Envision the website being delivered to you by developers. You think it’s amazing.
Next, the SEO team presents a comprehensive list of necessary changes. These alterations will impact the website’s appearance and navigation, and the web developers are hesitant to tackle them.
Are you leaning towards SEO or Web Development? Which side are you choosing?
Now let’s explore.
What is Web Development?
Engaging in web development involves crafting websites and applications for both the internet and intranet. Every webpage and application you interact with daily, from blogs to social media and eCommerce sites, is created by coding and integrating various technologies in custom website development.
The process of web development unfolds through stages that encompass planning, designing, coding, testing, debugging, and more. Crafting a website, whether it’s a simple single-page portfolio or the creation of a highly intuitive healthcare website, requires dedicated resources and a skilled team.
What is SEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) involves altering a website to enhance its likelihood of achieving higher visibility on search engines.
We can classify these ‘ranking factors’ into three main parts:
On Page SEO: Improving content and copy to make it user-friendly and understandable for Google crawlers.
Off-Page SEO: It is taking actions beyond your website that impact its visibility, such as creating backlinks, promotions, and guest posts.
Technical SEO: Includes adjusting the website’s code and server configuration to enhance crawling, optimizing page elements, managing HTTP header responses, updating XML Sitemaps, and handling redirects.
How Web Development and SEO Intersect and Differ?
The technical aspect of SEO holds the utmost importance in an SEO strategy. If the website’s technical configuration isn’t established correctly, both on-page and off-page efforts won’t yield the desired results.
Companies usually don’t employ dedicated technical SEOs. As a result, SEO teams frequently collaborate with developers, urging them to implement their recommendations. Developers, however, operate within specific guidelines and constraints regarding the changes they can make to a website.
Therefore, it appears that SEO and Web Developers are often at odds, even though both aim to ensure a positive user experience.
The web development team, recognizing the significance of SEO, identifies common ground and constructs the website accordingly. The approach of incorporating crucial SEO practices into web development is referred to as Web Development SEO.
How do web development and SEO collaborate?
While distinct processes, there is a notable intersection between numerous SEO and web development tasks, underscoring the significance of incorporating professional SEO services to enhance the overall effectiveness of these activities.
1. Mobile Friendly
Studies indicate that 60% of global traffic originates from mobile devices. Google predominantly crawls and indexes the mobile version of a website, and if it lacks mobile-friendliness, it may not even index the desktop version.
However, web design goes beyond just being mobile-friendly.
Foldable phones, smart TVs, smart fridges, and smartwatches have expanded the range of screen sizes. While SEO specialists aim for a fully responsive website, the responsibility ultimately falls on web developers.
They need to construct a website that provides users a smooth browsing experience without compromising functionality.
Read More: Boost Engagement with These 5 Mobile-Optimized Design Tactics
2. Website functionality
While having the website accessible on all devices is excellent, functionality holds even greater importance.
If visitors to the website cannot read its content, they won’t gain knowledge about your business. Unclickable buttons and links can disrupt the visitor’s journey on the site, and malfunctioning forms may prevent them from reaching out to you.
A reliable website builder ensures that each element of the website functions properly.
3. Website speed
The conflict between Web Development and SEO often revolves around page speed. SEOs prioritize fast-loading websites and core web vitals.
The web development team understands the constraints of technologies and is familiar with the repercussions if speed precedes functionality and security.
Nevertheless, web developers with a grasp of SEO go the extra mile to accelerate the website.
4. Website structure
Developers are enthusiastic about creating a flat structure, as it enhances speed and aids mobile users. On the other hand, SEO specialists prefer showcasing all crucial links on the homepage.
Numerous SEO experts suggest keeping every web page within three clicks of the homepage, which is achievable through extensive internal linking. A meticulously designed website sitemap and Information Architecture (IA) can only be achieved when web development and SEO collaborate.
5. Website Design
Effective website design and user experience (UX) are pivotal factors in holding the interest of valuable visitors, highlighting the significance of custom website development in achieving this objective.
SEO monitors the visitor’s behaviour on the website and can identify specific areas where engagement is lost. They provide recommendations derived from their research, which developers then need to implement.
Including a brief message, providing a clear call to action, introducing or removing pop-ups, and conducting A/B tests on website copy and colour are various approaches to enhance the usefulness of a website.
6. Website security
The development team prioritises website security since their reputation is at stake. Occasionally, speed and functionality are pushed aside in favour of guarantee.
SEOs are primarily concerned with SSL certificates, as Google favours websites loading on HTTPS. Therefore, SEOs aim for HTTPS implementation, and developers promptly add the SSL to the site.
7. URL optimization
The well-known incident of the developer’s team mishandling URLs during migration creates tension between developers and SEO.
A page URL serves as the address of the page. If you relocate the page to a new address, the backlinks, internal links, and social media shares will result in 404 errors. Proper redirection becomes essential in such cases.
At a technical level, a website may possess various domain variants, such as:
- http://www.abc.com
- http://www.abc.com/
- https://www.abc.com
- https://www.abc.com/index.php
- https://www.abc.com/
In Web Development SEO, we ensure all domain URL variants include canonical tags and redirect to a single primary domain URL.
8. Image Optimization
Many web developers choose icons and images from free image websites for use. Image optimization falls under the purview of digital marketing tasks.
However, when dealing with a multitude of images on the website, developers need to automate the process of populating alt tags. Image alt text benefits individuals who may not be able to see but choose to listen to the page, enhancing the overall user experience.
Ultimately, it is crucial to compress the images to maintain the website’s speed.
9. Code optimization (Java, HTML, CSS minification)
Speed optimization tools emphasize code minification so that even SEO professionals grasp its intricacies. Competent web developers minimize codes and activate Gzip compressions for enhanced performance.
SEO professionals cannot execute it independently since it involves server configuration and editing of the .htaccess file. When web development collaborates with SEO, they write the code and optimize it for speed.
10. Page’s metadata
The metadata comprises the meta title and meta description, visible on the Google search page.
Developers usually neglect to update the meta title of pages. Frequently, the page name is generated randomly with unreadable words.
Once the developers finish the production, the SEO team must incorporate keywords into the title and description. When SEO and web design collaborate, the page’s metadata is SEO-ready right from the launch.
11. Indexation
The web development team operates on the staging environment. The website is set to ‘noindex’ to prevent it from accidentally appearing on Google.
When a website is set to ‘noindex,’ it signifies that crawlers are not permitted to explore the website. Ideally, SEO prefers indexing the website before the launch because the processes of crawling and indexing consume time.
JavaScript poses another challenge. While beneficial for functionality, it complicates crawling due to client-side rendering. Although HTML renders smoothly, it imposes limitations on website features.
Web developers and SEO teams need to strike a balance between the accessibility of the website and the timing of indexing.
Conclusion
Effective leadership requires a harmonious blend of web development and SEO strategies in the ever-evolving landscape of web design. The synergy between these two facets is crucial for crafting websites that boast visually appealing designs and excel in functionality, speed, and search engine optimization. As businesses seek comprehensive solutions, finding a reliable software development company in India becomes pivotal. This partnership ensures a seamless fusion of web development and SEO expertise and a strategic approach that propels web design leadership to new heights in the digital realm.
