Elements of Good Web Development
I recently read a great article on SitePro News about the Elements of a Good Design. While reading that article, the light bulb in my head turned on, shining bright! I said to myself, "How about an article about the Elements of Good Web Development?" Hence, the following article.
Okay so you have the design of a website done. Now it is time to move into the development stage (the piecing together of the website; making it functional and search engine friendly). Whether you are developing it yourself or using a company to do it for you, there are many elements that are needed for good web development.
I will, in detail, explain the various elements that need to be taken into consideration (actually not into just consideration, but that NEED to be done) when developing any website.
Element #1 - META Tags
We have all heard of META tags but most people don't really understand how important they are. META tags are strictly in use for search engine purposes. They tell the search engine spiders what the website is about, what keywords to use for indexing purposes and so on. Using the right meta description and keyword are vital! When coding the META description and keywords you need to keep in mind the content on that particular page. When you have written content for a particular page within your site, you need to make sure that the keywords that you have placed in the META keyword section are among the text. When the search engine spiders crawl your site, there needs to be those keywords in the content or else the spiders will think you are keyword cropping (basically packing your site with keywords that have no relevance to your site's content - A BIG NO NO!) This will cause your site to be bumped from the search engines. You don't need to take the chance, so make sure that your content is relevant to your META keywords and descriptions.Element #2 - ALT Attribute
As of right now, search engines have no way to read what is in images. That is one of the major reason why text or content should NEVER be an image. When you do have images, the need for the ALT attribute to an image tag is very important. This is used for people with disabilities that need a screen reader when viewing websites. When a screen reader reads the website and comes to an image, what's going to tell it what the image is or what is going on in the image? That is where the ALT attribute comes in. What the ALT attribute does is provide an alternate description of the image. If you do not have an ALT attribute with the image, the screen reader will be unable to translate to the person, hence he/she will not get the complete benefit of the website. So to be fair to all who come to your site, disability or not, make sure that you use ALT attribute for all images within your site. I know that it may become mundane to do so but it will be well worth it.Element #3 - TITLE Tags
There are two different TITLE tags (both of which are very important) that is used in development. They are both strongly used for search engine benefits. First, is the main TITLE tag. This is used for the title of the document or web page. This is used for many purposes:- defines a title in the browser toolbar
- provides a title for the page when it is added to favorites
- displays a title for the page in search-engine results
