3 Important Web Development Choices For SEO

Web developers and search engine optimisers often have disagreements when it comes to the best practices for a website, as often what is good for web development can hinder SEO progress, and vice versa.

However, today we’re discussing things from an SEO perspective, to introduce things you need to push the web developers you’re working with to prioritise. After all, having a great-looking website is important, however, if no one is finding it through SEO, then it’s not all that beneficial!

Reduce the Use of Javascript

The first thing that you need to push for is the reduced use of Javascript. Firstly, when Javascript is heavily used, it can slow down websites quite significantly, and slow websites are a big red flag for Google and your rankings will likely be impacted.

However, more specifically, when Javascript is added to a section of a page that contains content, it is so much harder for Google to crawl and index the content, so in many cases, the bots simply won’t crawl it.

Crawling Javascript takes more time and resources, so Google has no motivation to do it. When Google can’t/isn’t indexing content on a page, then it won’t understand what the page is about, so, therefore, won’t want to show it as a result on the search engine results pages to its users.

So, it’s really important that you push for, as a minimum, any content to be completely free of Javascript, and instead build in HTML and then styled in CSS.

Prioritise Mobile

The future is mobile, particularly when it comes to eCommerce, so focusing on your website from a mobile perspective is essential. Not only will this improve the experience for your customers, but it will be well received by Google!

Throughout the entire design and development process, focusing on the mobile side of things is key if you want your website to rank well and for your customers to enjoy shopping with you.

Before you work with a web development agency or a web developer, confirming that they have a firm mobile-friendly mindset is vital.

URL Structure

Lastly, having an SEO-friendly URL structure is a really important thing to consider during the development process.

You want URLs to be really clear and follow the same logical structure as the website, as this makes it easier for the bots to crawl the site and therefore it will likely be done more efficiently and regularly.

For example, say you’re a women's fashion brand. You will have your homepage, and then likely have top-level pages such as Dresses, Tops, Shoes, then you will have category pages within each of those top-level sections, such as Mini Dresses, Midi Dresses, Maxi Dresses, then your products in each of those categories.

The ideal URL structure for this website would be womensfashion.com/dresses/mini dresses.

The above very clearly shows the hierarchy of the website, so it makes sense to the user and can easily be crawled. If you’re migrating to or from a different CMS, make sure you carefully consider the URL structure, as some CMSs such as Shopify don’t allow you to modify the structure much and you may need to create redirects for the entire website.

So, there you have it! Pushing back on the above is important when it comes to development and SEO and the best time to do it is before the website is live! Working with an agency for SEO Manchester or London-based will help to ensure the development process goes smoothly and SEO is always a priority.