Your website code determines how easily users can access your site and interact with your content. Many SEO improvements depend on how robust your website code is, which means you need to understand how to optimize website code if you want to learn how to optimize SEO.
However, just like everything else, there are strategies to follow when trying to optimize website code. Here’s what you should know to decode how to improve website SEO performance by tweaking its code.
Why Optimizing Website Code Matters for SEO Performance?
The website code determines how your website will function when published online. It is basically a set of structures and instructions, usually in coding languages like CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. The biggest advantage of a coded website is that it enhances user experience, which is one of the most important Google ranking factors.
While a coded website may cost you more initially, it delivers the best value for money over time. That is especially true if it focuses on mobile responsiveness, better page load speed, and improved structured data markup.
The good thing is that even if you already have a website published, you can still work from the ground up and improve its code first. It is usually essential when you notice your website traffic going down or never reaching a satisfactory level. Don’t know where your website stands in search engines right now and how many visitors you have? No problem. Try some online tools, like traffic site checker, which tells you a lot about your website’s paid and organic traffic sources and how it compares to your competitors.
If a traffic site checker doesn’t tell a happy story about your site and its traffic, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and optimize website code for better website optimization. Here’s what needs your attention when working on your website code:
Focus on Clean and Semantic HTML
You can’t create a well-structured, SEO-friendly website if you don’t focus on semantic HTML. It uses HTML tags for SEO to clearly describe what you have published on your website. Speaking of HTML SEO, the website uses <header>, <footer>, <nav>, and <main> instead of generic <div> tags.
To optimize HTML for SEO, you should consider using appropriate HTML5 tags to explain your content. Ditch any unnecessary wrappers and stick with the proper heading hierarchy. Using descriptive alt text for all your images is also a good idea.
These seemingly simple steps can enhance the crawlability of your website and improve content targeting. It also plays a role in entity optimization and will likely make your website more compatible with AI-driven search experiences.
Work on CSS Optimization
Utilized by web designers, CSS helps tweak style elements like font, color, size, and spacing of content. Optimizing CSS is vital for improved website performance in search engines. Here’s what to do and why:
| Technique | Description | SEO Impact |
| Minification | Remove unnecessary whitespace and comments. | Enhances page load speed. |
| Concatenation | Combine multiple CSS files into one. | Reduces server load and boosts load speed. |
| Use of CSS preprocessors | Use tools like Sass or Less for efficient code management. | Simplifies code structure, aiding in better crawlability. |
| Inline critical CSS | Embed essential styles directly in HTML. | Speeds up initial rendering, improving mobile responsiveness. |
| Avoid redundant rules and selectors | Eliminate unnecessary repetition in code. | Enhances load times, indirectly boosting metrics like time on site and reducing bounce rate. |
Work on Optimizing JavaScript
JavaScript is a programming language used to create dynamic content, animations, clickable buttons, and pop-up menus. It helps make your website more interactive, which is why JavaScript SEO is an important aspect of search optimization.
Mastering Java can help improve crawling and indexing, translating into more SERP visibility. Faster load times, enhanced user experience, and improved content accessibility are other added SEO benefits.
Optimize Images Properly
Image optimization is an integral part of website coding, especially when your aim is to achieve better SEO performance. Images that are too large, take a lot of time to load, or add no value to the text would only hinder a positive user experience, which Google takes very seriously.
Right from the coding stage, it’s vital to resize and compress images to limit their negative impact on user experience and SEO. Use descriptive file names with keywords embedded in them.
Using Alt text to describe the image content also enables crawlers to understand your content and improve visibility. Taking these steps not only improves Core Web Vital’s score but also reduces bandwidth costs.
Implement Lazy Loading
Lazy loading ensures that non-essential content doesn’t load unless it is needed by the user. For instance, images won’t load until they come into the user’s viewpoint. It is an important technique to use when coding a website because it improves website performance and boosts SEO as well.
Lazy loading works directly on improving page load speed, which in turn boosts the quality of user experience, a vital Google Ranking Factor. Boost user experience with your website, and Google will reward you with better rankings.
Be Sure to Reduce HTTP Requests
Whenever someone enters your URL in their browser, HTTP requests are sent for files needed to display the page, such as CSS, images, and JavaScript. The number of requests goes up when there are more files to load, and this translates into a website being loaded slowly.
The slow loading speed can be devastating for your site because it annoys your users, and they leave quickly. Keep in mind that a couple of seconds increase in the load time can lead to a four-time increase in bounce rate. Techniques like combining JavaScript and CSS files, minimizing third-party scripts, and optimizing images can reduce HTTP requests and improve website speed.
Don’t Forget to Leverage Browser Caching
Browser caching allows you to store static assets locally on your user’s device, such as CSS, images, HTML, and JavaScript. It considerably reduces the load time the next time your user accesses your website.
Browser caching helps improve user experience, reduce server load, lower bandwidth usage, and enhance SEO performance. You can use many strategies to leverage browser caching for SEO performance. For instance:
| Caching Strategy | Description |
| Set Cache-Control Headers | To reduce server requests, define how long resources are cached using Cache-Control and Expires headers. |
| Implement ETags | Use ETags to ensure users receive the latest content without unnecessary downloads. |
| Optimize Static Resources | Cache static content longer and update dynamic content frequently to balance freshness and performance. |
| Use Caching Plugins | Automate caching processes with plugins like WP Fastest Cache for easier management on platforms like WordPress. |
Learn to Optimize Server Response Time
Any change a developer makes on the coding side will ultimately affect the page load time of your website. Loading a page quickly means your users feel happy to interact with your content, which is essential for better SEO performance. The same happens when you focus on optimizing the server response time of your website.
It takes time for a web server to fulfill the request made by a web browser, which is called the server response time. A faster server response time helps load your page quickly, and it helps with SEO, considering top sites on the first page of SERPs load in a couple of seconds or less.
Moreover, a slower server response time also comes in the way of search engine crawlers, making it harder to index your website. It often leads to fewer pages being indexed, lowering your site’s visibility in search results.
Various strategies can help improve server response time. Optimizing server code is probably the most important. However, employing content delivery networks (CDNs), using caching, and sticking with reliable hosting services will also help.
Take Advantage of Structured Data and Schema Markup
Schema markup and structured data are now essential parts of website SEO code because they bridge the gap between search engines and content on your website.
Search engines crawl your website to interpret the information on your web pages. The easier you make it for crawlers to access and understand your content, the higher the chances of you enjoying better rankings in SERPs.
Schema markup ensures your content is presented to search engines like Bing, Google, and Yahoo in a language or semantic vocabulary (code) that their search crawlers can comprehend. Focusing on schema markup can also get your content listed in rich results, which improves listings on SERPs and boosts traffic to your website.
With structured data, the idea is to make your search listings a tad more attractive and visible. As mentioned, structured data enables rich snippets, which are more likely to grab users’ attention, leading to an increased CTR and traffic.
Conclusion
Getting a website designed and published has become much easier with AI tools and software solutions. However, hiring a developer who understands the importance of optimizing website code is still of great importance. A website with optimized code is more likely to perform better in search engines. Just be sure to work with an experienced developer who knows everything about coding and how to make certain changes for better SEO performance.