What Is SEO-Friendly Web Development?
What precisely is SEO-friendly site development, before we continue? How does it function? Let's review the bare minimum requirements.
You're using a program called a web browser to browse the internet. For example, that might be Chrome or Firefox. Your browser sends a request to the web server hosting the files for a website when you type the domain name of that site into the URL bar. After then, your browser downloads these files, which include HTML text, pictures, and videos. It renders them on your screen in the end.
Because they are directed at the user, HTML and other languages used to display the files you've downloaded are referred to as "front-end technologies." Back-end technologies are server-side languages that control the data exchanged with the server while you do actions like submitting forms or entering credit card information.
You could compare it to the front- and back-of-house staff in a restaurant. The front-end employees handle the intake and delivery of customer requests, just way the hosts and waitstaff do. Like the culinary crew, the back-end employees handle those front-end requests.
Web development is building the architecture of your website, similar to creating the restaurant's floor concept and hiring staff. Setting up the site so that search engines can crawl it and rank it, draw users, and deliver a positive user experience are all part of doing this in an SEO-friendly manner. It's similar to planning and running your "restaurant" to get favorable reviews from reviewers, draw in guests, and provide excellent customer service.
Here are five guiding principles for SEO-friendly web development that you can use to create a website that ranks well and attracts leads:
- Create crawlable site structures and URLs
- Target keywords in content and tags
- Use redirects when changing content around
- Utilize Schema markups for rich snippets
- Optimize your site for mobile
1. Create Crawlable Site Structures and URLs
Making a website simple for search engine crawlers to traverse is a key component of developing a website that is SEO-friendly so that it may be evaluated and indexed in search results. Your site's navigation, URLs, and structure should all be logically designed as your first step to making it simple to grasp.
Site Structures
Consider the crawl bot as a critic that visits your restaurant to write about it and describe its atmosphere to potential customers. What would the critic think if it was difficult to place an order because it was unclear which door to enter through, whether to wait to be seated or sit, and how the menu was laid out?
They find it more difficult to evaluate you when your structure is poor, and the user experience will probably suffer as a result. No matter how good of material or "meal" you offer, the "critic" won't recommend you as often as they could otherwise.
Your website should be organized in a logical hierarchy to address this. The most appropriate comparison is to a filing cabinet. Your website is the actual cabinet. Categories like "Products," "Services," and "About" are represented by the drawers. The documents contained therein are pages for specific goods or services, and the folders within are subcategories.
For instance, the file in the Frontier Marketing filing cabinet's Services drawer is our Web Design page. When designing websites, we find it useful to write out site structures in the following manner:
- Home
- About
- History
- Team
- Products
- Product Subcategory
- Product
- Product
- Product
- Product Subcategory
- Product
- Product
- Services
- Service
- Service
- Service
- Portfolio
- Contact
- Blog
- Product Subcategory
URL Structures
Next, you have to label those pages correctly so that the search bots are able to navigate them. Due to a hierarchical URL structure and predictable and consistent naming conventions, both bots and users should be able to predict what will be on a page.
The URL for a new page should make sense with the remainder of the page. The URLs should be something like this: For instance, if an auto shop adds additional sites for dent repair, engine servicing, and brake lights:
- autoshop.com/services/body-work/dent-removal
- autoshop.com/services/repair-work/engine-service
- autoshop.com/products/brake-lights
As you can see, the routes you take to reach those pages and how they are organized are very clear. A crawl bot or user can easily understand the destination and contents of the words because they are separated by hyphens (not underscores).
Navigation
Finally, you need to make it simple for users to move around these structures once they are on the site. How are your links organized and labeled? What areas do you want users to focus on? Text links, the page's actual content, and the template's design components all fall under this category.
Make your website's structure as simple to use as you can so that users can find what they're seeking as quickly as possible. Otherwise, that logical framework won't function properly.
2. Target Keywords in Your Content and Tags
Keyword targeting is the next stage in building a website that is simple for bots to index and, consequently, simple for users to locate and utilize. The main terms that you want to rank for in search results are known as keywords. Your website should include the word "shoes" in order to show up when people search for that term if you want to rank for that term.
Incorporating your keywords into the text, title tags, and meta descriptions of your website is the first step in effective on-site optimization.
Keywords in Content
It's vital to avoid "stuffing" the text with keywords in superfluous or unnatural areas when using keywords in your website's on-page content. Instead of just counting the number of times you utilize the term, search engine bots try to evaluate the relevancy and utility of your content using machine learning. Keep in mind that you should create original, pertinent material for both readers and bots. That said,
here are places throughout your content where you should be trying to feature that page’s target keyword:
- The title is as close to the beginning as you can.
