SEO Fundamentals Every Developer Should Know

Why Developers Need to Understand SEO

SEO isn’t just a marketing concern—many critical SEO factors are technical implementations that developers control. Understanding these fundamentals helps you build sites that perform well in search.

Technical SEO Essentials

Meta Tags

Every page needs proper meta tags:

<head>
  <title>Your Page Title | Brand Name</title>
  <meta name="description" content="Compelling description under 160 chars" />
  <link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/page" />
</head>

Open Graph Tags

For social sharing:

<meta property="og:title" content="Your Page Title" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Description for social" />
<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/og-image.jpg" />
<meta property="og:url" content="https://example.com/page" />

Performance Metrics

Google’s Core Web Vitals are ranking factors:

Metric	Target	What It Measures
LCP	< 2.5s	Largest Contentful Paint
FID	< 100ms	First Input Delay
CLS	< 0.1	Cumulative Layout Shift

Improving Performance

Optimize images - Use modern formats (WebP, AVIF)
Minimize JavaScript - Ship less code
Use CDN - Serve assets from edge locations
Enable caching - Set appropriate cache headers

Structured Data

Help search engines understand your content:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "headline": "Your Article Title",
  "author": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Author Name"
  },
  "datePublished": "2024-01-05"
}

URL Structure

Good URL practices:

Use descriptive slugs (/blog/seo-for-developers)
Keep URLs short and readable
Use hyphens to separate words
Avoid query parameters when possible

Sitemap and Robots

Configure your sitemap:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/</loc>
    <lastmod>2024-01-05</lastmod>
    <priority>1.0</priority>
  </url>
</urlset>

And robots.txt:

User-agent: *
Allow: /
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml

Mobile-First

Google uses mobile-first indexing:

Ensure responsive design
Test on real mobile devices
Avoid intrusive interstitials
Make tap targets appropriately sized

Conclusion

Technical SEO is a crucial skill for modern developers. By understanding and implementing these fundamentals, you’ll build websites that both users and search engines love.