SEO Considerations for Developers

by Jeremias Duarte. .





Posted in

SEO.

For starters, the languages in which your website is generated is generally of no importance. All server-side languages are returned to the user as HTML, regardless of the language. The article does, however, cover the importance of server-side program design. Program design is important because your website should ideally respond to the users’ requests as efficiently as possible.

Object-Oriented Design

Academics and object-oriented purists cling to the elegance and alleged efficiency of objects and classes. However, when deciding whether or not to take an object-oriented approach to the program design of your site, you must consider the impact on server resources. Objects require more memory than standalone variables. More memory used means less efficiency, which ultimately leads to a slower website, and results in poor site performance.

In essence, make attempts to minimize the use of objects in web programming. Object-oriented PHP may appear beautiful, but the impact on server supported can be exponential when dealing with a million site visitors each day.

Databases

Databases have become nearly irreplaceable in many of today’s websites. They provide the storage of user information and the storage of large amounts of organized data. Keep in mind, however, that in an effort to maximize the efficiency of a website you should minimize the number of database queries made. Consider using sessions and cookies as a substitute to database storage when possible.

File I/O

File I/O uses a considerable amount of server resources and should be avoided when possible. The processing an memory requirements of file I/O are considerably greater than database calls and sessions. Reading and writing files should be used only when necessary to maximize the effective use of resources for a web server.

In summary, a portion of good SEO practices includes the maximization of site performance through a unique approach to programming. Minimizing the use of objects, database queries, and file reading and writing leads to increased website performance by reducing the processing load on the server. This allows web server resources to be allocated for serving web pages, although doing so may reduce the overall elegance of program design.