If you want to have a successful online presence, the first step is to make sure your website is well-designed, easy to navigate and informative. However, web development also involves functionality and how well your site works. All of these factors play into your SEO rankings, which can impact how visible you are on search engines and how much traffic you get to your site.
Web Design
If your site is hard to use or doesn’t look reputable, visitors are likely to click away and go to a different site. This increases your bounce rate, which is a key metric that search engines look at when determining your rankings. Search engine crawlers may also have trouble indexing your pages. This can lead to lower rankings or even getting dropped from the search engine results altogether. A good website design should:
- Match your brand and messaging
- Be easy to use
- Load quickly
- Have well-written and informative content
Front-End Development and User Experience (UX)
Front-end development is how your website’s design comes to life on the internet. It’s responsible for everything from the layout of your site to the interactive elements on each page.
User experience (UX) is how easy and enjoyable it is for people to use your site. A good UX leads to increased engagement, more trust in your brand, and an uptick in qualified leads. From an SEO standpoint, a good UX can help reduce your bounce rate and increase the amount of time people spend on your site. This sends positive signals to search engines, which can help improve your rankings. In order to have a platform with a great UX, you must have a clear understanding of:
- How users interact with your site
- The features and functionality they’re looking for
- What their overall goals are
It is also best if you have a comprehensive understanding of what your goals for your web platform are. If you are an artist who wants to use your website to display a portfolio of work, you might want to focus on a design that makes use of white space and highlights your work.
If you are a small business owner who wants to use your website to sell products and services, you will want to focus on creating a user-friendly shopping experience with clear calls to action. No matter what your goals are, it’s essential to keep the user in mind when designing and developing your website.
Desktop and Mobile Optimization
These days, more than half of your web traffic will come from mobile devices. This means that your site needs to be optimized for both desktop and mobile users.
If your site isn’t properly optimized, it will load slowly and be difficult to use on a smaller screen. Since this leads to a poor experience for such a large volume of traffic, Google now uses what’s called a “mobile-first” index. This means that they primarily look at the mobile version of your site when determining your rankings.
Before beginning the development phase, be sure to prepare both mobile, tablet, and web versions of your site design. This will ensure that your site is accessible and usable for everyone who visits it.
Heading Structure and Backend Development
Backend development is the code that runs behind the scenes of your website. This includes your server, database, and application code. Your website’s heading structure is important for both users and search engines. The headings on each page tell both crawlers and visitors what the page is about.
Many people are unaware of how much headings and metadata impact SEO, so they don’t pay much attention to it. On the backend of a website, headings look like this:
<title>Web Development and SEO Rankings</title>
<h1>How Web Development Can Impact SEO Rankings</h1>
<h2>A Good Design Can Help Your Rankings</h2>
<h3>Front-End Development and User Experience</h3>
The title tag is the most important heading on your site, as it tells search engines what your page is about and appears as the clickable link in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Your title tag should be 50 to 60 characters long, feature your target keyword, and represent the content on the page.
The meta description is the short paragraph of text that appears under your title tag in the SERPs. This short description is your opportunity to convince people to click through to your site. Your meta description should be 135 to 155 characters long, contain your target keyword, and describe your content in a simple and engaging way
Below that, H tags (headings) separate your body text into sections. H tags are ranked in order of importance, with your H1 tag (the title of your page) being the most important
Headings and metadata are extremely important for both users and search engines because they help break up your content and give each page a clear focus.
By taking the time to ensure that your site’s heading structure is well-organized and effective, you can make it easier for both users and search engines to understand your content. This will, in turn, improve your SEO rankings.
Web Development Technologies That Impact SEO
The technologies you use to develop your website can also impact your SEO. Some common web development technologies include:
- Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
- Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
- JavaScript
Each of these technologies can impact your SEO in different ways.
HTML is used to structure the content on your website. This includes things like headings, paragraphs, and lists. Using proper HTML markup helps search engines understand the content on your site and can impact your rankings.
CSS is used to style the content on your website. This includes things like font size, colors, and spacing. Using CSS can help improve the readability of your site, which is a key factor in UX.
JavaScript libraries are used to add interactive features to your website. Popular Javascript libraries include:
- jQuery: Best for adding simple animations and interactions to your site
- React: Best for building large and complex progressive web applications
- AngularJS: Best for building single-page applications
- Vue.js: Best for lightweight applications
Adding interactive features to your website can help improve the user experience, but it’s important to use these libraries sparingly. Too much JavaScript can impact load times, make your site harder to use, and damage your SEO health.
Tips for Improving SEO Through Web Development
SEO is a very abstract component of a website, which is why web developers work with agencies like Goodway to understand how businesses want to rank. Here are some tips for improving SEO through web development:
- Properly use CSS to make your web content readable
- Avoid placing any text before your H1 header
- Frequently separate content with headers (H tags) to help search engines understand your content
- Use proper HTML markup to structure the content on your site
- Stay away from full-column layouts
- Don’t use too much Javascript and condense when necessary
- Avoid website builders that allow you to drag and drop content without coding
- Invest in a quality web developer who understands search engine optimization
Endnote
Web development plays a massive role in your business’s online relationship with Google. If you want to build your online presence in the most efficient way possible, you need to understand how web development can impact your SEO rankings.