If you want to be successful developing websites for clients, you should have at least a cursory understanding of search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is a set of strategies designed to help websites rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). It’s considered a distinct online marketing strategy, but it draws from multiple disciplines.
Because SEO relies both on the technical factors of a site and the qualitative nature of the content on the site (not to mention offsite factors), a developer can’t reasonably tackle all responsibilities necessary for good SEO—but they’re still a necessary part of the process.
The Elements of SEO
In case you aren’t familiar, Google and other search engines keep a massive index of all the pages on the web. They send out bots to crawl the web (appropriately called “spiders”) and gather information to store in this index. Then, whenever a user searches for a specific keyword or keyword phrase, Google attempts to find the best possible pages to provide that user.
It does this based on the relevance of a page (how closely related it is to the query) and its authority (or how trustworthy it seems to be). Relevance is largely considered based on the type of content found on a given page. Authority is, in some ways, more complex; the quality of your content, the number and quality of links pointing to your pages, and other factors can all play a role.
Accordingly, most search optimizers split their attention into multiple separate strategies, including:
· Technical onsite SEO. Technical onsite SEO is all about how the site is built, and how it’s maintained. Good technical SEO is designed to make the site completely crawlable, so it can be indexed properly. It’s also designed to make the site more functional, and therefore more authoritative in Google’s eyes. This is where the majority of your responsibilities as a developer come into play.
· Onsite content. SEO also requires the generation of high-quality onsite content, which serves a number of simultaneous roles. For example, it provides keywords and contextually relevant content that can increase a site’s relevance for certain queries, but it also helps make a site more authoritative.
· Link building. With the help of link building services or by attracting links naturally, search optimizers can establish much higher authority for the site they’re working on. Google has gotten good at discerning spam from legitimate links, so these days, most links are built with the foundation of high-quality offsite content.
Technical Factors to Consider
There are many technical factors you’ll need to consider for SEO when developing a website, but all of them are part of the same overall philosophy. Google and other search engines preferentially rank sites that function well, optimizing for the best possible user experience. Accordingly, if you’re developing a site according to best practices, with user experience in mind, you should naturally be able to reap the benefits of SEO.
If you’re interested in more specifics about how development factors into SEO, these are some of the most important categories to consider:
· URL structures. First, you’ll need to think about how you’re structuring the URLs of your site. Basic best practices are usually sufficient here, including breadcrumbs pathing to make it easy for users to navigate your site, and making sure each page of your site has an intelligible description in the URL.
· Semantic markup. Next, you’ll need to consider the semantic markup of your site. Including the right meta tags for the right types of content is vital if you want search engines to “see” and index that content properly.
· Site speed. Site speed plays a major role in determining the rankings of a given site. In general, the quicker a site loads, the more authoritative it will be, and the higher it will rank. You can improve site speed with efficient coding, proper caching, and other simple adjustments.
· Content and compatibility. It’s also important for all the content of a site to load properly, no matter what type of device, operating system, or browser is accessing it. This is a basic best practice, but you’d be surprised how many developers miss it.
· Status codes. Setting up proper HTTP status codes, including 1xx informational codes, 3xx redirection codes, and 4xx error codes will help bots crawl and index your site properly.
· Robots.txt. You may also want to spend time optimizing your robots.txt file, which provides rules and instructions for how crawlers should operate.
As a software developer, you’ll play an important role in optimizing the sites you build for search engines. If you can master this, you’ll be able to construct more functional sites, and you’ll be able to market your services more effectively to companies interested in SEO.
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