An Ultimate Guide for Any SEO Web Development Project

Let’s be honest – web developers have so many different tasks (as any of us), and the last thing on their list is SEO. To be completely fair, I think it isn’t anywhere near their list of tasks and priorities at all. If you are a marketer, you understand why I’m saying this. Anyway, we often hear about content quality, keyword usage, and link building. Yet, the times when this would be enough are long gone. 

Today, whether we like it or not, everything starts with technical SEO, and those who can help us with it are programmers. Some may think that AI will replace programmers, but they are still much needed, especially when it comes to good SEO practices. If you’re still thinking that you can go a long way without caring about any of this, you will change your mind after reading this blog. So, why is SEO web development so vital? And most importantly, what should you do exactly?

What Does SEO for Web Developers Include?

Your main question probably is what programmers have to do for search engine optimization. Below, we’ve prepared all the answers for you.

Understanding How Google Search Engine Works

First things first – everyone who works with SEO web development has to understand how Google algorithm functions. What happens is that search engine crawlers see some content differently. Let’s look at the images below. On the left, you can find a page a user sees, while the image on the right shows how Google perceives the same page. Why does it happen? In this particular example, the website uses a ​​JavaScript feature that Google can’t support. And it’s just one of the possible cases. 

Source: Google Search Central

Building Proper Sitemaps and URLs

When many think about SEO, they start looking for guest posting opportunities, checking their competitors’ websites to find relevant keywords, and creating content. Yet, it might all be useless if you forget to fix your sitemaps and URLs first. You have to remember that Google is an algorithm, and what it does is basically ‘scan’ all the internet space according to some prerequisites it has defined. And your main job is to make it easier for the crawlers as a part of your SEO web development.

So, how do you do that? The main goal of an XML sitemap is to outline a clear structure for a website. This will give Google a better understanding of what matters for indexing. Make sure that no pages have 404 responses and that all of them render 200 status codes (OK status code, i.e., a successful request). As for the URLs, they also have to be ‘clean.’ The best scenario is to have concise and informative links featuring keywords, preferably with a defined hierarchy according to your sitemap.

After you are done with those basics, you can finally say that here is a great place to get started with buying backlinks, doing guest posting, and collaborating with influencers. Yet, until you do all the ‘boring’ technical stuff, none of your SEO activities will bring decent results. So, set your priorities wisely. 

Putting Security in Order

We couldn’t talk about SEO for web developers without mentioning the security aspect, as it is crucial. I’m not inventing this. Here is a quote from Google: “Security is a top priority for Google.” So, what do they mean by this?

First of all, for SEO, you need a Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS). It is something you can see in front of many links when browsing. This basically refers to a secure way of exchanging data between a server and a browser. Google uses this protocol as one of its ranking factors, so don’t neglect it. 

Yet, of course, cybersecurity goes further than that. If you have some specific security compliance, you might even consider hiring a security software developer at least part-time to cover all your needs. 

Developing With Mobile Version in Mind

When was the last time you googled something on your phone? I bet today, well, at least mine was. Regardless, everyone understands that people use their smartphones more and more for any task. In fact, mobile devices made up over 60% of all website traffic in 2022. Looking at this number, you get to understand why Google uses mobile-first indexing to rank the pages. So, no matter what your web designers and developers do, ensure they prioritize making your page mobile-friendly.

Learning How to Manage SEO Projects Effectively 

Creating an SEO project plan might be complicated simply because organizing everyone is tough. It is especially true when marketers have to explain to the software engineers why their ‘things’ matter. Yet, instead of getting into dead-end conflicts, everyone could just try to understand each other. For example, collabnix.com recommends marketers be concise and factually explain what they need without any fluff.

Another crucial aspect of managing SEO projects is being realistic about your resources and doing one thing at a time if you don’t have enough workforce or budget. We all know that excitement of desire to have it all straight away, but it rarely works like that in reality. So, of course, you could start posting on social media, recording a podcast, bringing your corporate YouTube channel back to life, doing link-building, and have millions of other creative ideas, but you will barely see any results with insufficient resources. 

That’s why it’s better to take it easy and invest in one project at a time, and everything will come to those who try!