SEO for Web Developers: 7+ Google Optimization Tips for Website Development

After developing a website, what will be your utmost priority? Is it relying on Google’s paid search results for advertising or growing traffic organically with SEO for free? The second one seems more reasonable and effective in the long run, which is why SEO for web developers has become a must-use arsenal for SEO web development. 

In the past, the general concept of SEO was keywords, contents, synonyms, and rankings. However, as the internet evolved, so did the concept. 

Many technical aspects, rules, and changes are happening behind the scenes of a search engine that determine whether a page will rank or not. 

Let’s take a closer look at the world of SEO. 

• What is SEO and How Does It Work? 
• 8 Google SEO Tips for Web Developers in Late 2022
• Why SEO Basic Knowledge is a Must for Web Developers?  
• Is Programming a Must for Becoming an SEO Expert?

What is SEO for Web Developers and How Does It Work for SEO Web Development? 

In short, SEO, or Search Engine Optimization is the process of getting natural traffic and visibility in search results through editorial content. 

In a nutshell, SEO is the process of modifying and uploading any content in a media such as a channel, page, or website using organic content to achieve a higher rank on its preferred platform. The word “SEO” is no longer bound to any website, content, or traditional search engine. There are multiple tricks for different platforms. Like, WordPress developers have some specific SEO strategies for website maintenance.

Take YouTube search results as an example. If you search with a random keyword, many results will show, and some contents have a higher ranking than others. The same goes for searches with a minimum number of content results on the internet.

8 Google SEO Tips to Rank Better for Web Developers

These essential SEO tips will help you quickly rank websites, get the highest visibility for a long time, and make your site stand out from the crowd. 

1. Increase Website Security 

The first step in making a website that is good for SEO is to protect it from hackers and other bad people. 

If a website gets hacked, it creates trust issues for both old and new visitors. Your website will have a higher bounce rate after a security breach. 

Moreover, Google’s search AI prioritizes websites with safe status in the ranking process. 

The initial step for securing your website is to get an SSL certificate from a hosting service. Also, make sure to enter it correctly. 

Besides this, ensure you have all the crucial safeguards, like plugins, applications, and tools, installed for your website. If all goes right, your web pages should constantly rank and get prioritized by the Google search algorithm. 

2. Focus on Design Responsiveness

One of the most important SEO tasks in the back end of web development is responsive design. 

Making websites responsive is critical because you can capture many prospects via various devices. Also, it creates customer satisfaction. 

You can try some SEO methods like changing the viewport in meta tags. The process is quite simple, 

• Go to your Dashboard> Appearance> Editor. 
• Select the “Responsive” theme.
• Search for “Header” on the right side.
• Scroll down and find the <Header> tag. 
• Now, write the below code, <meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1″>

With “width=device-width,” pages are told to match the width of the screen in different pixels and sizes. 

3. Add Metadata to Your Contents 

Metadata is a short term for “meta description,” “title, or “URL.” When you try to publish an article in WordPress, you will see a meta description section. A meta description is a short script that helps the Google bot understand the content.

The word limit for a meta description should be 150–160 and 8–9 lines maximum. 

A good meta description should have these characteristics, 

• A minimum of 2-3 lines.
• All to-the-point information.
• Must contain the main KW.
• Not more than 20-25 words.

For the URL (Uniform Resource Locator), make it short, definitive, and straightforward. It’s best to use hyphens in URLs instead of underscores.

Also Read: How to Fix URL Issues: 6 Successful Techniques

4. Look Out for Redirects

If you want to convert content or other resources from an old website to a new one, then it’s best to add many redirects. 

A redirect is closely related to website migration and the launch process. To put the plan into action, you need to make sure that all of the old site’s URLs 301 redirect to the most relevant page on the new site.

Having a ratio of 1:1 in redirects from old to new site pages is enough. However, sometimes redirecting one page to multiple pages can be beneficial too.

Use a plugin or tool like Redirection to confirm all redirects are 301s.

5. Prioritize Featured Snippets

A featured snippet is a small part of a text or video that Google shows on top of a SERP. This snippet will contain the most accurate solution or description of the searched keyword.

Getting a featured snippet is all about technique. Firstly, you will need to have an SEO-friendly website with minimum authority.

Here are some tips for making content worth a snippet,

• Always search for KWs that have low difficulty and high audience relevance.
• A well-defined content structure is pretty crucial. Before making any content, you can do pre-visualizing and outline to get the best design from your content.
• Add as many LSI as possible, for example – the “people also search for” section.
• Authority and content consistency is a must.
• You can add many internal linking or CTA to your content.

But add or change your content until you get a valid result, and don’t mix things up from top to bottom. 

6. Add Keywords, Power Words, LSI 

Keywords, power words, and LSIs are the primary SEO activities in content. Since 2012, there have been numerous changes in the addition of these three elements to content.

There was a time when adding more keywords and LSI made an article rank in minutes (even though it jumbled the entire structure). But, in 2022, Google will prioritize more content clarity and relevance.

Here is a quick note for adding the three elements, 

• Add keywords in a 1:4 ratio (4 keywords in a 2000-word limit article).
• The intro, conclusion, and article body should contain keywords in a 1:1:2 ratio.
• A maximum of 4-8 LSI is enough for an article.
• Add any relevant power words you want.
• The FAQ section is an excellent source for adding keywords.

