The Intersection of SEO and Web Development
By: Shivani Dua
Tags: Web, Content Marketing, Web Development, Content, SEO

Most people don’t think that web development and SEO are correlated. They believe SEO is about writing keyword-filled blog posts and hoping for the simplest. But that is just an aspect of SEO.

Beyond keyword-optimized blog posts, there are tons that go on within the background. The technical aspects of SEO aren’t obvious to all or any but they’re even as important as every other aspect of SEO.

Successful SEO isn’t supported by one factor alone, but rather a mixture of the many various factors, especially since the industry keeps evolving and becoming more competitive.

Beyond content, SEO also involves link building, keyword research, analytics, and in fact, web design and development. You are happier considering SEO from the scratch of building an internet site than not. But albeit you haven’t done that, you’ll improve your SEO by optimizing the technical aspects of web development. Here are some ways web design influences SEO and the way you’ll improve your organic traffic.

Building a Sitemap

A sitemap (or XML sitemap) lists the important pages on an internet site and their contents and defines the connection between them. The purpose of a sitemap is in order that program bots can crawl your website and index webpages properly. Where there’s no comprehensive internal linking strategy, perhaps thanks to the massive size of the web site, a sitemap makes it easier for the bots to seek out the important pages on your site. Note that pages not added to your sitemap can still be indexed by Google by following links on your website.

After creating a sitemap of your most vital pages with uniform XML tags, you’ve got to submit it to Google. Navigate to the ‘Sitemaps’ section on your Google Search Console account to add a new sitemap for Google to find. Of course, building a sitemap isn’t all there’s. There is no guarantee even that when you are doing that you simply would always rank for keywords. There are more important steps to take.

Site Structure and Internal Linking

Ever visited a site and therefore the navigation was intuitive? You didn’t need to labor through pages and pages to seek out what you wanted. Sites with a transparent structure don’t only make navigation easier; they also make it easier for search engines to crawl their webpages. The best thanks to building an honest site structure are by having an indoor linking strategy.

Search engines crawl websites by following links; therefore, a page that is not linked to any other page cannot be indexed. In doing this, the bots also distribute authority throughout the web site and identify the foremost important pages. For instance, the homepage is usually the foremost important page partly because it’s the foremost link.

To build a correct site structure, link to the foremost important pages on your site from the homepage. Feature your latest posts on the homepage too, in order that visitors can find them quickly and also to spice up the authority of these pages.

Site Mobile-friendliness

Mobile-friendliness has been a ranking factor since 2015. And in 2019, Google started prioritizing mobile-optimization for all websites. Why? Increasingly, more people access the web on their smartphones lately, as against desktop access.

So it only is sensible that websites are configured to the requirements of the bulk of internet users. Therefore, mobile optimization doesn’t only boost your ranking; it also makes a good user experience for your site visitors. To optimize your website for mobile, here are a number of the favored steps:

Responsive design is the norm now. Using responsive design makes your website adapt to whatever device through which the user accesses it.

Readability is an important factor in mobile-friendliness. Make your text easy to read by using clear fonts and legible font size.

Pop-ups and interstitials are annoying, especially for mobile users. Mobile devices have small screens and interstitials tend to wholly obscure the most content.

No one likes slow websites. Reduce load time to but three seconds by reducing image size, compressing web files, etc.

Other Important Tips

Use heading tags properly. Heading tags make search engines understand the structure of the webpage.

Update the heading and meta tags for each page and media with unique keywords.

Always include relevant keywords in image alt attributes.

Use search-friendly URLs. URLs for each page on your website should follow a consistent structure and include relevant keywords.

Make your website visually appealing. The design of your website should represent your brand and prove your authenticity.

Conclusion

The best strategy is to specialize in user-friendly web development. When you put users first they’re more willing to interact together with your website, thereby improving your SEO. Every technical action you’re taking on your website must be aimed toward enhancing the user experience whether that be through navigation, access, speed, and so on. You can’t go wrong with that. SEO might evolve, but the users will always take the primary place of importance.