10 SEO Best Practices for Web Developers

1. Spend time researching keywords

To determine the best keywords for your website, you need to do some keyword research. This usually involves combing through your competitors’ websites to find the keywords that bring them the most traffic. There are many ways you can start keyword research. One recommended method is to create a spreadsheet listing competitor websites and add keywords. Analyze your competitor’s site title to find out what keywords they are using using tools like Ahrefs, Moz, SpyFu, or SEMrush. Find out what keywords others are using on your competitor’s site.

2. Focus on your title tag

This is the title of each post. It needs to be bold and eye-catching so that it catches the eye of potential users. Choose a location of approximately 60-90 characters to ensure it displays correctly in search engines and is readable in browser tabs. When writing your title, focus on unique keywords that readers are likely to search for. Also make sure the keywords you choose are relevant to your page. Another good practice is to make the title tag and title (h1) the same.

3. Carefully craft your H1, H2, H3 tags

Careful use of title tags helps search engines identify keywords on the page. To get the best results from your header tags, use H1, H2, and H3 in order, along with keywords in the H2 and H3 headers that support your H1 tag. Remember, your H1 tag should mimic your title tag, while H2 and H3 can expand and add additional context. You can also use multiple H2 and H3 tags, but make sure these titles support H1 tags and are relevant to the content on your page. Using irrelevant title keywords can actually work against you.

4. Avoid using JavaScript to load content

Despite its popularity, JavaScript is not well supported by search engines and can obscure important content. Progressive web applications in particular may be affected because critical content is loaded after the page has been crawled, or not loaded at all by many search engines that don't yet index JavaScript. The same is true for many social media sites, meaning dynamically loaded content is not evaluated or pulled in, causing your site's default skeleton to show up in search engines and link previews.

5. Name your images carefully

In the past search engines would evaluate your images based on their alt tags, but as more and more developers load this with irrelevant keywords Hidden image text search engines instead place more emphasis on the actual name of the image itself. This means that using a generic image name (such as 1.jpg) can actually hurt your website rankings because search engines may be looking for seokeywords.jpg. Now, just because you name your images carefully using relevant keywords that describe the image doesn't mean you should ignore alt tags. Be sure to continue adding alt tags for older search engines in case images fail to load, as well as for accessibility (i.e. screen readers).

6. Work on improving your page load times

It’s no secret that faster websites rank higher in search engines. One thing that Google looks at is how quickly images load. Therefore, we recommend you check how long it takes to load the first image on your site and even take advantage of lazy loading for non-critical images. You want the image to load within 30 seconds at the latest before the user actually clicks on the page. You also need to make sure that if you use multiple images they are loaded as a group. Next, look at how long it takes to load a web page. Does a page take longer than three seconds to load on your site? You want to provide users with fast-loading pages, but your code and templates can easily cause this to happen.

7. Optimize text throughout the page

In addition to your title tags, titles, and images, it’s important to add keywords to your standard content, while also working to avoid Keyword overload. To help prevent overload and improve search engine rankings for multiple keywords, you can use alternative phrases. In the case of "PHP training," the alternative phrase might be "PHP tutorial" or "PHP course." This both helps support primary keywords while also allowing the page to rank for those keywords. Remember to use the tools mentioned above to find keywords that are appropriate for your site, and then process them into natural sentences without forced keywords or excessive repetition. Also remember that just as the content and keywords on your page are important to search engines, how users interact with that content is also important.

8. Build your domain and page authority

Domain and page authority depend not only on the number of backlinks (or sites linking to your domain or page), but also on the links to the quality of your site and pages. One thing that makes it more difficult to get better DA or PA is to buy or acquire bulk backlinks. Please note that this practice actually violates Baidu's terms of service and may result in your entire website being banned from their search results! Because of this practice, it’s important to focus on high-quality websites and work to gain backlinks organically through partnerships or syndicated content (such as blog posts). You can also check your DA here, or use one of the many tools mentioned above.

9. Use social media

Speaking of backlinks, social media can be a powerful tool for increasing your page visibility while improving your search engine rankings! Keep in mind that most social networking sites don't support or read JavaScript, so make sure your content is available on the page. If you do have a Progressive Web App that uses JavaScript to load content, consider using Headless baidu to render a JavaScript-free version of your site to specific bots (note - the content must be the same as what the user sees, otherwise your site may be blockade). There are also many tools that allow you to build content via JavaScript on the server backend before delivering it to your readers. To help get more exposure, consider adding social sharing links or tools like AddThis.

10. Good SEO Takes Time

The truth is, there are no special secrets or ingredients to ranking well in search engines (which Google doesn’t share publicly). Instead, it's about formatting your page correctly, making sure it's readable by search engines, and providing content that your readers will engage with. As you provide more valuable content, and more people like and link to your content - your website's domain authority will gradually increase, making your site and pages stronger - and therefore ranking higher.

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