What SEO has to do with web development?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Optimization of search engines such as Google or Yahoo, to name a few, aids in increasing both the quantity and quality of website traffic. This process gets done as the visibility of the keyword-based search results gets improved through search engine optimization. In brief, SEO is shown to improve the quality of search engines, which aids in the smooth operation of searching the World Wide Web via various keywords.

As is observed, the process of optimizing the search engine is ever-changing. The foundation of good SEO is ensuring the most effective crawl-ability. There are mainly seven steps for a successful SEO, which include crawl accessibility, compelling content that answers any queries posed by a user, optimized keyword searches, great user experiences, and share-worthy content. Also, the title or URL and description that draws high CTR in rankings along with snippet mark-up that stands out in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

SEO is essential for any online businesses and it is necessary to be built into the designing of websites: web design process during the initial making process. A business website is the core centre when you foray into the digital marketing world; which is essential in the day-to-day operations of a business. Organic search forms the basis of larger traffic sources onto the websites. The factors listed makes SEO a mandatory important element that needs to be dealt with while building a proper business website.

SEO and Web Development

Based on the discussion we are having right now, there is a clear-cut connection between SEO and web design. As is well-known, an SEO-friendly website aids the search engines to explore as well as read the numerous pages across the site. Hence, it is essential to ensure easy crawl-ability by understanding the content: improves website visibility. There are ways by which SEO becomes an integral part of a business website design.

A web-crawler is used by search engines to ensure the apt crawl-ability. Understandably, an SEO friendly website is built with careful planning as well as a structured approach for representing the business and services that you provide. A solid digital marketing plan with a clear business model as well as a value proposition would be the right tool for your website.

Fundamentals of an optimized website

Domains

A good domain that hosts your business is essential for it to grow and become competitive. It should be ensured that the domain relates and make sense of what your business is all about. All variations, as well as sub-domains, should point to the right domain for improving website visibility. People should not get confused while searching for your products and services on the website. You should be able to map the real world and be sensible about it.

Hosting

The hosting of your website should allow all common-sense rules. The audience who search your website should be able to see you, wherever you are. The products of your business should be classy and the services should be fast and smooth. Ensuring this allows great hosting to your websites through an appropriate domain platform.

Content Management System (CMS)

The contents on your website should be precise, to-the-point explains all that a user is looking for and simple to understand. The instructions on the website should be easy to follow as well. This should be a good starting point for all businesses and the interesting ones will make a name for themselves in the global competitive market.

The facts that come under crawling and accessibility

Indexation

There should be proper indexation to your website as people need to correctly read and understand about the products and services you offer. For a proper indexation, it is essential to have just a text-based content in the index. Web fonts could be a way to go for proper indexation. There should be a clear-cut instruction as to what the website is all about and it should be understandable both to search engines as well as the audiences.

Link Structure

For setting up the proper indexed content, internal links are necessary that a search can crawl through. For instance, search engine directives, as well as XML sitemaps, help the search engine in crawling effectively and discovering new pages: effective primary navigation tactics.

Structure the website via apt information architecture

A filing cabinet architecture is always classy while designing a website. The business website comprises of high-level categories, sub-categories, as well as individual document pages. The context and content of the site should be organized properly for the proper order and to avoid any kind of confusion there off. For instance, the audits page might exist in an SEO folder under services; nice as well as organized.

The information gets structured in a way that your business products and services are made understandable to the audience who are potential customers and clients. There is two way by which businesses approach structuring content. These include taking a deep or wide approach for obtaining optimized results. This approach simplifies the organization process as well.

An approach comprising of three to four levels ensures smooth navigation among the contents in the website: tends to work better than a, way too deeper organization approach.

URLs (Uniform Resource Locators)

The context of a website gets further indicated by specific URLs: a way that both search engines and people can locate the required websites as per the various needs that arise. SEO helps with identifying and ranking the best URLs, which makes it easier to do a keyword-based search.

Navigation

A well-structured site helps in smooth navigation as mentioned before. The factors that help with navigation include URLs and XML sitemaps that solidify the content that is present on a website. Navigation aids in signalling and directing people on to your website. For these reasons, the navigation designed should be crystal-clear.

The SEO elements incorporated in website design

One of the most critical elements would be keyword targeting. A keyword strategy should be in place for streamlining traffic on to your website. These keywords should be related to the products and services you offer.

Page content helps in improving website traffic. The optimized website content helps customers to understand the business products as well as services.

Rich snippets aids in improving the click-through rates (CTRs) and helps the website to stand out among various results that pop out during a keyword search.

Optimized images aids in boosting the website description as well as the elements involved.

Some of the common problems that occur

Content duplication HTML title tags influence search engine results. Keywords are placed at the beginning of these tags for search engines to find these websites. Meta tags are used for the right positioning, which will be helpful for the search engines.

And happen in two ways: the true duplicates are those that exist in multiple places; whereas, the near-duplicates occur when content is displayed in different unique pages of various sizes. Duplication can crop up if the website is present in multiple domains as well as sub-domains.

Sometimes, multiple pages get targeted by the same keywords, which affects site-stability. This phenomenon should be eliminated during the web-design process.

Some major SEO based issues

Critical crawler issues can happen, which are mainly 400- and 500- level HTTP errors, while the optimization process is going on. Developers and SEO teams should work together to avoid these issues. Crawler warnings are useful to detect any related issues.

Issues can occur due to incorrect implementation of URLs. The site can sometimes run on multiple URLs, which can become a disaster.

Redirect as well as metadata issues can crop up while trying to implement redirects as well as metadata respectively. These should be examined carefully and rectified then and there itself.

Content issues such as duplication, thin data, slow load times and missing headers can occur, which creates confusion among people who visit the websites. These issues can considerably lower the site-traffic, which affects the business.

Wrapping Up

From the discussion we had until now, it is clear that SEO or Search Engine Optimization has everything to do with the website design as well as development. It is essential to understand the various advantages as well as the pitfalls involved while creating a website and hosting the same via domains. SEO aids in making the developers and owners of the website understand these critical elements, which are critical for website design and development.

In the above discussion, we looked into various elements that are necessary while optimizing websites for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) purposes. Developers and business owners looking into this article will become vary, of the pitfalls and can stay clear of any kind of problems that might occur during the SEO optimization process of website designing. So, these are the various elements SEO has to do with web development.