Website Developer SEO Mistakes
"There are always multiple solutions for any given problem"This is a general quote. However, we see developers practicing this while developing any website.
Web developers have to make the decision and choose from picking up the web hosting platform, fundamental data storage, and tools to write the languages in, design implementations, and possible frameworks and libraries to include.
In the midst of this process where the developer is sometimes sure of what he is going to use, there are some stages where he plays hit and trial method.
Website Developer SEO Mistakes
There are mistakes that are task specific and not very common and there are mistakes that general among the fraternity and known by almost every developer.
Here is our list of:
Top 7 mistakes developer makes while developing a website
1 Incomplete or Incorrect Input Validation on Client and Server Side
What? You didn't validate user input on the client and server side? That increases the risk of SQL injection?
You wouldn't want your client say this to you. Make it a habit of validating user input. It is a time-consuming process, we agree to that, but it is a must-do and not to be skipped.
2 Old School Coding Techniques
We can understand your feelings about how much you practiced writing old HTML and old habits die hard, but you got to get over and learn the present ones unless you want complications in your website.
The newer web browsers don't necessarily need last decades HTML.
Are you still using table elements for layout?
If yes, then stop using it and run with the latest markup options.
3 Writing Browser-Centric
It is working fine in my browser; I don't know whats wrong with your website. Have you heard yourself say that when your client tells you It is not working in my browser?
The most common reason this happens is that the developer used codes that fit in some particular browsers but doesn't comply with all of them.
Test the website after each development phase to see whether it is working fine. It is also advisable to make use of free tools available online to test the website at every phase.
4 Making the website SEO-unfriendly
Developing a website is one task, letting Google crawl it or bring it to the top position is another.
There are two stages of SEO, On-page, and Off-page.
SEO professionals do know all these on-page and off-page tasks that need to be done to make website SEO-friendly.
Your development friends may or may not know all these tasks or points as Google keeps changing its algorithms and only good SEO professionals keep him updated.
If you don't put an effort to contact one SEO professional, then you might be able to develop a good website, but one that Google doesn't crawl.
5 Non-optimized Bandwidth Usage
So, you download 3 background images 5MB each on your 1MB/s connection, you might not face any issue, but what if your user does that on his 3G connection, that can raise speed issues and your client might ask questions from you.
To avoid that situation, optimize bandwidth usage. Optimizing it would give it a great speed advantage.
Heres what you should do:
- Minification of all CSS
- Minification of all JavaScript
- Optimize image size and resolution
- Compress Server-side HTTP
6 Care for Client
Shift your focus to clients need than to writing code.
Know his problem and present him the solution.
Once you know what he wants and how the problem is solved, you are likely to get the code right because you will know what your customer cares about.
7 Planning
Let's get back to the first line of the article about multiple solutions for one problem.
In the planning phase, you funnel down those solutions and pick out the best one out.
If you proceed without planning, they are going to face many avoidable problems in the development phase.
This is a Guest Post, and it's written from:
Author Bio
Simran, an SEO consultant and marketing manager for SEO Professionals India.
I've more than 5 years of experience as an SEO expert and have worked for many big brands. You can find more about us through our twitter handle @seoprofessionalz
SEO Consulting Services Consultant, Specialist, Freelancer