Understanding the effective SEO basics will help you collaborate more effectively and achieve better SEO results. Content production, UX, code development, and more are all part of SEO in today’s world. Getting web development’s buy-in and support is crucial for SEO. It’s even better if the developers are aware of SEO concepts. Developers that understand the fundamentals and incorporate them with site maintenance are considerably more efficient, reducing the need for future rework.
Check out these ten effective SEO basics for web developers
1. Security
Search engines are concerned about website security to ensure no issues on the website. Have the essential protections 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. So when using any plugins or extensions, to safeguard the site, also keep the site speed in mind.
2. Response Codes
The server response codes are important to get a page to render for a user that prompts some unique dev implementations. Check to see if the pages are displaying 200 server codes. Remove redirects if you don’t need them.
3. Redirects is also an effective SEO basics
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 least perform redirects. Ensure that all URLs from the previous site are redirected to their appropriate page on the new site using a 301 redirect.
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. Understand the contents of the robots.txt file. Don’t push the staging file to production without double-checking it. Block low-value things like tag pages, comments pages, and any other variations your CMS generates. You’ll always have to examine a lot of low-value garbage, and if you can’t prevent the pages from producing, at the very least prevent them from being indexed.
5. Sitemaps
Using XML sitemaps can ensure that search engines are aware of all of our pages. Don’t spend 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. Keep them clear of 404s, redirects, and anything else that isn’t the intended destination page.
6. URLs
Good URLs are short and are related to the page’s topic written in lower case, and contain no characters, spaces, or underscores. It is good to have a subfolder and page URL structures that reflect the content hierarchy in the navigation and site structure.
7. Adaptive to mobile devices
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 terms of search, mobile friendliness is critical. “Mobile-first” indexing is used by Google and this indicates that they are viewing the site on their mobile device.
8. Site Performance
Slow page loads and sites have a negative impact on user experience and conversion rates. They have an effect on SEO performance as well. It all comes down to keeping your code light, and utilizing plugins and extensions sparingly. Always remember to have a well-optimized hosting environment, compress and minify JS and CSS. 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. Therefore, Site speed should be measured, monitored, and improved on a regular basis.
9. Heading Tags
For search engines, heading tags are excellent context information. Use them instead of other CSS and be as literal as possible in the hierarchy. If possible, limit the number of H1s on a page to one and work with an SEO team to grasp the general strategy for headers and on-page content.
10. Dynamic Content & Content Management
Understand the site’s long-term content strategy and requirements so that content writers have the power to compromise 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. Understanding the effective SEO basics can help developers collaborate more effectively and get better SEO results. Additionally, it may result in few reworks in “SEO-specific” adjustments and demands, resulting in more efficient website development labor.
If you need assistance with seo services, feel free to contact our SEO specialists at info@instiqa.com.