As a web developer, you’re probably very well versed in a wide variety of best practices on the internet. For some, this means that learning the basics of SEO is just irrelevant, while others would (wisely) disagree. When you make an effort to learn about and actually understand the basics of SEO, it can (and will) go a long way, making you not only more educated but successful. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you have to dive head-first into SEO practices and spend hours learning. Instead, you could focus on some of these things:
Focus on robots.txt
For some web developers, robots.txt is an afterthought that leads to devastating results. If you thought so too, you’d soon learn the hard way that nothing you do actually matters in SEO if the website you’re building can’t get indexed and shown in search results. Be careful with your commands, as you don’t want them to be too open, nor should they be too restrictive. Be intimately familiar with the content of the robots.txt instead of blindly pushing the staging file to production. Check and then double-check everything. A thing to consider that might help too: simply blocking comments pages, tag pages, and similar low-value items.
A thing or two about content
Once you start getting a bit more into the depths of SEO you’ll soon learn one thing: that content is king! It’s all about what and how often you publish on your website and how it relates to your audience. The amount of control you give to people who will publish content is tricky, as you have to be generous yet smart about it. Content creators should definitely be able to access the website in order to publish the content they prepared, but you have to be familiar with it and make sure that it follows the site’s ongoing content plan. That being said, creators simply can’t mess up the speed of the website or any of the existing SEO on-page elements.
Website speed is imperative
To ensure your site is actually indexed once launched, it has to be fast. This is because slow pages push visitors off, and if people are leaving faster than they’re getting on your website, search engines aren’t going to give you a thought and rank you as low as possible. Slow page loads will result in lower conversion rates, and you don’t want that to happen after your hard work, and they also impact SEO performance. This is especially important if you’re also selling something on your website, as you will have to invest in advertising as well as good SEO. Hiring professionals such as Green Web Marketing can get you a long way, especially if you set up a great base first. Optimize site speed often, keep your code light, optimize the hosting environment too, and keep image sizes under control. It goes without saying that any and all code, files, and aspects that can cause instability are a risk.
Why server response codes matter
Sooner or later, you’ll find yourself in a position where you have to get a page to render for a user. You will also deal with unique and often quite tricky user experience (UX) designs that will require creative dev implementations on your part. Whatever happens, it’s your task to ensure that all of the pages are rendering 200 server codes. If there are redirects, you don’t actually need, just remove them. Also, make an effort to source and update any and all 3xx or 4xx codes, as it will greatly improve the way a page responds to visitors.
When and how to redirect
Speaking of redirects, when a user is coming from an old website to a new one, redirects are critical. Website migration and launch processes are impossible to complete without it, so take redirects seriously. When it comes to your launch process, even if you decide not to touch and change anything that’s already implemented there, at least add some redirects. This, of course, means that each and every one of the URLs from the old site contains a 301 redirect to the new page, targeting the most relevant subject matter page. If you notice a page rendering, don’t slack off and assume everything is perfect – use tools to make sure that those redirects are 301s.
Heading tags are not an afterthought
Search engines rely heavily on heading tags, and so should you when building and maintaining a website. Heading tags are specifically designed for content, not CSS shortcuts, but it’s not going to be tricky to master them at all. Of course, you can easily tie your CSS to them, but arrange them accordingly and n order of importance. The first, biggest page heading should always be H1, whereas subheadings can go as low as H5 without any issues. Use logic and feel free to be as literal as you can in the hierarchy. Whenever and wherever you can, use heading tags instead of other CSS, and keep one H1 per page if possible. If this is giving you trouble, you can always work with your SEO resources to understand the
Keep it mobile friendly
You have to remember that even though something works perfectly and looks good in a browser, it doesn’t mean that the search engine is going to love it. If your website is also mobile-friendly, you will rank higher, and a great way to ensure this is to use Google’s mobile-friendly tool. Use the tool often and make sure you pass. Content too should be rendered in the mobile version, as Google uses “mobile first” indexing and they will be looking at the mobile version of your website.
Website security and search engines
You would be surprised to find out just how much website security matters to all search engines. This means that when you’re building a website, there should be an SSL in place and an impeccable one too. There is no room for errors on this front, as any mistake will have your website ranked lower than you ever thought. Of course, this is just the beginning. Your entire website should be perfectly safe and secured against content manipulation or any kind of malicious injection. Getting hacked is bad enough for your job, but user experience plummets, and search engines start avoiding you like the plague.
These last few years have seen a rise in the need for the support of web developers, and it doesn’t come as a surprise. With the entire world going digital, available web developers are becoming more of a rarity, especially good ones. To get a better position in the harsh market, many of them have to learn a thing or two about other SEO principles and how and why they are applied to their line of work. Thus, if you master the SEO basics, you’ll have the upper hand in your line of work.
