Web Developer

As a web developer, you’re in charge of both the design and the development of your client’s website. You want to make sure that each element is coded and displayed correctly. But when it comes to writing code, there are many things you need to consider to get the best SEO results. When building your WordPress theme or working on a Magento template, remember that certain coding protocols and styles will help your site appear higher in search engine results. Remember that every great SEO campaign in the world has a great website developer behind it. This doesn’t necessarily mean they’re good at programming, but they know how to get the job done. Anyone can follow a set of guidelines and receive some positive results, but that won’t help you stay on top for long. The key to success is implementing as many best practices as possible into your development practices. These 12 simple rules every web developer should follow will help you do just that.   Optimize your images  Images are an important part of a website. They can add visual interest to a page and help break up long blocks of text. However, images shouldn’t be used just for using them. Using images that are relevant to the content will help with SEO. Keywords should be used in the alt attribute of an img tag. As website development company would say that this is especially true if the image is being used as a link. For example, “click here” written out as text inside an anchor tag will be valuable for accessibility and SEO benefits (because it’s a keyword). The same thing holds if you use an image to create a link; its alt text should contain keywords specific to the page you’re linking to. Before uploading images, they should be compressed, so they don’t impact load times and don’t take up too much space on your server. You can use online tools like TinyPNG or JPEG Mini for this purpose. Several plugins can help you compress your images upon upload if you’re using WordPress.   Optimize your canonical tags A canonical tag (aka “rel canonical”) tells search engines that a specific URL represents the master copy of a page. The canonical tag declares a preferred version of a page—it prevents problems caused by identical or “duplicate” content appearing on multiple URLs. The canonical tag tells search engines which of your multiple URLs they should use when including a URL in a search result.  If your site has identical or vastly similar content accessible through multiple URLs, this can cause problems for search engines trying to determine which content is more important. The canonical tag also helps if you have pages with similar content but different URLs. For example, an ecommerce site may have an original item listing URL, as well as these variations: http://www.example.com/product-item/unique-name http://www.example.com/product-item/unique-name?trackingid=87654321 http://www.example.com/product-item/?trackingid=87654321&source=facebook A web development company would tell you that to avoid duplicate content issues, use canonical tags to tell search engines which URL is the original, directing users to a one-page version that features a clear, concise description of the content.   Choose the best url structure.  There are two main options for url structure: – Using dynamic parameters, like mywebsite.com?id=1 – Using one of several types of clean urls, such as mywebsite.com/news/1 The first option is technically easier to implement, but it isn’t good for your website’s search engine ranking and does not give anything to your users. If a user wants to send a link to that page to a friend, which one is easier: www.mywebsite.com/news/1 or www.mywebsite.com?id=1? On top of that, Google and other search engines will rank your pages lower if you use dynamic urls because they can’t understand them — they cannot find out what is contained on that page. As a result, if you want to build a successful website, you should always use clean urls and make sure that they contain the relevant keywords describing their content.   Use 301 redirects properly for SEO Use 301 redirects properly for SEO. If you’re changing domains or URLs around, use a 301 redirect. This is a permanent redirect from one URL to another, and it will also transfer your link juice (ranking power) to the new page/site. You can check your redirects with this tool. A website developer will tell you that a 302 redirect is a temporary redirect, so it does not transfer ranking power and is mainly used for maintenance purposes. If a page or site goes down, the 302 tells search engines that it will be back soon and not to remove them from their index. Check your 404 error pages. When users get a 404 error, they know something’s up, but they might not know how to get back where they were going. Having a well-designed 404 page that lets them back into your site content is important for usability and preserving traffic. According to Moz, 404 errors are the third most common landing page for organic traffic after the homepage and product pages. Ensure you have an XML sitemap for SEO and ensure all your pages are indexed in Google Search Console. Search engines love sitemaps because they help them crawl your website easier.   Fix 404 error pages SEO (search engine optimization) is a competitive strategy that aims to create a competitive advantage by improving the website’s visibility in search engines’ results pages. To do that, web developers need to ensure a high level of quality and content, and then they have to ensure that search engines index all the pages on their website.   Use SSL certificate for SEO and Security. If you are selling products or services on an eCommerce website, it is imperative that you have a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate installed. Without it, you could be penalized by Google for security issues and will be unable to accept payment on your site. To set up the SSL certificate, log into your cPanel and select “Let’s