SEO for My Developer Portfolio (Even When You Know Nothing About SEO)

Author:
Jaivardhan Singh

Description (500+ words):

If you’re a developer like me, creating your portfolio site is fun—but making it discoverable on search engines can feel like learning a new programming language. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) might sound intimidating, but you don’t need to be an expert to start improving your portfolio’s visibility. In this post, I’ll share the steps I took to make my React-based portfolio more SEO-friendly, the tools I used, and some beginner-friendly tips that anyone can follow.

When I first launched my portfolio, I realized that even though my site looked great and worked perfectly, search engines weren’t crawling it effectively. Bing flagged my pages as “Discovered but not crawled,” and Google Search Console pointed out missing H1 tags and other small SEO issues. I had no clue what “canonical URLs” or “structured data” meant, but I still wanted my site to appear on Google and Bing.

Here’s what I did:

1. Start with Basic Meta Tags I added basic meta tags to my HTML section:

title – descriptive page title

description – a short summary of the page

keywords – relevant keywords (not too many!)

author – your name

These small additions help search engines understand what your site is about.

1. Add Structured Data (Schema Markup)
   I added a JSON-LD script to describe myself as a developer, linking my social profiles. Search engines use this structured data to better understand content and sometimes show rich snippets in search results.

2. Fix Heading Tags (H1, H2, H3…)
   Search engines use headings to understand page structure. Initially, my portfolio had no H1 tag, so I added one describing me and my profession:

   Jaivardhan Singh | MERN Stack Developer

   This alone fixed some SEO warnings in Google Search Console.

3. Use Canonical URLs
   This tells search engines which URL is the “official” one when multiple URLs might show the same content. It’s a small but important step.

4. Pre-render Your React App
   Since React apps are Single Page Applications (SPA), search engines sometimes struggle to crawl them. I used Prerender.io to serve pre-rendered HTML to search engines. It improved indexing for my pages that weren’t showing up in Bing or Google.

5. Monitor Performance & SEO Issues
   I installed tools like Google Search Console and Vercel’s Speed Insights to check SEO issues, missing tags, and page speed. Monitoring is key—you want to see what’s working and what needs fixing.

6. Keep Learning & Iterating
   SEO is not a one-time task. Even with zero knowledge, starting small and fixing issues as you notice them will gradually improve your site’s visibility.

In conclusion, you don’t need to be an SEO expert to make your portfolio search-engine friendly. Focus on meta tags, headings, structured data, pre-rendering your SPA, and monitor results. Start small, experiment, and you’ll see your site appear in search results over time.

Github
https://github.com/Jaivardhan7773

Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaivardhan7773/

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/jaivardhan7773_

Portfolio
https://jaivardhan.vercel.app