Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is one of the essential work processes undertaken to make your website more viewable on search engines, increase the volume of organic traffic, and eventually rank better than others.
Many people attempt to improve their already live websites, but in actual sense, the development process is the best time in which the best SEO practices can be implemented. You’ll be building up a strong foundation and improving the user experience of the website at that point; you’ll save time and effort in the long term by doing this part as part of the development.
The article takes you through the key aspects of how to make your website SEO optimized during the development process.
1. Why Start SEO During Development?
Starting with SEO from development has several benefits. This means much rework is not needed to get the site right when it begins to get crawled and indexed by the search engines.
This will keep you on your trajectory to succeed highly at this point in the launch process. A website design agency that knows about search engine optimization can also make things go much more smoothly and efficiently for you.
2. SEO-Friendly Web Structure
A well-arranged web structure helps users and search engines alike, find and make sense of your content which, in turn, leads to better indexing by search engines, while giving the best user experience.
Key features of good web structure:
- Clear Hierarchy: Keep all the pages of your web under a logical hierarchy. Use categories and subcategories for organizing content.
- Breadcrumbs: Add breadcrumbs to help visitors know how to get to a given page. It will make it easy to navigate the site and for search engines.
- Easy Navigation: Use simple menus and make all the main pages available in a few clicks.
3. Mobile Optimization
With mobile surpassing desktop traffic recently, your website must be mobile-friendly. Since Google has become a mobile-first indexing, primarily based on mobile versions of your site to rank pages.
Best Practice for Mobilization:
- Responsive Design: Ensure that it automatically changes with the size of the screen. Co-operate with mobile app developers or collaborate with your website development team to make it fluid and smooth across all devices.
- Fast Loading Time: Optimise images and remove content related features that delay loading.
- Touch-Friendly Elements: Ensure buttons and forms are designed for touch interactivity with proper sizing and spacing.
4. Site Speed and Performance
A quick website will enhance user experience and rank better on search engines. Google has declared site speed as a ranking variable, so optimizing for performance is essential.
How to optimize site speed:
- Minify code: Reduce the size of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files by removing extra code from the files
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN): CDNs distribute your content across multiple servers with an increased chance of serving it from the closest server to where they reside, lowering the load time.
- Optimize Images: Compress images without losing the quality and make use of next-gen formats such as WebP.
- Enable Browser Caching: This enables the browser to store parts of your website for faster loading on subsequent visits.
5. SEO Friendly URL Structure
For rankings in search engines, an SEO-friendly URL structure is highly essential. A clear and descriptive URL will enhance click-through rates and make your website more navigable.
Best Practices for URL Structure:
- Use Keywords: Put your main keywords in the URLs so that search engines know what the page is about.
- Keep It Simple: Never use unnecessary words, special characters, or consecutive numbers.
- Use Hyphens, Not Underscores: In addition to making it easy on the eyes, it also helps with SEO to separate words with hyphens.
6. On-Page SEO: Meta Tags and Headers
On-page SEO elements, such as meta tags and headers, are a way of communicating with the search engine about what your page has to say. In other words, these elements of the on-page SEO help the search engines understand the relevance and structure of your content.
Critical Takeaway Objects:
- Title Tags: Every page should have a unique, keyword-optimized title tag. Title tags are not more than 54 characters long and contain the main keywords.
- Meta Descriptions: Write attractive meta descriptions wherein you would describe briefly the content that must contain relevant keywords. Although meta descriptions do not have an impact on rankings, they do affect the click-through rate.
- H1, H2, H3 Header Tags: Use header tags so that your content becomes well-structured and perfectly hierarchical. And your H1 tag shall contain a primary keyword of the page.
7. XML Sitemap and Robots.txt
An XML sitemap helps search engines discover and crawl every important page on your website. The Robots.txt file lets you control which pages search engines can or cannot index.
How to use these tools:
- XML Sitemap: Create an XML sitemap that includes all the relevant pages. Make Google Search Console aware of your website structure by submitting it to them.
- Robots.txt: Create a Robots.txt file that will exclude as much unwanted content as possible from being indexed. For example, admin or login pages won’t be indexed.
8. Image Optimization for SEO
Images are used extensively on a website; however, they have plenty of implications for SEO. Optimized images speed up page loading while making sure that crawlers can understand better.
How to optimize Images:
Rename image files with descriptive filenames consisting of relevant keywords that describe the content of the image.
- Alt Text: Use descriptive alt text for all images. Aside from helping the search engine index the image, it also makes your site more accessible to screen readers.
- Comp Image: Use image compress tools that won’t jeopardize quality. File size is compressed down and sets up a speedier site.
9. Internal Linking Structure
Internal link means linking various pages within your website to each other that would effectively aid the users as well as the search engines in finding the appropriate related content. A good internal linking structure boosts SEO and also further helps distribute link equity across a site.
How to Create an Internal Linking Strategy:
- Utilize Descriptive Anchor Text: Make sure that the anchor text used by your internal links refers to relevant keywords.
- Link to Important Pages: Make sure that the most important pages, like the product pages or blog posts, are linked from common pages so that these pages are ranked higher in the structure.
- Don’t Over Link One Page: Hyperlinking to other pages on your site is okay, but do not have a page that links excessively. Too many internal links can weaken each one’s power as a source for SEO.
10. Schema Markup
Schema markup or structured data is a form of microdata that helps to interpret the content of your website by a search engine and allows a search engine to display rich snippets in search results, thereby increasing visibility.
- How to use schema markup: Identify Key Schema Types Implement schema types that are relevant to your content, such as product, article, FAQ, or review. Add schema markup to your website’s code so that search engines can enhance the search results.
11. Integrate Tracking and Analytics
Google Analytics and Google Search Console can be tracked even after your site goes live. Embedded during development gives you a head start on keeping an eye on those KPIs from day one.
What do you benefit from tracking?
- Track Traffic: Know where your visitors are coming from and what they do on your site
- Track Keywords: Track those keywords sending traffic and optimize the winning ones
- User Behavior: Analyze their behavior to identify opportunities for improving engagement and conversion.
12. Security (HTTPS)
This will ensure that the site is secure because the security of the website prevents data compromise for users but also works to have better SEO. Google favors search rankings using sites that are encrypted with HTTPS. Your site’s security matters for instilling trust and it will help your website with better SEO.
How to secure your website:
- Obtain an SSL Certificate: Ensure that all data being conveyed between your server and the users is encrypted with an SSL certificate.
- Regular Security Audits: Carry out regular security check-ups and see that your CMS and plugins are updated.
- Adding Security Headers: Add security headers to your website so you can ward off common web vulnerabilities including cross-site scripting (XSS) and clickjacking.
Conclusion:
Optimizing your website during the development process puts in a bedrock for future success. If you design your website with such features as SEO-friendliness, mobile optimization, fast site speed, and so on, you are sure that the site will rank properly in search engines right from the start. Incorporating these best practices into the development phase gives your site a competitive edge in the digital landscape.