Hand in Hand: Web Development and Search Engine Optimization
Why SEO is important in web development?
A common practice we see with many businesses that want to have an online presence: The client hires a web developer to create a website from scratch. The developer completes the project and hands it over to the owner. The client then contacts a search engine optimization specialist and learns that certain elements of the website’s structure need to be changed to make it more attractive and easier to read for search engines and their bots. The client then contacts the best web development services to make changes to the website.
Availability of web developer
In this scenario, many things can go wrong. First of all, if the client has hired a freelance web developer, he cannot be sure that he will be available when the client decides that changes need to be made to the website in terms of search engine optimization. Another reason is that the website is built on Flash and JavaScript? Then the SEO specialist tells the client that a website based on Flash and JavaScript will not rank well. This could mean that you have to practically start over.
How does Web design help SEO?
Knowledge of on-page optimization
Before you hire someone to build a website, you need to make sure they know about on-page optimization. This is the part of search engine optimization that deals with how the website is built and how the search engine spiders will read it. If they are not familiar with this area, you can either find another developer or hire an SEO specialist to work with the developer.
Tips to make the website SEO friendly
If you are already creating a website and don’t have the budget to hire a full-time SEO specialist, here are some tips to make your website more search engine friendly.
1. Have only one URI for your home page.
Yes, one URI, because a URL is a URI and a URI is not a URL, but I digress. In other words, if I go to www(dot)yoursite(dot)com/index.html or www(dot)yoursite(dot)com/index or http: //yoursite(dot)com, it should only point to one page. You can set it with or without www, /index.php, /index.html, or just /index, but stick to one. Your web developer should know how to do this.
2. Regarding the size of the pages
do not exceed 150 kilobytes. If you say that some websites have much larger pages, it is because this restriction only applies to websites without much authority. Yes, for example, to a website that is not yet on the World Wide Web.
3. Content is king.
A website can be attractive and have all sorts of “bells and whistles”, but if it doesn’t have search engine robot readable content (written words/text), it won’t rank well. So try to refrain from making flash intros.
4. Don’t alienate people.
Yes, people (usually) like music, and music is there to be shared. But please, we don’t want our speakers to come alive without warning. It can be very frustrating to have background music automatically playing on your home page. In an age where browsing multi-tabbed websites are the norm, it can be very frustrating to switch between tabs to see where the music is coming from.
In addition to these four points, there are others to consider to make your website more attractive to search engines. But don’t be caught off guard, because if you’ve made the right decision to hire a web development services Lahore, they will at least know the basics of integrating SEO tactics into web development. Then, you can simply implement what you’ve learned along the way, like the four points above.