The Best SEO Practices for Software Developers

As a software developer, you may think that SEO is something for marketers to worry about and that it doesn’t concern you. After all, your job is to develop software – not necessarily to win leads for your company. That being said, software and technology companies are embedded in the online economy. Regardless of whether you are a company offering business-to-business software as a service (SaaS) or a consumer-facing application, much of your success as a software developer rests on your ability to be able to be found in the online space. That’s where SEO comes into play. By using the best SEO practices for software developers, you can increase your online presence and be easily found by potential clients.

Today, TeknaByte will be discussing the best SEO practices for software developers, including everything you need to know about optimizing for organic search. Unfortunately, many software companies and organizations simply don’t know where to start in terms of optimizing their SEO. For this reason, many software developers fail to organize a concrete game plan that can offer real, impactful results.

What is SEO and Why is it Important for Software Developers?

So, what is SEO exactly and why should you, as a software developer, take the time to learn the best SEO practices? Put simply, SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of using certain methods to increase both the quality and quantity of your organic search traffic. When you optimize for SEO, you increase your chances of coming up higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), and this makes it much easier to be found by potential clients. According to HubSpot, roughly 60% of marketers report that improving SEO and growing their organic presence is their top strategy for maximizing their inbound traffic.

If you are a software company, you can’t expect to be part of the buying cycle or evaluation process if customers and potential sales prospects can’t find you online. This is because a total of 57% of B2B marketers say that SEO had the biggest impact on lead generation. Further, 81% of B2B purchase cycles began with an online web search. As a software developer looking to grow and expand your business, you simply can’t afford to neglect the best SEO practices for software developers. So, what do you need to know about SEO? Let’s find out.

Create Key Phrase-Targeted SEO Landing Pages

As a software developer or software company, it is crucial that you understand that landing pages are one of the most effective lead generation and SEO tools around. A landing page is a standalone web page that is created specifically for the purpose of marketing or advertising a product or service. As a software developer, it is vital that you create key phrase-targeted SEO landing pages to advertise your software development services and/or products. Key phrase-targeted landing pages are essential because it should be your goal for potential customers to visit web pages based on the products and/or services that they searched for.

When a potential customer lands on a landing page that is highly relevant to their needs, it is much more likely that they will go forward to book with that software developer. By embedding key phrases directly into your targeted landing pages that advertise your services, you can effectively improve your overall SEO and become more easily found organically.

Keep Web Users Up to Date with New Feature Announcement Articles and Blog Posts

As a software developer, it is highly likely that you are constantly developing, improving, and releasing new product features and functions. For this reason, you have a valuable opportunity to keep your target audience informed about your latest offerings while also improving SEO. Software developers can use this to their advantage and consistently develop content that not only keeps their customers informed but also gives them a greater search presence.

One of the best ways to do this is by creating articles and blog posts in support of new feature announcements. This content will not only serve as a resource that showcases new features and software improvements, but it will also make you more discoverable by search engines. Create product release notes and new feature announcements whenever you have something to announce to your audience – it will pay off over time!

Prioritize Page Speed

One of the most important components of any effective SEO strategy involves the prioritization of page speed. Your software development company has the potential to bring in a high number of new leads – if your website loads properly. This means that your website should load quickly and efficiently. Otherwise, you could potentially lose hundreds of customers. Google, specifically, has indicated that page speed is one of the signals used by its algorithm to rank websites in its search results. The faster your website loads, the better the chances are that you will rank well on Google, attracting new customers.

Page speed is also important in terms of user experience. Web pages that take more time to load tend to have much higher bounce rates (people leaving their website without browsing further) and lower-than-average time spent on a page. Additionally, longer load times have also been shown to have a negative impact on conversions Prioritize the page speed of your software development website to improve SEO and increase your rate of conversion!

Make Sure Your Website is Mobile-Friendly

Finally, another of the most important SEO practices for software developers involves ensuring that your website is mobile-friendly. Much like page speed, making your website-mobile friendly is impactful to the overall user experience. That being said, it is also very important in terms of SEO. In June of 2013, Google announced that there would be a penalty for websites that produce bad mobile experiences. These penalties would impact the rank of the website in question.

As a software developer, if you care about SEO (and you should, based on what you have learned in this article), you don’t want to suffer the negative impacts to your company’s website ranking due to issues with mobile friendliness. Here are a few ways that you can make sure that your software development website is mobile-friendly:

• Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool to conduct a mobile-friendly test.
• Check the speed of your website’s pages with Google’s Speed Test.
• Check your website for errors by using the Mobile Usability Tool.

Software Development Services for TeknaByte

If you are a company looking for software and application development services that you can count on to utilize the best SEO practices for software developers, then look no further than TeknaByte! We offer design, development, and even quality testing services for a fraction of the cost. Further, we even specialize in mobile app development, and our development team has significant expertise in building both native iOS and Android apps. Give us a call today at (317) 620-3900 or contact us online!