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Essential SEO Guide for Developers

Asad Gill 0 Comments ♥32Likes
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The role of a web developer doesn’t end at designing and developing a website. In addition to crafting an aesthetically pleasing, fully-functional website, they also need to make sure that users will embrace it and it performs well on search engine rankings (more key roles in this “what is a web developer” guide). This is where SEO comes into play. SEO is an ever-changing field and web developers hold the key to optimising a website for on-page and technical SEO. This is why web developers need to grasp fundamental SEO techniques to contribute to their website’s overall success.

Here’s how web developers can code pages more efficiently with respect to SEO.

Make sure your URLs are User-Friendly

Even though a URL is the first thing people see on a page, it is often overlooked. The most effective URLs are concise, easy to read, offer context as to what the page is about, contain relevant keywords and use hyphens instead of underscores or spaces to separate different words in URL. These traits are preferred by both your users as well as the search engines, which is why it goes a long way to customise your URL paths. In order to ensure bot-friendly URL structures, developers need to add primary keywords at the start of the URL.

However, refrain from cramming your URL with too many keywords or it will appear spammy. Not to mention, it is prudent to use a single domain wherever possible, instead of using subdomains. Also, remember that short URLs work better, so keep your URLs short when possible. Last but not the least, it is best to avoid unsafe characters, such as carats and spaces, since they hinder bots from properly crawling your site.

Optimise the Title tags and Meta Description Tags

Search engine crawlers look at HTML tags, especially the title and description tags, on a web page to identify the type of content on the page. This is why it is important to optimise these tags with the relevant keywords.  Make sure to include your primary keyword at the beginning, but if it isn’t possible, you can also use it inside the title.

Also make sure to keep your title tag from under 60 characters, including all special characters. As for your description tags that appear on the SERPs to give some context about what the page contains, make sure to pen down a compelling description that entices users to click. However, since algorithms don’t consider description tags as an important factor for ranking, it is advised not to spend too much effort optimising this tag.

Enhance the user Experience

Do you know that the amount of time spent viewing online videos has increased? Statista data published this year show that an average person watches online videos for 10 hours every week. Apart from that, by 2025, the number of social media users will be about 4.41 billion worldwide. Isn't that a great market? Demand for videos from consumers has also gone higher. To put it into perspective, about 88% of buyers will consider buying your brand if they see it in a video. Being a marketer, you should take advantage and come up with brand videos that your audience can't resist watching. That way, you will increase the chances of converting them into paying customers and generate more revenue and sales. Look at it from this perspective, the number of social media users is rising faster. Demand for videos from your customers isn't lagging either. So, how do you use video content to increase your social media conversion rate? If you're an amateur in video marketing, you can begin with the steps below. Effective Tips to Increase Social Media Conversion Rate Using Videos 1. Have Clear Video Marketing Goals Before undertaking social media video marketing, you need to have a goal. What do you want to accomplish with your videos? Among the objectives you can consider is introducing your new brand, creating brand awareness, or attracting huge traffic to your brand site. When just starting, make sure to create a few goals. That way, you won't be overwhelmed. But what is the essence of having marketing goals in place? Well, they will help you know your audience, the type of content to create, and the platforms to post your content. Apart from that, when you have clear goals, you plan your budget to suit your video creation needs. Remember, you need equipment like cameras, a tripod, a lighting system to create engaging videos for your social media platforms. Therefore, with clear goals, you will decide on better video-making gear to help you achieve your objectives. 2. Choose the Right Platforms to create Your Videos Your target audience may not be on all social media platforms. First, you need to establish where your potential customers spend most of their time. That helps you post content that reaches a huge brand audience. If you haven't used video on any platform, start with the one where you have an established audience base. If you aren't sure what type of video to create, take the footage, make use of different tools available online, come up with different types of video content and run concurrently on social platforms. You should also check what each platform offers and the video dimensions you can display there before you choose. That's essential if you want to repurpose your video. If you're going to post recurring video series, you can consider YouTube or Facebook. The two platforms allow you to categorize your videos into a playlist. Live streaming has also become a great way to attract and engage your audience. Through live videos on your social platforms, you can respond to queries from viewers about your brand. Apart from that, live streaming helps to build trust around your brand. So, as you choose your preferred social platform, you can pick YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook that allows live streaming. 3. Select Video Types Your Audience Wants Many customers want a video that reflects a specific brand or service they have interests in. You will convert many social media users into paying customers if you post the content they want to watch. Creating and posting a testimonial video will help build trust from your audience, which is suitable for your brand. On the other hand, you can use educational videos to empower your potential buyers. When viewers watch how your brand works, they will consider it. That way, you will know the one with more views, likes, and comments. From there, you can tell the type of videos your audience wants. 4. Develop a Content Production Plan Develop a clear content plan to save time and money during the video-making process. A plan helps you figure out what your final video looks like. When planning, ensure to get the right equipment and props, a video script, and a video editor you will use to polish your content. That's not all. You should also know where you will be shooting and the time of the day to capture beautiful natural lights in your video. Failure to plan will leave you lost in the video creation process. You wouldn't want to finish shooting, and while editing, you realize there can be more clips to capture and add to your footage. That is why a plan will be essential. You will know what to film and estimate the number of clips you need for your project if you have a good video plan. 5. Edit Your Video to Tell a Story To capture attention and convert your social media followers through videos, make sure to tell a story. Everyone loves stories, and you'll win many viewers by telling your brand story. When editing, keep your audience in mind. You can make your social media video more attractive by adding some music. Apart from being attention-capturing, good music helps to set the right tone and mood in your audience. Your video should also have closed captions, a call to action, and a text overlay. Ensure to get a free video editor that helps add all that to your video without struggle. 6. Schedule Posting and be Consistent Converting social media followers into buyers isn't a one-time event. You need to create more videos and maintain consistency in posting. Don't post one video and wait for long before providing your audience with the content they want. You risk losing your audience to your competitors if you keep them waiting for long. You should think of social media video marketing as a series, not a one-and-done act. If you're such a busy person and not sure when you will film next, ensure to capture many clips when you get time. Depending on your schedule, you can then create multiple videos you can post later. 7. Promote Your Video After you've come up with engaging content, you need to let the world know about what you offer. And the best way is to promote your content. Ensure your videos are optimized for search engines. If you will post your video on YouTube, ensure that it has attention capturing the title. Within your video title, add a keyword. Don't forget to include descriptions and tags for your video. All that helps YouTube to rank your content giving it popularity. Apart from SEO, you can share your video on multiple social platforms. That increases the chance of reaching a broader audience base. As many people watch your video, the higher chances of conversion. Conclusion Social media video marketing will propel your business to a great height of success. Get your video ideas, shoot quality clips, edit your footage and begin marketing your brand. You can rely on these tips to launch effective video marketing. The number of active social media users is rising every year, which provides a wider market to sell your brand. However, you should post quality videos to attract and change your audience into loyal customers.

