Common Signs That Your Web Designer or Developer Doesn’t Do SEO

Sourcing a web developer that understands SEO is often difficult. When developing a website, you should aim to construct it in a way that can maximise conversion potential. It’s quite easy to build a lovely-looking website that no one can find because of the lack of SEO work that has been carried out on it. The visual aspects of the website are subjective, however knowing the importance of SEO should be very much objective. Here are some signs that your web developer and designer doesn’t do SEO.   Image of the Google Search Engine. Website Isn’t Showing on Google Your new website has been live for a year now and still can’t be seen, your business has invested thousands of pounds for a swanky new website and you aren’t getting the traffic and leads you thought you would with the new website. This is uncommon, however, in the build stage of the web development project, your web developer would have hidden your website from the search engines so it can’t be crawled. Your target audience should see your website when it is completed, therefore, it makes sense to hide it from the search engines while it’s on the staging area. We have seen this happen on a few websites, where web developers have forgotten to disallow search engines to crawl the development site. To rectify this, you should stop search engines from crawling your website by adding them to the robots.txt file. Once your website is live your web developer should allow the search engines to crawl your website for ranking purposes.   Google’s Page Speed Insights. No Need for Speed In recent years, Google has taken a liking to fast websites, the speed of your website is now a ranking factor and can help your website to get to the top of the search engine rankings. If your website is too slow, many users will click off it in a couple of seconds. It can easily get overtaken by a faster website. Google’s main priority is keeping their user’s content. We often get enquiries to speed websites up as the company’s web developer has built the website and has not considered speed. Many developers may think it’s fast because it loads quickly on their new Mac, however, they need to take into consideration that some may have slower computers or slower connections such as 3G.   Image of the Global Site Tag for Google Analytics. No Sign of Google Analytics Website developers that have no experience with SEO will probably know little about Google Analytics. If so, it is very unlikely they’re going to drop a piece of code onto the website that they know nothing about. Not having Google Analytics on your website drastically limits the amount of data you can get from your website. Statistics like website visits, how many goals were achieved, and most viewed pages can all be found by adding Google Analytics onto the website.   Yoast SEO for Meta Titles & Descriptions Downplays the Importance Titles & Descriptions Optimised titles and descriptions of pages are one of the most important SEO factors and should not be downplayed. Implementing them onto your website ensures that Google understands what your page is showing. The page’s title and description are both indicators that can impact your website’s ranking positions. Often, web platforms like WordPress automatically create titles for you, however, you should ensure that you create your own optimised ones for a full SEO impact.   Image of the User Experience diagram. Doesn’t Understand the Role of UX in SEO Your website needs to be easy for your target audience to use, otherwise, they will click on another website that has user experience (UX) in mind. Therefore, user experience needs to be considered once the web design stage is underway. You may have a great-looking website but if it’s confusing to use, users aren’t going to be able to use the website very easily. Users going onto your website and then click off harms your bounce rate and the drop-off rate will increase. You need to ensure that your web designer doesn’t choose style over substance, you need your website to look professional, however, this shouldn’t be at the expense of your user’s experience.   Contact our Web Design & Development Team Get in touch with our team of Web Designers and Developers who have the knowledge and know-how to complete a fully optimised website, allowing you to enhance the number of leads and conversions your business gets. Call our team on 0121 439 5450, alternatively fill out our contact form.   Share seo web design web development

For more information on Common Signs That Your Web Designer or Developer Doesn’t Do SEO talk to Odyssey New Media Ltd