SEO Elements Necessary for Web Developers

SEO implementation requires technical skills. That is why, it is imperative for web developers to understand the basic technical elements as well as webmaster’s guidelines to make a website search-engine friendly.

Here are a few technical elements to focus on:

Integration of Webmaster and Google Analytics tool

It is one of the most essential elements that should not be ignored. It helps you to study and analyse visitor’s data, traffic source, technical errors, website compatibility, etc.

Benefits of Webmaster Tools:

• Quick access to search statistics.

• Access of data regarding incoming links and internal links as well as backlinks.

• Send notification of crawl errors, sitemap errors, malware (spam, viruses, etc.)

• Show keyword performance and indexing statistics.

Benefits of Google Analytics:

• Cost effective and productive.

• Helps to analyse visitor’s demographics and user’s behaviour.

• Helps to identify fake traffic.

• Helps to fine tune a website.

Implementation of Google Tag Manager

According to Google, Google Tag Manager offers simple, yet powerful tag management solutions. Basically, it is a free tool that helps you to add and update website tags – including conversion tracking, site analytics, remarketing, etc.

Features of Google Tag Manager:

• Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Support

• Asynchronous Tag Loading

• Defining Reusable Variables

• Mobile App Support

• Smart Caching

Benefits of Google Tag Manager:

• Tag Manager supports all Google and third-party tags.

• Improves collaboration.

• Increases tracking capabilities.

• Flexible and easy to use.

Mobile friendly websites

Web developers must ensure that the website is mobile friendly (either by creating a sub-domain or adherence to standard development techniques.)

How to check whether a website is mobile friendly or not?

https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly

Benefits of mobile friendly website:

• Most of the website’s web traffic comes from a mobile device.

• Fast and easy social media sharing.

• Mobile advertising is user friendly.

Facts:

• According to a study, 93% of people who use their mobile for researching a product make a purchase.

• In April 2015, Google started to use mobile-friendliness as a parameter for providing better search rankings.

Tips:

• Always check mobile URL structures for duplicity.

• Refer to guidelines – https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/separate-urls.

• Focus on HTTP redirects and JavaScript redirects.

• Try to obtain secure certificates for sites.

Implement Structured Data

Structured data is added directly to a page’s HTML markup. Search engines use it to generate rich snippets that appear in search results.

Use https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly to test the structured data.

Benefits:

• Improves Google’s understanding of content on your website.

• Increases your business’s online reach.

Implement Robots.txt

Sometimes, web developers overlook the importance of robots.txt files, which is a big mistake. Basically, robots.txt file instructs search engines.

Tips:

• Use “Disallow” and “Allow” and validate them before uploading the file.

• Never block necessary file/folders.

Benefits:

• Assists search engines not to crawl certain directories.

• Helps to improve website’s performance.

Fix HTML code errors

HTML code errors and warnings may pose serious issues and may hamper the rankings of a website. Use https://www.w3.org/ codes to make a website flawless.

Tips:

• Use https://validator.w3.org/ (HTML validator and CSS validator) to validate codes.

• Comply with W3C standards.

Benefits:

• Improves rankings.

• Helps to identify invalid HTML or XHTML codes.

• Teaches best coding practices.

• Improves end-user’s experience.

• Makes a website browser friendly.

Bonus Tips:

• Fix common website issues like the size of image.

• Improve website’s speed.

• Solve pagination issues.

• Reduce total number of plug-ins.

• Follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

• Use GZip Compression.

• Look into server configuration for probable errors.

All the above mentioned technical elements may make or break any website. So, as a web developer you should fix these issues.