10 Must-Know SEO Basics For Web Developers

You understand how difficult it is. All you need to do now is take care of these four or five tickets, and it will make a huge difference in your monthly SEO goals. But how do you enlist the help of your web designers? When they have so many other competing concerns on their plate, how can you help them appreciate the urgency of your SEO needs? I used to be able to conduct roughly 90% of my SEO work for a customer on my own fifteen years ago. Those were the days, but they’re no longer with us. Content creation, user experience (UX), code development, information technology (IT), many layers/levels of approvals, and other factors now play a role in SEO. I’ve written before about how SEO can’t be done in a vacuum, and I’m glad it’s now become a discipline that emphasizes alignment for better results.

1. Security

Search engines are concerned about website security. Ensure that you have an SSL in place and that there are no issues. That’s where it all begins. Have the essential protections in place to guarantee that the site is free of vulnerabilities that could allow for an injection, modified content, and so on. Hacking at any level degrades the user experience and sends out negative signals to both users and search engines. When using plugins, extensions, or tools to safeguard the site, keep site speed in mind (more on that later).

2. Response Codes

The server response codes are important. There are often unique UX designs and techniques to get a page to render for a user that prompt some inventive dev implementations. In any case, double-check that pages are rendering 200 server codes. Any 3xx or 4xx codes should be sourced and updated. Remove redirects if you don’t need them.

3. Redirects

Redirects are an important aspect of the website migration and launch process when moving from an old to a new site. If you don’t do anything else during your launch, at the very least, use redirects. We’re talking about ensuring that all URLs from the previous site point to the most appropriate subject matter page on the new site using a 301 redirect. If you’re simplifying and upgrading content structure, this might be 1:1 old site to new site pages or many to one. Don’t trust a page’s rendering and think it’s fine, just as you shouldn’t trust server codes. Verify that redirects are 301s using tools.

4. Robots.txt

Nothing counts in SEO unless the site is indexed and displayed in search results. Don’t let the robots.txt file fall by the wayside. In certain circumstances, default commands are too permissive, while in others, they are excessively restrictive. Understand the contents of the robots.txt file. Don’t push the staging file to production without first double-checking it. A disallowance of all commands from staging (to keep the dev site from being indexed) that was pushed to the live site has thwarted several sites with great migration and launch plans. Block low-value things like tag pages, comments pages, and any other variations your CMS generates. You’ll almost always have to take into account a lot of low-value garbage, and if you can’t stop the pages from creating, at the very least block them.

5. Sitemaps

Using XML sitemaps, we can ensure that search engines are aware of all of our pages. Don’t squander time and resources by allowing photos, insignificant pages, and other items that shouldn’t be prioritized for concentration and indexing to get in the way. Ascertain that all pages listed in XML sitemaps return a 200 server response code. Maintain them by removing 404s, redirects, and anything else that isn’t the destination page.

6. URLs

Good URLs are short, contain terms that are pertinent to the page’s topic, are in lower case, and contain no letters, spaces, or underscores. I like it when subfolder and page URL structures reflect the content hierarchy in the navigation and site structure. What’re three levels lower? Then type “example.com/level 1/level-2/topical-page” into the address bar.

7. Mobile Friendly

Remember that just because something works or appears well in a browser doesn’t mean it’ll work or look good in a search engine. In SEO SEO services terms of search, mobile friendliness is critical. Make sure it’s mobile-friendly by using Google’s mobile-friendly tool. Ensure that it passes. Consider how the content is displayed in the mobile version. “Mobile-first” indexing is used by Google. This indicates that they are viewing the site on their mobile device. Examine whether you’re hiding or not rendering crucial content that you want search engines to consider in the mobile version for UX considerations.

8. Site Speed

This is number eight on the list, but it may be the most crucial after making sure your site can be indexed. The speed of your website is crucial. Slow page loads and sites hurt user experience and conversion rates. They affect SEO performance as well. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to improving site speed. It all boils down to keeping your code light, utilizing plugins or extensions sparingly, having a well-optimized hosting environment, compressing and minifying JS and CSS, and keeping picture sizes in check. Any code, files, or other elements that can cause performance or stability issues are a risk. Include any content management protections so that a 10MB image cannot be uploaded and cause a website to crash. Alternatively, a plugin update may go undetected.

9. Heading Tags

For search engines, heading tags are excellent context information. Keep in mind that these are content shortcuts rather than CSS shortcuts. Yes, you should link your CSS to them, but do it in the order of relevance. Subheadings on a page should not be H1s, and the first, largest page heading should not be an H5. There’s a lot of discussion about the impact (or lack thereof) of headings on SEO performance. In this article, I’m not going there. Just be as specific as possible when it comes to the hierarchy and how it’s applied. Wherever possible, use them instead of other CSS. If possible, limit the number of H1s on a page to one. Work with your SEO team to grasp the general strategy for headers and on-page content.

10. Content Management & Dynamic Content

As previously said, CMS functionality may wreak havoc on even the most well-designed development projects. Think about how much control you’re giving away. Understand the site’s long-term content strategy and requirements so that content writers have the power they desire while not jeopardizing site speed or any of the SEO on-page features. Tagging, XML sitemap generation, redirects, and other dynamic features can save you time while also ensuring the stability of your site and code.

Conclusion

The confluence and collaboration between SEO experts and site developers are critical. For technical SEO and other things like enterprise scaling of on-page objects, SEO relies on best practices. Understanding SEO fundamentals can help developers collaborate more effectively and get better SEO results. Additionally, it may result in fewer rework or “SEO-specific” adjustments and demands, resulting in more efficient website development labor.