Most Common SEO Mistakes Developers Make

If you’re a website developer looking to add value to the service you offer, you might consider making your designs more SEO-friendly. Your clients will appreciate the boost in the number of visitors they receive from the search engines, and you’ll find it’s not really that difficult — as long as you avoid certain pitfalls. This article will explain the advantages of SEO-friendly website design, answer your questions, and point out some of the most common SEO mistakes.

When most of us think about SEO we tend to think about the content that shows up on a site. While this is a key component of a sound SEO strategy it is far from the be all and end all of a sound SEO strategy.

As a matter of fact, a sound SEO strategy starts at the very beginning. It starts when the site is being developed. This presents a unique opportunity for you as a developer, whether your site is for professional or personal use.

The advantage for a personal site is that your content will be easy for end users to find. Your content will average higher rankings than it would have otherwise, and any SEO strategy that you choose to put it all together later on will be more effective, because it is working with your site design and not against it.

The advantage for you as a professional developer is in reputation. As your designs become more and more SEO-friendly, your clients will notice the benefits mentioned above. (A smart developer might point them out as part of his or her service). When they do that, you will develop a reputation for being an SEO-friendly developer, which will attract more clients to your door and make you more money.

SEO Friendly Design Questions

Now that we know what some of the possible advantages to learning about, and implementing, SEO friendly designs, we can talk about some of your concerns. That way we can lay to rest any concerns you may have about implementing such a design.

Q: Will implementing an SEO-friendly design cause any aesthetic or layout concerns that I should be aware of?

For the most part, no. Most of your SEO-friendly design modifications will be minor and not visible. Those few that are visible should not require a lot effort to work around. In the end this is great news for you, since it allows you to add more value to your service.

Q: How do I broach this issue during a design meeting with clients?

Just make it a part of your first meeting. That basic “what do you want and what do you need?” conversation you have with clients is a great time. After all, who would not want to make their design better? Most of them are likely to be grateful for your concern about their needs after the first purchase of the site.

Q: What should I do about a client who wants to skip the SEO- based design?

That will be a personal call for you, but on the whole you should probably do what your clients want you to. Think of the SEO friendly design as an added service that you offer. If a client thinks they can do better on their own, then let them try.

Q: Will learning to develop SEO friendly design require me to learn any new languages?

No. A working web developer should have no problem with using these techniques and developing great SEO friendly sites for their clients. This is about using what you already know in a new and interesting way to create a better end product. No complicated theory or new languages, just practical advice for your designs.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Now, let’s get down to business and look at some of those common mistakes, so you can avoid them and provide SEO friendly designs to your clients.

Common Mistake One: Skipping Meta fields

Yes, in the past some engines have taken issue with abuse of these Meta fields. This does not make them, in and of itself, a bad thing. Keeping the Meta tags and description for the site is important. It allows your clients to have at least some control over what is being shown of their site when they are indexed by a search engine.

All of your clients may not choose to use them, but you never know. Six months down the road they could change their minds and want those fields. You are not really going to want to go back and make alterations just for that. If a client decides not to use the fields, then they can just leave them blank.

It should have no negative impact on the site to leave them unused. Just be sure to give your client some basic instruction on how to properly use these fields. That way you do not end up doing more harm than good. A client who has never heard of keyword staffing could easily end up doing it inadvertently.

Common Mistake Two: Trying to decide between Do Follow and No Follow by yourself

Using Do Follow or No Follow for links as a default, especially when those links are in a comments or forum section, can be a controversial decision. A site that defaults to No Follow is often accused of acting as a black hole, which is not a reputation that most new sites want to garner. A site that is by default all Do Follow, on the other hand, can end up with a serious issue with spam commenters. That means a lot more comment moderation will be needed.

Either of these options has its up side and its down side to consider. As the developer, you are probably not the best person to judge this issue. The people who will be running, managing and promoting the site should be the ones to make a decision on this often delicate issue.

That having been said, if a client comes to you for advice, you can choose to give them a hybrid option: do follow links in posts and no follow for links that are in the end user comments. Many sites find this to be a happy medium for SEO.

Common Mistake Three: Making authentic posts URLs that feature a date instead of words, and not allowing those to change manually.

A post URL that only includes the post date is a URL that does not allow for a chance to use the keywords from a title in the URL. This may seem like it is a silly thing, but those words can help some engines to index with greater accuracy. In a competitive field, any advantage is one that is worth considering.

You may have noticed that this one is a two-parter. The second part is about giving the ability to manually change those auto generated URLs that are based on the title. Why would you want that ability? Well, perhaps a title needs to be changed! Maybe the chosen title only makes sense in the context of a post, and the author wants a URL that more obviously conveys what the post is about.

No matter what the reason is, you should give that control to the end user when possible. Just be aware that this can be a real challenge, or even impossible if you are programming a template for a blog host with default rules against this practice. In some cases your style sheet can be used to override this, and in other cases nothing you do will change the default. Be sure to know which you are dealing with before you begin the development process.

Common Mistake Four: Expecting sidebars to be indexed

This may be the one that will change the look of some of your sites. It will not be dramatic, though. A lot of designers and site managers do not realize that content in sidebars is rarely, if ever, indexed by a search engine. Consider these areas to be for human use only.

Sorry, I know that it seemed like such a good place to add in free links, but it just will not work. If you need to add links, look to headers, footers and post bottom link lists.

While we happen to be on the issue of things that will not be indexed on a usual basis, we should talk about members-only areas. Any site content that is locked up behind a username and a password will not be indexed by a search engine. That does not mean a username and password to post a comment, as long as the comments are visible on the site without signing in. This only means things that you would have to log into the site in order to view.

This means that users-only or subscription sites will have some issues with search engines placement unless they want to give away some content so that the engines have something to use.

Now you have an idea of how to make your unique and in-demand designs even more useful to your clients. These tips will even help your own sites to grow and prosper. Enjoy your new-found knowledge and hopefully, in the near future, you will get a chance to use that knowledge in a new project. Just be sure to talk to your clients before you integrate these tips into an existing concept or change a site that you also maintain.