7. Understand Robot.txt Files 

Google has to crawl your site to start any later processing. Robot.txt is a root directory file that controls the behavior of bot processing and grants developers access to select pages to crawl.

Understanding the robot.txt file is a splendid way to choose any specific web page you want the Google bot to crawl. You can create a robot.txt file.

Here are a few things to remember when including and excluding files:

• Excluding low-value pages like tags and comments sections.
• Exclude different variations of CMS.

8. Mobile Optimization is Key

In 2022, 52.79% of all web visits will happen from mobile devices, and 47.21% will be from desktop users. 90% of websites on the internet are mobile-optimized. 

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It’s almost as if you have to make your website mobile-friendly or risk losing massive “traffic that may have happened.” 

Here are some ways to make your website mobile optimized,

• As we told you earlier, responsive design is a must.
• You make your website images mobile optimized.
• Skip unnecessary animations because most visitors don’t give that attention.
• Speed optimize your website to load faster in all screen sizes.
• Don’t add pop-ups.
• Make the website design simple and less dynamic.

Why Is SEO Basic Knowledge a Must for Web Developers?  

Dmitry Gerasimenko, the founder of Ahrefs, talks about how Google has become a parasite on the modern-day internet. Right now, Google has two significant issues that have become a problem for web developers.

Firstly, Google doesn’t share the revenue fairly. Secondly, Google always lies about privacy and uses a lot of user information unfairly.

Google is everywhere! It has advertisements that track your every website visit (DOUBLECLICK). Google is in your pocket (Android) and knows where you go (Google Maps). It knows what you are talking about (GMAIL). Google gives its users better search results, but it also collects and stores a lot of information about how its users act. Google does it for free. Many people voluntarily provide that information without knowing it.

Dmitry Gerasimenko

By pointing out this issue, Dmitry informs us how crucial it is to know about the optimization process of search engines like Google for web developers. 

1. A website with proper SEO has more visibility and ranks higher

Nearly 2 billion websites are on the internet, and 40 million are active. In 2022, you can find websites that answer any question and every physical product on the planet. 

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Also, among the 40 million websites, some are well known and have an existing customer base that doesn’t want to welcome any new website. 

Only proper SEO can resolve all these issues. The most fundamental task for SEO is to increase your website’s visibility, which means how your prospects will find you in the related subject. Greater visibility will affect your website’s ranking on the search engine result page (SERP). 

Having your web pages rank in the SERP is excellent because 90% of visitors don’t go past the first result page. 

2. SEO increases web traffic 

For a website to be seen and keep its good rank for a long time, it needs to get a lot of traffic. By doing SEO, you can increase any website’s traffic, which is essential for ranking in the top 10.

Web pages that rank 1 in the SERP get a 32% click rate. Other statistics show that moving only one spot up in the SERP can increase your web page’s CTR (Click Through Rate) by 30.8%. 

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Web traffic also increases your chance of getting a featured snippet. Snippets are the most concise answers or definitions to a question and are ranked first. The website that owns the snippet does not have to be the most popular. 

3. Helps with organic search results

Paid search results will give you a rank right away, but they are never compared to organic search results in terms of building an essential buyer funnel, conversion rates, and real trust.

Especially for Google, organic search results are more crucial than additional big search engines like Bing, Baidu, Yahoo, and Edge. Google owns nearly 80% of the search market and audience. So, most businesses want to increase their natural rank in Google through organic search results. 

Also, Google has more than 1 billion global users and is one of the best search engines in the world. 

4. A better SEO means better authority

You can assume authority as the hallmark of trust, authenticity, and relevancy. The more your website has these qualities, the more power it will have.

A website’s authority is a Google ranking factor and helps increase the overall rank-up chance. Google AI scores a web page’s authority between 1 and 100. If a page scores more than 80, that page will automatically rank between #1 and #10 in the SERP.

One SEO trick to get more authority for your site is to use external links from trustworthy, credible, and well-visited sites. To know your page score, you can use Sitechecker to see your PA or DA rating.

5. SEO can improve the prospect experience 

With SEO, you can make great articles and other content that can attract prospects by focusing on relevant topics. These contents improve your site’s usability by providing to-the-point information for visitors. 

Moreover, making your website responsive will help you reach mobile visitors. SEO also suggests making your website faster so that visitors don’t have to wait and so that their experience is smoother. 

Is Programming Knowledge a Must to Become an SEO Expert?

There is a general belief among some professionals that without proper programming skills, you can’t be an SEO expert.

The truth is, you don’t need any programming knowledge to be a good SEO expert. If you work as an SEO expert in a corporate setting, you are unlikely to be assigned programming or other coding duties. 

Most SEO experts consider programming languages to be a hobby. Having basic programming knowledge will help you suggest crucial edits to website building.

Read More: Top Search Engines for Web Developers

Final Words on SEO for Web Developers

SEO is a process that needs to be performed continuously to achieve success. So, consistency and patience will be critical factors. 

As a developer, you must know the technical side of SEO to complete corporate work more efficiently. 

Basically, SEO for web developers is all about researching and following SEO trends. Always follow the Google Algorithm updates.