The Web Developer cannot indulge in a complete focus on coding and the other technical aspects of a website. They must learn the basics of SEO that they need to implement at times, staying within their capacity. The SEO needs to render, and alter some inputs from time to time. They often depend on the web Developers for that matter as they hold the door to the site’s technical floor. A certain amount of SEO knowledge will only help them make the collaboration faster and easier. This leads to the creation of an SEO-friendly, successfully optimized website that offers great ROI while engaging a large group. Take a look at some SEO best practices that Web Developers must know.
SEO generally has 3 major categories. They are,
- Technical SEO: Technical SEO is the method that shows how bots can crawl or index web pages.
- On-page SEO: This method judges how well the site content is optimized for certain keywords to enhance user experience.
- Off-page SEO: How different sites from across industries are linked to your website to make it an authority site.
Developers play the biggest role in making technical SEO success for your site. However, a developer’s role in the process of SEO does not end here. There are certain SEO practices that Web Developers must follow for better ranks of the site and sustained health of it.
Clean Code…
Clean and simple codes are great for creating an exceptional user experience. That is what impresses visitors the most. Clean code is the prerequisite to properly SEO-optimized websites. After landing on the site, it is the user experience that helps the user decide whether it is worth the effort to come back to the website or not.
Reduced Loading Time…
Complicated codes are also detrimental to the load time of your web pages. Loading time is another deciding factor for the SEO of the website. Search Engines offer higher ranks to sites that load quickly and offer information as the quickest response. So, the Developer needs to keep load time less for the sake of high search engine ranks.
Proper Redirects…
Website structures are evolving very fast. On-page content (graphics + text) keeps changing. Additions and removals keep happening on your web pages. Whatever you do on the site must work in favor of user experience. 301 and 302 are the redirects that have the greatest impact on SEO. The 301 redirects indicate that the site pages have been permanently moved. The 302 redirect indicates the temporary movement of the page. At that point, the developer needs to be extra cautious that you can keep the link equity for all the original pages. Correct use of redirects is one of the most important factors that can impact the site’s SEO.
Add The Sitemap…
Search engines do not see the website the way human users do. They require hints on how the web pages link together. That is why a sitemap is an absolute necessity. Sitemap is the best element to offer clues about how your site pages are linked. While indexing the site, bots chase all the links to find out their origin. Adding a sitemap would help the bot do this procedure easily. Google and other search engines will crawl the site thoroughly with the help of Google internal linking. When the site is really big and has too many pages, the sitemap is really important to reduce confusion. This way, the site is indexed better by all search engines.
Mobile Compatibility…
The site must work perfectly on your mobile devices. 54.8% of traffic visits a site on a mobile device. That is the major reason why Google prioritizes websites with amazing mobile compatibility. Google and other search engines follow a mobile-first indexing system. Your site cannot rank high on a search engine without a highly functional mobile version of the site. Google’s mobile-friendly test helps you understand how well the mobile version of your site is faring. Google Lighthouse is another tool to help you understand the overall UX of the site.
Concluding Lines…
Every site owner would like to gain sizeable traffic through organic SEO. That is the reason Developers should have good knowledge of SEO. You should connect to talented Developers to create SEO-friendly websites that are naturally curated for your business success.