The visual representation of a webpage is given a lot of emphasis to provide satisfactory user experience (UX). If you are launching a new website or redesigning an existing one, your design should be useful for the users as well as the search engines. The importance of SEO has increased vastly in recent years for any online marketing campaigns. Everyday the competitions are rising, and every website’s SEO need to have a better technical approach to stay ahead in the competition. But, most designers or developers aren’t aware of the importance of these technical factors. They must adapt to the new trends. In this article, I will discuss the technical SEO checklist for web designers & developers. Let’s begin..

Technical SEO Checklist for Web Designers & Developers

Web Page Accessibility

• Mobile Responsiveness: Major portion of search queries come from mobile devices. So, you should have a mobile-friendly website for better user experience. Besides, search engines like Google have made this a major ranking factor for mobile SERPs. Therefore, mobile-friendliness is a must for every websites to stay alive in the competition. There are several ways to make a website mobile-friendly. The most common practice is responsive web design. As for mobile eCommerce development and SEO, mobile responsiveness is one of the most the important parts along with a perfectly developed E-commerce website to improve the user experience on mobiles.

• Page Load Time: Web pages which load faster have a better chance of engagement. People show lack of interest when it comes to waiting for a slow page and finally leave the site. There is a 11% loss in page view and 7% decrease in conversion for every 1s delay in page load time[1]. Besides, average page load time plays an important role in SERPs. So, optimize your page load time. You can use Google Page Speed Insight or other tools like Pingdom, GTmetrix etc to have an insight on the page speed. The following image shows the relation between conversion rate and page speed.

Image source: Forbes

• Page Size: Keep the page size at an optimum level. A heavy page takes more time to load. Here are some steps to consider for optimization of page sizes:
  • Compressing images
  • Asynchronous loading of html, CSS and JavaScripts.
  • Minifying CSS and JavaScript files
  • Using CDN
  • Reduction of cookie size
• Web Page Crawl: Make sure search engines can crawl every one of your pages. If search engines can’t crawl a page there is no chance of being indexed. Make sure your robots.txt is not blocking the important pages you want to have ranked on SERPs. You can always block bots to crawl the incomplete pages through robots.txt file.
• SSL Certificate: Transfer your http protocol to https. Https provides more secure browsing for users than http. It has become a sign of trust. Besides, SSL certificate is the easiest way to boost a website SEO rankings.[2]
• Redirects: Use “301” (permanent) redirects instead of “302”. Try to reduce the number of 404 not found errors. Redirect those “404” (not found) URLs to the most relevant pages. Always avoid redirecting all “404” URLs to home page only.
• Duplicate Content: There is no place for duplicate content on a website, whether they are among your web pages or with another website. You can check for duplicate contents on siteliner. Revisit your pages to get rid of duplicate content. Besides, if you have multiple pages with the same content you can either use canonical tag or use “301” (permanent) redirects.

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URL Structure

Follow these steps below to optimize you URL structure.

• Domain Extension: Make sure your website domain extension fits your purpose. Such as .com for commercial or .org for organization. Besides, local businesses can have country specific domain extensions (such as .com.au or .co.uk etc) for better ranking opportunities.
• Descriptive URL: Use an URL structure that describes the page rather than some random numbers or characters.
  Example: Bad practice: https://www.domain.com/page1
  Correct way: https://www.domain.com/our-service/
• Hyphens: Use hyphens to split words inside an URL. See the example above.
• Parent-Child Structure: If you use parent-child URL structure, categorize properly. Besides, make sure you do not go four, five or more level deep link structure. The higher the level the less value it puts to SEO.
• Permalink Structure: If you have customized permalink structure for your posts, make sure they follow the guidelines listed above and do not have unnecessary words to make the URL larger than usual.

Sitemap

• HTML Sitemap: HTML sitemap can help user to easily navigate through a website. It can also help search engines to get an idea about the website structure.
• XML Sitemap: XML sitemaps are visible for search engines only. XML sitemaps act as a roadmap of your website with links to all of your important pages.[3] XML sitemaps can also contain metadata to provide additional information about the pages.
• Image Sitemap: Image sitemaps can help your website images to be indexed and show up on image search results.

Keywords & Content

Keywords are important in many ways. The keywords you target can make the difference between success and failure. Here are the guidelines for keywords and representation of contents:

• Keyword Research: Keyword research are important to specify your target audience, your content, your services and how you are going to represent the content and resources. Most people do keyword research after launching the website. I would recommend doing a keyword research before designing so that everything can be put in the right places.
• Keyword Target: Every page should target a single individual keyword. Search engines will decide which page to rank for a keyword, but a page will have better chance of ranking among the top if it is focused on a single keyword rather than multiple keywords.
• Keyword Placement: Place your keywords in the page URL, page title, headings, content and image alt tags. Don’t try to stuff keywords unnecessarily. Just present a it naturally.
• Unique Content: Create unique content for each of your web pages. Check if there are duplicate content.
• Variety of Content: Create a variety of content like texts, images, infographics, video etc for better representation and improved user experience.
• Content Accessibility: Make sure every part of your content is crawlable for search engines.
• Content Length: A small content refers to less information. Although there is no fixed amount, it should be more than 300 words in general. Longer content tend to perform better if other aspects are taken well care of.
• Fresh Content: Fresh content are good indication in the eyes of search engines. Post an revise regularly on your website to keep your content fresh and up to date.
• Content Language: Define your content language to search engines so that there is a clear differentiation between original and translated content.

Images

• Use descriptive name for images
• Use Alt tags for images
• Image size should be kept to a minimal so that both page size and page load time are optimized.

SERPs Display

• Page Title: Add an unique page title that describes your page and attract searchers to click. Also, add an attractive call to action (CTA). The title should not be too long or too short.
• Meta Description: Add an unique and engaging meta description to every pages. A well presented meta description can convince users to click and increase the click through rate (CTR).
• Structured Data: There are several forms of structured data used for websites such as Microformats, Schema MarkUp etc. Use structured data to tell search engines about your web page. Besides, you can use structured data to create rich snippets. Rich snippets can enhance your representation style and increase CTR as well. Validate your structured data on Google Structured Data Testing Tool.

Webmaster & Analytics

Submit the website to webmaster tools like Google, Bing etc. Google Search Console (Previously Google Webmaster Tool) is a free tool that helps website owners to monitor website performances and issues. The most useful features include keyword data, link profile, crawl and index status and notification of website issues. You should also integrate search engine analytic tools such as Google Analytics.  Analytics will help you track live and historic user data for direct, organic, referral and ads traffic.

Checkout Our Related Article About How to Choose A Trustworthy SEO Company

When you are designing or developing a website, these technical aspects are crucial for SEO. These factors help search engines to have a better understanding of the webpage and ensure improved user experience. If you are a web designer or a developer, this SEO checklist will help you design or develop a well optimized user friendly website.