Page load speed

Increasing the page load speed helps you provide a better user experience to your users. Not only that, Google algorithm uses the page load speed as an important ranking factor, so the faster your page loads, the higher up you appear on the SERPs. Use a tool like Google’s Lighthouse to measure the performance of your site under different network connections to see what an actual user may experience on your site.

There are numerous ways to increase the load speed of your website, such as minimising redirects, compressing your images, relying on browser caching, using code splitting and tree-shaking, and leveraging Google’s Accelerated Mobile Page. As a developer, you can also cache your pages on the server, improve server response time, remove render-blocking JavaScript, serve static pages as much as possible, and use lazy loading. You can also use the Google Webmaster tools to analyze all your web pages and see if there are any problems that need fixing.

Make your website Mobile responsive

Since most web users are shifting to mobile, Google has taken a strict mobile-first approach and integrated mobile-friendliness into its ranking algorithm. Therefore, it is prudent to make your website mobile-friendly to enhance the experience for mobile users. The best way to achieve mobile-friendliness is to make your website responsive, making sure it is functional and aesthetically pleasing on devices of all sizes and resolutions, including logo design ideas that work on all devices.

A responsive layout will keep the users hooked, rather than when they have to zoom all the time because your page isn’t responsive. Going responsive is often the best way to achieve mobile friendliness since it doesn’t affect your existing codebase. Another way is to use a dynamic design and serve differently rendered pages for mobile and desktop users. This method is also effective yet time-intensive.

Ensure Accessibility

Even though a lot of developers don’t pay much heed to accessibility, making your website accessible to people with disabilities help you rank higher on Google. There’s a lot you can do to enhance accessibility on your website, such as using an appropriate color contrast ratio, using alt attributes for all images, making all clickable things easier to see, making all buttons and links conspicuous, leveraging semantic HTML tags, etc.

Fix all Redirect Issues

Moving and shifting content on a website can lead to redirect issues. Things like temporary redirects, redirect chains, and meta refreshes can wreak havoc on your SEO, which is why website developers need to know their redirects. Temporary directs are used to divert users from one URL to another, for instance when you have changed the URL or a page is no longer available. These redirects don’t hold much value for Google and offer no link equity to the page. On the other hand, redirect chains redirect one page to another page, which in turn redirects to another. The issue is that each redirection takes a few seconds, and you lose link equity at every redirect. So, in a long chain redirect, Google crawlers don’t bother to reach the destination. This spells badly for your page because it fails to index, and in turn, rank.

Pay Attention to Technical SEO

In order to make sure that your site can be indexed and crawled, you need to work on a few factors. For instance, you need to ensure that your website has consistent protocols; either relative paths or absolute paths, but not both. Second, you need to work on your XML Sitemap which is akin to a table of contents for your website. Your XML map makes it easier for Google to crawl your website. You should also create a robots.txt at the root of your website to provide instructions to the search engines what they should crawl and which parts of the site they should not index. Similarly, you should also Enable SSL (https) on your website to make people feel safe on your website and enhance their user experience.

Read More: 5 SEO Tips To Grow Your Business 2022

Author

Asad Gill

Asad Gill is a serial entrepreneur who founded SEO Calling, a holdings company that owns: Provide top-rated SEO services, and product selling over 50 countries with #1 worldwide digital marketing consultancy firm. (Contact: [email protected]) (Skype: [email protected])

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