Marketing / SEO

Best ways a developer can help SEO your website

Stella Lincoln

Updated: Dec 13, 2023 · 10 min read

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Best ways a developer can SEO your website


With the majority of businesses today progressively seeking online avenues to strengthen their reach toward targeted audiences, having a proprietor website has almost become an obligation.

However, at present times, there is an overwhelming competition that businesses face in the virtual realm. This mandates that websites are backed and supported through commendable SEO (search engine optimization), as this will allow it to attract online traffic and build a strong online presence for brands.

Therefore one can pretty much define SEO for websites as a necessity, and this is exactly why website developers should never neglect the importance of SEO features and functions when developing a website.

According to a recent report by IMPACT, 57% of marketing executives claim that on-page content development is the most effective SEO tactic. Furthermore, over 70% of marketers proclaim that SEO is more effective than PPC (Pay-per-Click), and 61% say that improving SEO and organic presence is their top priority.

In light of this information, let’s take a look at some of the ways website developers can assist SEO when developing websites for brands and businesses.

Content-centric development

With SEO becoming more content-centric with the passage of time, it is becoming a crucial part of modern web design and development.

A content-centric design relates to the website project management as a gateway process where the actual website design and subsequent build of the website centers on copywriting, images and other multimedia assets to be included on the website.

Hence, this indefinitely emphasizes that all written and visual content should be made available on-time so that further processes required to build the website are not delayed. This includes finalizing and signing the content that has been proofread and cross-checked for quality and requires no further changes.

SEO-based website structure

The site structure relates to the overall process of organizing your website and the content it contains. Your website may deal with a variety of related topics that are presented through pages and even posts.

Developers can pay special attention to the following SEO factors to improve your site’s performance:

  • Nailing the user experience as it is one of the biggest factors these days to rank higher on search engines.
  • Site links such as services, blogs, about us, contact us, FAQs, and many more allow users to easily navigate through the website and enable users to visit relevant pages on your site.
  • You need to optimize your website for search engine crawling and indexing.
  • Emphasize on-site hierarchy and information hierarchy.
  • URL structures that follow site hierarchy (navigational hierarchy), e.g., www.johnsclub.com/locations/chinatown.
  • Build a shallow website navigation structure where users need fewer clicks to reach desired pages.
  • Use top header navigational bar with drop-down menus.
  • Comprehensive internal linking structure.
  • Schema markups and rich snippets

    Here we simply cannot neglect the importance of schema markups and rich snippets as they greatly boost search engine rankings. Schema markups are the code that you put on your website to help search engines return more information for users. They utilize semantic vocabulary in microdata format, and you can visit Schema.org to learn more about its usage.

    Closely related to schema markups are the rich snippets. Rich snippets are able to provide additional information for users whenever a result is pulled from a website that has structure data present on its HTML pages. Both schema markups and rich snippets are potentially important and focus on users.

    Keyword utilization

    The use of keywords and SEO keywords are tremendously important, as they allow online users to find your website. Search engines crawl through content on your website, and your usage of keywords allows them to connect potential visitors to your homepage.

    Here are some ways you can use keywords on your website:

    Title

    Optimizing the page titles of your website is a part of technical SEO and also a good place to start using keywords. When search engines display search results for your website, they include the page title upfront. Page titles often include the name of the page as well as the main headline of a post.

    Here you can use targeted SEO keywords or keyword phrases to let search engines and users know what your page is all about.

    Meta description

    After page titles, the meta description is the second most important place to use keywords, as they show up under your page title in search results. While meta description is no longer a direct or prominent ranking factor, it can still help search engines to determine the relevancy of your content and what users are searching for in the first place.

    Heading tags

    Heading tags can be used as indicators in HTML to help structure the content of your webpage, and for an SEO point of view, this can help search engines read your content. Heading tags can range from H1 (main heading) to H6 (lowest sub-heading) from a hierarchical perspective.

    tags are thus an essential part of your written content that is displayed on your website for viewers and users. This is why they should carry keywords as they make your content relevant for users, and they may also appear as a part of the featured snippet on SERPs (search engine result pages).

    Image optimization

    Might sound a bit outlandish, Image SEO is unquestionably a thing and carries a lot of importance for veteran and experts in SEO. As a website developer, you need to understand the importance of using images and how they can be optimized to improve search engine rankings.

