What is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of optimizing a web application or website to improve its visibility and ranking on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
The purpose of SEO is to increase a website's organic traffic by making the website more relevant to users searching for information related to its content.
Why Should I be Bothered About SEO as a Developer?
As a developer, you should be bothered about SEO because it is essential to ensure that the websites and web applications you develop are visible and accessible to users through search engines.
No one wants to build something amazing and hide it!
Some Key Aspects of SEO to Implement
There are several aspects of SEO you can implement as a developer to help improve a website's search engine visibility. They include:
Site Speed: Most times, your users just access your website on the go to get bits of vital info or subscribe to the package you are offering quickly. No one has the time to wait around for over a minute before your site loads fully.
So, if your site isn’t fast enough, they move on to the next.
This is why you should focus on optimizing your website's performance by minimizing the number of HTTP requests, using browser caching, optimizing images and videos, and reducing server response time.
Content Value: The importance of good content cannot be overemphasized. You want to make sure that users engage with your site for as long as possible. Your title and description should be really good as that’s what will guarantee a high CTR (Click Through Rate).
Also, note that Google takes note of your dwell time (the amount of time users spend on your site) and your bounce rate (how long did it take before they used the exit button?).
In SEO, more time spent on your web page = more recommendations from the search engine!
Mobile-first Indexing: With more than half of all traffic on the internet coming from mobile devices, Google has shifted to mobile-first indexing. This means that Google now uses the mobile version of a website's content for indexing and ranking and as such, mobile-friendly websites are prioritized.
As a developer, you should ensure that your website is mobile-friendly and optimized for mobile devices.
Bot-Friendly HTML: SEO ranking is done by web crawlers which are bots. Therefore as a developer, you should make sure to use semantic HTML for your page content to be reliably understood by these bots. Use tags like the body tag, article tag, headings and paragraphs where needed.
Everything doesn’t have to be a div!
Use alt tags and aria tags where needed to make your site useable on devices like screen readers. Also pay attention to your metadata because even though the users won’t see it, the metadata is what bots will use to further understand your page and format its appearance on search engines
HTTPS: HTTPS is a secure version of HTTP that encrypts data sent between a website and a user's browser. Website security is essential to protect user data and Google has stated that HTTPS is a ranking factor. So as a developer, you must implement it on your website alongside other security measures like two-factor authentication and secure login procedures.
Voice Search Optimization: As always, technology is evolving and with the rise of voice assistants like Siri and Alexa, voice search optimization is becoming increasingly important. As a web developer, you should try to ensure that your website's content is optimized for voice search queries.
Conclusion
In summary, the most important SEO practices for web developers in 2023 include optimizing for speed, content value, mobile-first indexing, using semantic HTML, HTTPS, and voice search optimization. By implementing these practices, you can ensure that your website is optimized for search engines and provides a better experience for users.
I do hope this was a nice read!
As always, feel free to drop your questions or comments in the comment section.