Nowadays, you need to use all available means at your disposal to be able to run your business efficiently in the modern digital age. Building an online presence by mastering SEO development is one of the best ways to make your brand recognizable and profitable. When creating your website, it’s definitely not enough to only ensure its proper functioning. Experienced web developers also take into consideration all essential elements that can impact the website’s searchability and rankings on Google.
Atlasiko Inc. is an experienced SEO and web development company that knows exactly how to make your web pages successful in search results using our expertise in SEO web development services. In this article, our experts will share their best practices and other valuable insights.
What is SEO in web development?
Let’s begin exploring the topic by giving a comprehensive definition. SEO in website development is a consistent practice of utilizing search engine optimization basics and applying them to a web development process. This practice helps developers identify significant elements of their web-based products that can be decisive for SEO success, presents them with proven methods to optimize these elements and then to assess their efforts.
Out of the main search engine optimization categories (technical, off-page, and on-page SEO), web developers are usually heavily involved in technical SEO. This type is linked to the process of website indexation by search engine bots and web crawlers, so it directly depends on the quality of the code, functional components realized on the website, and architecture. On-page SEO also depends on the web dev’s expertise – it includes the factor of user experience highly dependent on overall website performance.
We recommend implementing the fundamentals of SEO in web development right from the start of your project. This is the most productive way since developing your website from scratch with the right strategy in mind is easier and more efficient than redesigning afterward. If you continue to ignore the elements that impact search rankings when developing the website, they will accumulate and prevent your site from ranking higher. Then to correct all mistakes, you’ll need additional evaluation of current faults in the design and redevelopment of SEO strategy which usually is quite challenging. Either way, Atlasiko’s specialists can help you with both projects by delivering our qualified web development and SEO services.
When businesses need SEO web development
We can note several reasons why organizations might need website development SEO. If your business website falls under these conditions, it means you need professional assistance to improve the situation. Explore circumstances to be aware of the most popular issues caused by inefficient web dev SEO.
- Insufficient organic traffic. The lack of organic web traffic is one of the main reasons why your business remains unknown to your target audience and marketing could be more efficient. This type typically makes up most of the traffic as it is unpaid and its main sources are search engines. Having this factor well-tuned is one of the main search optimization goals so all businesses strive to gain it through professional SEO website development.
- Lack of credibility. Building the authority of your brand and website is just as important as performing your primary line of work. Your services and products won’t get the desired promotion and sales if Google and site visitors don’t find your website content trustworthy. Increasing this aspect is one of the principles and objectives of web development SEO, so organizations often opt for it as a working solution.
- Bad user experience. When you have major errors in user experience optimizing your website using fundamental principles and methods of SEO can help businesses to correct them.
- Outdated technologies. Even if you’ve built your website considering search engine optimization, those standards you used might be outdated compared to new Google updates in guidelines. Businesses need to review their strategies regularly and request qualified assistance from experts like Atlasiko’s web development team.
- Inefficient cost spending on marketing. Since search engine optimization is considered the cheapest option in the long run for website promotion, companies choose this method striving to optimize their expenses.
Benefits of SEO and web development combined effort
When your website development and SEO work together, it can bring considerable advantages that significantly improve basically all performance metrics and advance your marketing efficiency.
Increased traffic via SEO and website development
The main benefit that this practice delivers to businesses is the growth of traffic. Web traffic refers to the number of search engine users that visit your website. It is a result of achieving better rankings and a guarantee of increased client engagement. The more users visit your pages, the more chances they make decisions about your services or products. Search engine optimization focuses on gaining organic traffic compared to other marketing methods targeting paid traffic by using by relying on ads. While sponsored advertisements are a great way to increase website traffic, they are not always completely dependable and are not always simply accessible.
Enhanced quality of websites
The best SEO and web development approaches not only aim at enhancing website performance on search engines but also at making it better in general. It includes working on advancing page loading speed, code quality, user experience, accessibility, and other aspects. Overall, these methods significantly improve the quality of your website along with search engine rankings.
Boost in local marketing
Local business owners typically start by trying to grow their sales in their regional market. In these situations, SEO and web strategies have tried-and-true methods to offer to orient your website toward a local target audience. The website can be designed with the location, address, and other relevant local information incorporated so that users searching for "nearby services" would find the appropriate site, increasing sales.
Efficient work with web development and SEO
This approach is the only marketing tactic that requires less work than others if we compare it to social media marketing or email marketing. The effective utilization of labor and effort allows you to focus on other important tasks while your search optimization strategy works for your business promotion. Of course, it doesn’t mean you can leave the matter unattended as SEO is a long-term strategy. Google regularly optimizes its standards so you still need to keep up with updates to stay on track.