    Some basic tips for optimizing images for improving your website’s SEO include:

  • Relevant images that match your text.
  • Picking good file names for images with a focus on key phrases in the image name.
  • You should use images with the right format (JPEG, PNG, etc.) and scale (dimensions and resolutions), as it improves loading times.
  • Reduce file size, image compression without any loss to quality.
  • Add captions to your images, as they are important for readers, visitors, and users of your website.
  • Alt tags

    A special mention goes to alt text or alt tag. Alt tags allow descriptive text to be displayed if the image is not provided to the visitor for any reason. Furthermore, people with visual impairments and using a screen reader can find alt tags useful, as they provide information and moreover, functionality is retained. Alt tags are also great for using SEO keywords and phrases.

    Mobile-friendly design

    Mobile-friendly websites are becoming extremely common and popular due to the fact that much of the web traffic and online traffic is being generated through mobile devices. For an SEO point of view, mobile-friendly websites are a favorite among search engines, especially Google.

    They are essentially shrunken and made small enough to be displayed on smart devices. The site retains its functions even with zooming, scrolling, and pinching actions. For developers, they need to make sure that your website remains responsive as well as includes the same content and information on any device it is accessed through.

    Structural linking

    Internal link structure is an important aspect of concerns relating to SEO. While inbound links are important, your website developer must not neglect the significance of links within your website. Search engines view internal links and process how to pass their weight.

    For users, internal links provide a primary method to navigate throughout your website. It is important over here to understand that broken links can deteriorate your Page Rank and are considered horrible for SEO as well as user experience (UX).

    Your website developer must pay special attention to minimizing duplicate links, understand how your most linked pages carry the most weight, and work toward facilitating links to carry this Page Rank weight to other pages. The goal here is to completely remove broken links or mend them while also organizing your links based on a hierarchy system so that the weight of your Page Rank is distributed in a logical manner.

    Checking for Robots.txt

    The Robots.txt files are crucial, as they tell search engine crawlers which pages or files they can or cannot request from your website. Robot.txt files are also called robots exclusion protocol or standard. Hence, you can use these files to disable search engines from crawling unimportant or similar pages and focus on more important information.

    The more time search engines take to crawl your website, the more negative impact it leaves on your website’s ranking. With proper usage of Robots.txt, you can improve your website’s crawl health and enable search engines to crawl through your website quickly.

    Removing HTML errors

    HTML errors can seriously hurt your website rankings, which is why your developers must take their time and effort to make sure that they are removed completely. There are also various tools available online that can help you validate the quality of your code and find errors found on your website.

    The two main types of errors are namely syntax and logic errors. The 404 HTML code for Not Found can be fixed by simply redirecting users to another page. This can be accomplished through a 301 redirect.

    Keeping in mind that, ‘User is the King’

    Today, search engines are increasingly becoming more focused on providing users with the best experience when surfing online. This is why websites that have user-friendly interfaces and offer commendable user experience are ranked higher by search engines. Here are some important pointers for your web developers to take note of in the future:

    User-friendly URLs

    These are short and easy to remember. The URLs that are user-friendly help visitors revisit pages by simply typing them in the address bar on their browsers. There are various tools online that can help you generate user-friendly URLs for your website’s pages.

    For an SEO point of view, they should contain keywords/key phrases, must be short, use static URLs, use lowercase letters and hyphens to separate words. In the end, if you do this right, your website will perform better on search engines, and the CTRs for your website will also improve.

    UX

    User experience, as discussed before, is becoming increasingly important and bigger for SEO. Your web developers need to facilitate various functions and features of your website so that it offers a friendly experience to visitors.

    This may include the use of white space, optimizing page speed, using hyperlink differentiation, usage of images with optimization, well-designed headlines, removing 404s, and a responsive website that is mobile-friendly. In short, that is pretty much everything that we have covered so far in this post.

    Bounce rate

    Another nuisance that can hurt your website’s SEO is the bounce rate. Bounce rate analyzes the percentage of visitors who enter your website and leave rather quickly without continuing to stay on your website or viewing other pages. In 2020, a good bounce rate is between 41%-55%, but aiming for a 26%-40% bounce rate is ideal.

    Many students running their own websites nowadays use thesis writing services UK for their academic written work so that they can cater to improving their site’s bounce rates. To reduce bounce rate, developers should work toward increasing your site’s speed and perform A/B Testing, deploy high-quality videos and images, and lastly, improve user experience.

    Conclusion

    Your website development process builds the very foundation and overall architecture of your website and serves the floorplan for any building. This is why your website developers must understand the importance of incorporating SEO-friendly features and functions for your website that can, later on, save time, effort, and even cost in the future.

    Developing an SEO-friendly website allows you to get more traffic to your content and accomplish your desired goals.

    Author Bio

    Stella Lincoln currently works as a Business Executive at Crowd Writer, a platform known for expert content services. She also formerly worked as a Developer at Dissertation Assistance. During her free time, she likes to indulge herself in pop culture ranging from movies, music and even video games.

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