Jun 27
SEO
SEO Tools to make your development easier
A list of SEO tools that help Web Developers work more effectively. Meta Tags, Screaming Frog, Lighthouse, Broken Links Checker, Redirect Trace, Social Media Preview and more…
This post is for Web Developers who work on public-facing web products. There are SEO specialists/consultants working in your organisation. You are working on delivering the given SEO strategy.
I found some very useful tools. These tools fall into two buckets: Reporting and Testing.
Reporting Tools
With these reporting tools, you can use them to generate aggregated reports to address issues
Google Search Console
A must-have tool. Ask your SEO Specialist to grant you the permission, keep an eye on the reports, and address the issues as soon as possible.
You don't have to be an SEO expert, but at least read these two articles — SEO Starter Guide and How Search Works from Google.
Google Lighthouse
This is a big topic on its own. Let’s focus on SEO now. As a bare minimum, you should audit your website using Lighthouse. Most of these issues can be easily fixed.
Screaming Frog
A web crawler on Mac OS — the free version is limited to crawling 500 URLs, but it's good enough for a Developer.
- Check broken links — choose the spider mode and provide a URL. It automatically crawls the given URL and all the contained links. How To Find Broken Links Using The SEO Spider
- Verify a sitemap — choose the list mode and provide an XML sitemap. It automatically crawls all links in the sitemap. You should always audit your sitemap before submitting it to the Google Search Console.
Testing Tools
All these are Chrome Extensions. With these handy tools right in your hand, you can test your page with a simple click.
SEO Meta in 1 Click
Not sure what SEO Meta Tags are? Check out what meta tags are and how Google uses them.
JSON-LD Tester
We use Structured Data, in most cases JSON-LD to provide explicit clues about the meaning of a page.
Web Vitals
Learn the Web Vitals and know how they impact your SEO ranking. 💚
Link Redirect Trace
If your website contains many redirects, use this extension to visualise the redirect logic.
Social Share Preview
What does your website look like on Social Media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn?
- ❌ a bad example on the left is my Tech Lead Handbook on GitBook
- ✅ a good example on the right is a great article from FreeCodeCamp that explains What is Open Graph and how can I use it for my website?