Cost efficiency
Combining SEO and web development isn’t efficient just effort-wise but also cost-wise. Since it targets unpaid methods of attracting web traffic, it’s considered easier on the budget than consistent use of paid ads. It also is a long-term effect strategy, so you can reap the results without new investments for some time after the initial implementation. All you need to do is make sure you're adhering to the proper rules if you want to enhance the volume of online traffic to your website.
Insightful analytics
You can use specialized tools to analyze your website's performance and determine its results to comprehend user behavior on your website. Getting useful insights into the experience of your users allows you to be equipped with knowledge of what direction to curate future content.
Increased brand awareness
If your website is carefully crafted using the most remarkable web development and SEO techniques and top-notch content, it won't take long for it to rank well in search results. This enhances the reputation, visibility, and credibility of your brand. If more people click on your content, consumers who visit the website and like the content will also promote your brand name through other communication channels.
10 Best SEO developer practices to master
Here, we’ll share useful practices and tips for SEO developers that are widely acknowledged and proven to be effective. Use these recommendations and techniques if you want to improve your chances for successful site promotion on search engines.
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Focus on page loading acceleration
Professional SEO developers have a clear understanding that page loading time is a significant factor considered by Google when determining ranking factors. Google’s algorithms boost faster-loading websites while lowering the ranks of slower-loading ones making them lose out on exposure and organic traffic. Page speed also affects how often search engine bots visit a page. Search engine users also don’t like to wait for pages to load which negatively impacts client engagement and conversions. All things considered, programmers have to take page speed optimization seriously if they want to ensure a positive user experience and high rankings. Otherwise, you may lose out on important chances to market your website through search engine results.
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Optimize URLs
SEO for developers also includes URL optimization practice which entails making your URL structure understandable for a more thorough website architecture and improved crawling. To implement this, make sure your URLs accurately reflect your content hierarchy.
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Create a sitemap
To help search engines understand your website, SEO developers create a blueprint of its content. It’s an .xml file that contains a list of all the relevant pages you mark as the most important on your site. When added to Google Search Console, it can greatly ease the workload for Google bots and speed up the indexing process.
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Create robots.txt file
Making a robots.txt file is a practice of SEO for web developers purposed to inform Google’s web crawlers about the URLs on your website that you wish to have checked and indexed. It's primarily used to prevent sending too many queries to your website. You can use password protection or block indexing with noindex tags to prevent Google from finding a page.
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Ensure mobile-friendliness
Google presents mobile-friendliness as one of the significant ranking factors. Therefore, web developer SEO requires the application of this principle during development. Having a mobile-friendly website with a responsive design also can help you boost traffic since only in 2023 around 50.55% of it was generated from mobile devices, according to DataProt.
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Implement structured data
SEO developer specialists are skilled at structuring pages so that search engines and users can both read them. By utilizing schema markup, they can fully utilize formatting. It improves Google's ranking by letting crawlers know what's on every section of your page and the questions each page attempts to address. Naturally, structured content also results in enhanced UX.
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Use HTML tags
Every SEO web developer knows the importance of using HTML tags. Thanks to them search engines can view structured data and content relationships on websites which accelerates indexing and might improve rankings. Search engines also can determine a keyword's importance by looking at where it falls in the hierarchy of HTML.
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Use proper redirect codes
SEO for web developers recommends using redirect codes to send both search engine bots and users to another URL on your website. The main reason is to preserve search engine rankings while a certain web page undergoes migration or redesign. The utilization of correct redirect codes also ensures maintaining a positive user experience.
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Implement response code
To ensure indexability and assure search engines of the health of your site, SEO web developers implement HTTP status codes. They are three-digit codes that the server responds with when a browser request is fulfilled or not. You must ensure that search engine crawlers can access your material if you want to increase traffic. For that, you want to get HTTP status 200 back when people and search engines request your content.
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Collaborate with a content team
Your content team must understand web developer SEO aspects for accelerated performance. Typically, SEO writers and designers want to enrich their content with different on-page SEO components, like videos, GIFs, PDFs, photos, and other material. Unfortunately, they can cause a website's structure to be unimpressive and impede proper page loading performance. Visual elements also have to be optimized according to standards (size, image title, image file name, Alt text, file format, image delivery). Ensure the content creators on your team know these limitations and adhere to them while creating text and visuals if your website uses a content management system for content management.
Tips for SEO developers
| Challenge | Solution |
|---|---|
| Improve loading speed |
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| URL optimization |
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| Slow indexing process |
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| Structure content |
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| Ensure proper UX and indexability |
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| Optimize content |
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Conclusion
In this article, we established that search engine optimization in web development is one of the crucial practices leading to satisfactory performance of your website and the desired boost in search result rankings. Now that you fully understand its principles and know the basics, it will be easier to optimize the web development process with SEO and reach your project objectives. If you still have trouble getting this optimization process right, don’t hesitate to reach out to our SEO web development company for professional assistance.
