers can do to an extent. The developer is responsible for creating a website that functions well and provides a great user experience.
What is SEO Software Development?
SEO software development refers to the process of making software and web apps SEO-friendly.
What is the role of an SEO developer?
An SEO developer knows how decisions made during development will impact a website's search ranking and organic traffic.
SEO For Developers Conclusion
For most website owners, increasing organic traffic is their main goal. SEO for developers is therefore important.
SEO is naturally enhanced by good developers creating user-friendly sites. However, it is important to be familiar with search engine optimization. You can make better decisions and provide better service to your clients by learning the basics.
SEO for developers does not have to be difficult, but it can make a huge difference in a website's success.
How can you approach SEO as an SEO developer?
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By: Neil Patel
Title: 8 Must-Know SEO Best Practices For Developers
Sourced From: neilpatel.com/blog/seo-developers/
Published Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2021 13:00:00 +0000