SEO, or search engine optimisation, is getting noticed by more people on search engines like Google. A good web developer can mean developing websites that look great and are also friendly to search engines.
Your site will, therefore, have a better chance of ranking higher, bringing in more visitors and potential customers. You don’t need to know everything that goes into marketing or any SEO trick, but sometimes, basic practices help boost your website’s visibility. Here are simple, non-technical SEO tips every web developer must know.
1. Make Your Website Load Faster
Fast sites make happy people, and so do search engines like Google. The longer it takes a site to load, the more quickly a visitor leaves it and the more likely it is to be placed at the bottom of a search results list by Google. Both user experience and SEO rely on this.
How to Improve Speed:
- Compress Images: Images are the largest files on your website. Compressing images reduces their size without losing quality, thus making your site open much sooner.
- Use Fewer Plugins: Lots of plugins and extensions cause slowdown.
- Choose Fast Hosting: Fast hosting can make your website load incredibly fast, and it is one difference an excellent web host can make. Choose one with a reputation for good, quick service and reliability.
The faster your website is, the better your search rank and user satisfaction.
2. Mobile-friendly Design is a Must
Today, over half of all online traffic comes from mobile-based devices like laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Google uses this ” mobile-first ” approach to ranking websites because it considers your site’s mobile form more valid than its desktop version. If not, it will affect and decline your SEO.
How to Ensure Mobile-Friendliness:
- Responsive Design: Your website’s screen size should be adjusted to fit your smartphone, tablet, or computer. This is responsive design, an essential technique for proper SEO.
- Simple Navigation: Make navigation easy from the mobile perspective. Avoid making menus overly complicated or lengthy blocks of text.
- Tap-Friendly Buttons: Ensure that buttons are large enough and well-spaced so people can easily tap them on small screens.
Mobile optimisation is one of the easiest ways to boost SEO and user experience, keeping visitors on your site longer.
3. Optimise Your URLs
Another, though less critical, area to optimise is the structure of your site’s URLs —the addresses of your web pages. The best URLs are simple and easy to read and contain keywords relevant to the page’s content so users and search engines understand the page’s nature.
Best Practices for URL Optimization:
- Use Keywords: Ensure your URL includes a word or two related to the page’s topic. For example, instead of a random string of numbers and letters, a URL should look like this: www.yoursite.com/about-us or www.yoursite.com/best-coffee-recipes.
- Keep It Short: Shorter URLs are easier to read and remember. Avoid lengthy, excessively long URLs that confuse users and search engines.
- Avoid Special Characters: The URL must only contain letters, numbers, and dashes—no special characters, such as & or %.
Good URL structure helps search engines crawl your site more effectively, thus improving your chances of ranking higher.
4. Focus on Easy Navigation
As soon as visitors come to your website, they must be able to make their search within the shortest time possible—that is why navigation is crucial. A website’s organisation and substantial menu should facilitate content browsing. Also, search engines encourage the use of user-friendly sites.
How to Improve Navigation:
- Use a Simple Menu: Don’t complicate your site’s menu in any way. Provide only constant limits on menus or, better yet, leave out some options to avoid user saturation.
- Breadcrumbs: Breadcrumbs are navigation aids. They indicate a user’s current location within the website by showing all the pages he has visited before the current one. This facilitates user navigation and aids the search engine in assessing the website’s hierarchy.
- Internal Links: Cross-link all the relevant pages on your website. This aids users in seeking more information and helps the search engines crawl and index web pages.
The easier it is to navigate the site, the higher the user engagement and the higher the SEO ranking.
5. Use Alt Text for Images
Search engines cannot ‘view’ or process images as we do. Hence, they depend on the usefulness of descriptions called ‘alt text’ to grasp the meaning of an image. Alt text helps with screen readers (for sighted users) and enhances SEO by giving search engines additional information about the image content.
How to Use Alt Text:
- Describe the Image: Be concrete and explain what is contained in the image. For example, instead of saying ‘image1,’ write a cup of coffee on a wooden table.’
- Keep It Short: Alt text should consist of a few words, but it should be explanatory, usually a sentence or less.
- Use Keywords (If Relevant): You may place words on the image if they correlate with the subject matter of your page, but do not abuse them.
Proper alt text usage helps your images rank on Google images and increases overall SEO.
6. Secure Your Site with HTTPS
A website’s secure infrastructure is a consideration regarding search engine optimisation. Research has shown that Google-optimised web pages or sites that run on HTTP servers are, to put it in less technical terms, not very safe tabs. Thus, using a site that allows data encryption between the browser and web server provides complete coverage of the data bundled into HTTPS. Google prioritises protective sites and installs a badge like ‘Not Secure’ on HTTP, which may cause a loss of audience.
Why HTTPS Matters:
- Improved SEO: Google prioritises its search results to rank HTTPS websites rather than non-secure ones.
- Builds Trust: People tend to believe they are safer on these sites, making users more likely to entertain such sites, particularly sites asking for passwords and credit cards.
- Easy to Implement: Most, if not all, web hosting companies incorporate HTTPS certification free of charge or as part of their packages.
A secure website helps enhance your rankings while assuring visitors that their information is safe.
7. Optimise for Local Search
Whenever your website is intended for a local audience, optimising it for local search is crucial. Local SEO will help your business feature in searches relevant to your location. This is critical, especially for restaurants, shops, or services with local clients.
Local SEO Tips:
- Include Your Location: Amplify your business area throughout the website, including page titles, meta descriptions, and content.
- Google My Business: Register and manage your Google Business account. This is usually the first thing a client sees after searching for businesses within a particular locality.
- Encourage Reviews: An organisation’s rating enhances its image, increasing traffic and improving its placement in local searches.
Focus on local optimisation strategies to ensure customers have a better chance of discovering your business.
8. Create an XML Sitemap
An XML sitemap functions like a map for search bots, indicating pages of a website and their significance as well. This ensures that search engines can crawl and index the website more effectively. Rank-wise, there’s no impact from a sitemap, yet it makes sure that every one of your pages is found, which is a significant factor of SEO.
What to Include in a Sitemap:
- All Important Pages: Include all the major parts of your website, particularly the ones for which you hope to rank.
- Update It Regularly: Each time you add new pages or content, please remember to revise your sitemap.
Using an XML sitemap and submitting it to Google Search Console helps ensure your website’s correct indexing.
9. Make Your Content Shareable
When other websites refer to your site, it indicates that it has much to offer and is reliable. One way to encourage this is to make your content shareable.
How to Encourage Sharing:
- Add Social Sharing Buttons: Social sharing buttons should also be provided on blog posts, articles, and key pages. This allows visitors to easily share the content on Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites.
- Create Valuable Content: Write quality and informative content people will be urged to link to or post on their social networks.
In SEO, the social signals of shares, backlinks, and other factors are significant.
10. Monitor Your Performance
SEO never ends; therefore, assessing your website’s performance is essential. Employ tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to determine traffic, user geography, and a website’s ranking on search engines. This will help you identify gaps that need to be filled to correct the strategic implementation of plans.
Key Metrics to Watch:
- Traffic: How many visitors have visited your site, and who refers them to you?
- Bounce Rate: Are users navigating away from your page too quickly? Many visitors who are not exploring your website may negatively affect its SEO ranking.
- Keyword Rankings: Measure your site’s performance in position for essential search queries with the help of graphs over some time.
You can analyse and monitor your SEO strategy by evaluating performance and making informed decisions.
Conclusion
The aim is to create visually pleasing sites that function correctly for users and search engines. If you follow these rules, you can create more search engine-friendly websites, attract more traffic, and retain it for a longer period.