- The first paragraph of copy.
- At least one of the H1, H2, and/or H3 subheadings breaks up the copy.
- Multiple times throughout the body text, including variations. We try for about one per 100 words, though it’s more important for them to appear naturally than to hit a specific keyword density.
- In at least one alt attribute of an image on that page, such as the caption, description, or alt text.
- Once in the URL.
- Once in the meta description tag.
Using keywords in the anchor text of hyperlinks leading to other pages of your website is one instance where you shouldn't do it. Sending traffic to another page is a practice known as keyword cannibalization and reduces the page's SEO value.
Keywords in Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
Perhaps the clearest cue you offer a search engine about the subject of your website is in the title tag. The ideal length is between 65 and 75 characters, with the target keywords appearing as early in the sentence as possible while maintaining readability and impact for the user.
By putting your brand name, you may further brand your titles. Just make sure to use pipes (the | character) to demarcate these elements of the title.
The language that displays beneath your title on the search results page is known as your meta description. This is the advertising copy you employ to get users to click on your page, even if it has no direct bearing on your rankings.
Use your keyword here since Google will bold it and let the user know that this result has what they were looking for. Try to entice users to read the rest of the page by including the keyword early in the meta description, keeping it to a maximum of 160 characters, and using compelling language.
3. Use Redirects for Changing Content Around
It's common to have many pages with the same or related content when shifting content around or adding new stuff. It's best to get rid of duplicate content and utilize redirects when moving stuff around because this confuses search engines.
The search engine bots will consider your pages to have duplicate content and penalize you if you temporarily relocate content somewhere else, copy pages to a subdomain, or establish new URLs for your content. The fact that these several pages will compete with one another for the same keywords and SEO rankings is not helpful.
Instead, combine these sites into one powerful page. Using 301 (permanent) and 302 (temporary) redirects is a crucial component of this. Users and bots will be automatically redirected from the old URLs to the new ones by these. By doing this, the page receives the full SEO value it merits and users are spared from 404 errors and dead links.
These 404 errors are just one kind of crawl mistake that could happen to your website. The subject is too complex to go into detail here, but Google has helpful guides for understanding how to handle this and other crawl issues.
4. Utilize Schema Markups for Rich Snippets
The use of Schema to display rich snippets on search engine results pages (SERPS) was one of the SEO trends we noticed at the beginning of 2017. This pattern has persisted, thus it makes sense to utilize Schema markup to make your website's content more understandable to search engines.
In addition to the URL, title, and meta description, rich snippets are search results with additional information. For instance, if you look up a recipe, a lot of the results will include information such as star ratings, images of the food, calorie counts, preparation durations, etc.
Schema markup allows you to tag the material in your pieces in order to give it context and aid Google in understanding how the content is related to other stuff. For instance, you can use Schema markup to specify which content on your About page displays your location, business hours, etc.
This aids Google in organizing the data so that it may conceivably show it as a rich snippet on the SERP. Not only will this improve your rankings, but it will also make you more clickable to users.
5. Optimize Your Site for Mobile
One of the main aspects that Google is encouraging web developers to concentrate on is mobile friendliness. Making your website mobile-friendly is therefore necessary for the success of your web development efforts.
You might be surprised to find that Google now views your site's mobile version as the primary, "genuine" version. This implies that's the version it indexes with. Why? since mobile devices now account for more than half of all internet traffic.
Your website will suffer if it is designed with desktop displays in mind but doesn't prioritize mobile visitors.
Entering your domain URL into Google's Mobile-Friendly Test is a smart place to start. This test will evaluate how mobile-friendly your website is and offer recommendations for enhancements.
On-page loading times play a key influence in a website's becoming mobile-friendly. 40% of mobile consumers will leave your page if it takes more than three seconds to load, according to Google, which expects your above-the-fold (ATF) content to load in under a second.
There are several strategies to optimize your load times for mobile friendliness, including:
- Optimizing image sizes or hosting them on a content delivery network (CDN).
- Utilizing browser caching to reduce the number of HTTP requests.
- Minimizing the size of your ATF content so that it loads within Google’s timeframe.
- Minifying code to improve caching and reduce bandwidth usage.
- Using Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) so that Google stores the page in a dedicated cache to serve instantly later.
Get Help from a Dedicated Team of Experts!
There is a lot of information here to process, and each of these sections is just the beginning of many other pieces that might be written about them. So why not try to handle this on your own? Getting seasoned experts to back your web development efforts is the best thing you can do for your website.
For many groups, both commercial and nonprofit, Frontier Marketing has created and managed websites. You may view some of our website designs in our portfolio, and if you have any questions about our SEO or web development services, don't hesitate to contact us!
