How to Develop a Website for a Great SEO Experience

When you're building a website in 2022, you need to consider a few other things: page speed, headless CMS, and edge computing. Previously, we had to think about page experience, a mobile-friendly approach, and compressed images – and that still stands. But, some of the pain points can be mitigated by building your next website with new solutions.

Page Speed is an essential part of a website's user experience.

It's not just about how fast your page loads but also how quickly it responds to user input and how quickly the browser processes that input.

The other core web vitals are similarly important—the more you can optimize each of these, the better your site will perform.

The first thing to know about page speed is that Google has a set of "web vitals" to determine how well your website performs. These include how fast your site loads, how often it can be accessed without errors, and how quickly it responds when users click on links within your content.

If your score on these web vitals is too low, you'll get dinged in Google's ranking algorithm. It means that potential customers may never see your site at all — and if they do, they might bounce right off it because it takes too long to load!

You want your users to have the best experience possible when they visit your site, so it's essential to make sure that your pages load quickly. That's where headless CMS comes in — it allows you to build a faster-loading site by using pre-built templates that load quickly.

With the Serpstat Site Audit tool you can scan your website for technical issues that have a negative impact on your SEO, including the Page Speed for desktop and mobile devices:

This report also contains practical tips on how to fix each technical issue detected on your website:

A headless CMS is an API-first approach to developing websites. Instead of building your website on top of an existing content management system like WordPress or Drupal, you create an API first and then build your website around that API.

It allows you to focus on building a proper structure for your website instead of worrying about all the features provided by an existing CMS like WordPress or Drupal.

If you decide to build your website using a CMS, it is essential to pick the right one. It can make all the difference when it comes down to creating a website that looks modern and up-to-date.

WordPress may be a good option if you are looking for something easy to use. However, if you want something advanced with more features and functionality, headless CMS like Contentful or Storyblok may better suit your needs.

One of the problems with building websites on platforms like WordPress or Joomla is that they require plugins to function correctly and provide any custom experience, which means additional cost over time as these plugins need upgrading regularly for safety and compatibility reasons.

That is why you should consider other solutions like Storyblok, an easy-to-use CMS that's great for technical SEO.
It's a good choice if you're looking for a simple site management system and want to avoid complex or expensive products.

Forestry is a content-first CMS that's ideal if you want to create a site where users can easily add their content.

It's also helpful if you want to write content in Markdown, a popular markup language used by many developers and designers.

Sanity is a CMS specifically designed for websites with large amounts of content. It also offers built-in SEO functionality and multilingual support, so it's worth checking out if you have an international audience or need your site translated into multiple languages.

Picking the one that is right for your website can be overwhelming but you can freely compare them here.

Edge computing is a way for companies to process the data close to where it will be used — rather than storing it on cloud servers in remote locations. It means better performance, reduced latency, and faster network speeds. It can also make operations easier by making data more accessible without requiring complex network connections or complicated security protocols.

Edge computing is the next step in the evolution of search engine optimization. We can analyze the SERP results and determine the best course of action for each unique user with edge computing. You also cut the time to load the page in full by a significant amount.

With edge SEO, we'll be able to look at your site's traffic and see where your users are coming from — and then customize their experience accordingly. For example, you can personalize the experience for location. That is extremely helpful for companies that are building their SEO in different markets and need to adapt the content and language to serve the best audience. That way, you can ensure that users get relevant information no matter the location.

Another great feature of this solution is link rewrites (instead of redirects); for example, you can have a blog under a subdomain from a technical POV but for people (and google). That allows sharing the SEO value of your blog and domain if kept separate.

Edge also allows you to use a dynamic schema that is easier to set up and enables you to make updates faster.

No matter what you are going to implement on your next or current website, you now know what is available to jumpstart your SEO efforts and not let the technical part of your website limit your growth. It is much simpler to plan ahead and worry less when google algorithm updates require you to meet new technological standards.

We might not know what the updates will look like in the future, but we know that pushing towards fast results, good UX, and great content. Make the steps to help your content team and regularly audit your website.