In this forever-evolving digital world, a successful website is made for both the audience and the search engine. It is a combination of best SEO practices and a website with visible search engine performance. Professional web application development services ensure that your website performs well in the search engine rankings and presents your business in the best possible way for increased traffic.
There are several aspects of a website that play a key role in performance optimization and better user engagement. These aspects, including website speed, mobile friendliness, and technical SEO affect the bounce rate and functionality of the website. Now that we know the importance of digital presence, let’s see how web application development impacts your SEO.
How Web Application Development Impacts Your SEO
A well-designed web application can help you improve its SEO, pushing you to the top in SERPs. Here are a few ways that can positively impact your web app’s SEO.
Mobile-First Design
Statistics show that nearly 60% of the website traffic comes from mobile phones, and thus Google follows a mobile-first indexing procedure for websites. A site lacking a mobile-first design will not rank higher on the search engine, resulting in decreased website traffic.
With mobile-friendliness being the primary goal, your website should have a design that is accessible across all mobile phones regardless of their screen sizes. The following few ways can help create a design that works perfectly for all devices (desktops, tablets, and mobiles) and browsers (Safari, Chrome, and Firefox) for better search engine ranking:
- Use tools such as Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to check your website’s performance on mobile phones.
- Prioritize a mobile-first design and build a site for smaller screens and then scale up for larger ones.
- Utilize adaptable grids and layouts to fit different screen sizes.
Use a simple and intuitive navigation menu to make it easy to use on smaller screens. - Optimize media (image and video) queries to appear the right size for each device.
- Ensure the buttons and other interactive elements are large enough with proper spacing for a touch-friendly design.
Speed and Performance
Imagine clicking on a website for a quick 5-minute recipe, and it takes around 2 minutes to load. It will instantly turn off your mood, or you’ll go to another website that works faster. A website has 5-10 seconds before the person goes back and finds an alternative option because nobody wants to wait for a site that takes minutes to just respond. This increases bounce rate, affecting user experience and search engine ranking.
Slow speed and performance can harm SEO benefits, whereas faster pages get increased traffic with better user engagement. Let’s see what you can do for speed and performance optimization of your website.
- Take help from tools like GTmetrix and Google PageSpeed Insights to get detailed insights on your website’s performance. These tools provide reports on website speed and identify elements that require improvement, along with possible optimization suggestions.
- Use compression tools like TinyPNG and JPEG Optimizer to reduce file size and optimize images before you upload them.
- Leverage browser caching to temporarily store website data on a user’s device cache.
- Implement lazy loading to load images and videos only when they come into view. This will reduce initial website response time.
- Incorporate efficient and clean code to improve overall website performance and response speed.
Other than these tips, you can hire a web application development service to build a content strategy and website that fulfills both the audience’s and search engine requirements.
Website Structure and Navigation
Site structure is another important feature that affects user experience as well as search engine rankings. A cluttered and messy site can trigger visitors to leave the site and look for an alternative, eventually increasing the bounce rate. In contrast, a properly structured website with clear navigation can keep the user hooked by providing easier access to site content. In addition to clean website architecture, internal linking supports site exploration by leading users to other valuable content.
Here are a few things you can do to make your site structure more effective for search engines and the users.
- A clear homepage with a simple top navigation menu with properly sorted categories in each section, so the users can click the one they want.
- Add a search bar on the homepage to direct users to the section that interests them.
- Take help from a web application development service to implement Breadcrumb navigation and generate an XML sitemap.
In short, a well-balanced content strategy with clearer menus, proper navigation, and shorter response time can boost your business’s digital presence, user engagement, and indexing.
Technical SEO and On-page SEO
Technical SEO deals with the performance optimization of the code (back-end) of your website. The effectiveness of this code decides the search engine visibility of your website. While a clean and valid HTML code boosts search engine ranking, a broken code or errors lead to poor indexing. It means that the code doesn’t directly concern the users, but the search engines.
In addition, on-page SEO and seo-friendly URLs help rank your site and bring in increased traffic. As a result, it enhances reach and conversions, helping you achieve website goals. Below are a few simple steps to achieve more SEO benefits:
- Compress JavaScript and HTML files wherever possible to shorten response time.
- Keep updating codes to avoid 404 errors and broken links that will affect SEO indexing.
- Invest proper effort in on-page SEO and seo-friendly URLs to ensure a search engine-friendly website.
- Use a plugin that automatically updates the sitemap when you add new pages to your site.
- Utilize tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics to monitor your website’s performance, identify and fix technical SEO issues, and get better insights on user behavior.
Conclusion
Elements including mobile-unfriendly design, long response time, broken codes, and cluttered website structure can lead to poor search engine indexing and increased bounce rate. You must prioritize mobile-first design, speed and performance optimization, efficient code and a clean website structure for better search engine ranking and user experience. A web application development service can assist you in fulfilling your users’ needs as well as search engine requirements.
Deliverydevs’ web application development and SEO teams work together to ensure that your web app is not only robust and responsive, but also makes it to the top results in SERPs. Get in touch with us today for FREE consultation!
