What does it Take to be a Successful Web Developer? The Must Knows

What does it take to be a successful web developer, according to you? Skill set, knowledge of the platform and coding language! Is it all? Not really! Being a truly successful web developer requires a set of characteristics and personality trait. Rather than considering it a knowledge that can be mugged up, it should be considered a skill that should be developed with time. Other than the technical experience, there are a lot of things that you need to learn with time. Are you a website builder? Do you aspire to be a trail blazer in this field? The blog has complied some of the skills and traits that are a must for becoming a successful web developer. Have a look.

Analyze the customer requirement

　

The entire designing and development phase depends on the requirement of the user. In fact, the web development starts and ends with the user requirement. So, a developer who understands the needs of the end user will turn out to be a good developer. Analyzing the user need doesn't mean that you need to observe what attracts the user more. The visitors may initially be attracted to the visual graphics, but they may exit from the site if they don't find any value. Get an insight of what actually the users are looking for instead of what they are using.

Plan before you code

　　

No matter how good a coder you are, an efficient strategy is a must. Gone are the days when every department of the website building right from graphic designing to the marketing worked separately. In the competitive scenario, you need to plan everything ahead of time. Nothing should be kept as a reserve for the future. A developer should have be a good strategist as well. Planning ahead of designing is the first aspect of the same otherwise everything can get messy. The idea is to create a solution for the client and not just a website. Things like optimizing the load time, and creating a friendly interface should be considered first.

Keep yourself updated with the latest technology

Having the basic knowledge of the HTML, Javascript and CSS is the building blocks of all web development. However, the technology keeps changing and you need to keep yourself updated accordingly. A single person just can't master each and everything, but being aware of the progression of the industry is important. For instance, if you are looking to build an eCommerce store, you need to have an idea about the various platforms and factors such as responsive website and others. Whether you are a builder yourself or you are planning to hire an eCommerce web development company, this basic information will help you get the heart's desire.

Be a market researcher

The market research is a must, regardless of the purpose. Whether you are designing your own site or that of your client, doing an in-depth study of the market forces is essentials. Along with a high-quality code, an efficient user interface and user experience are essential. So, once you take the requirement of your client, check out the competitor's site. Analyze the good and the bad reviews of the users of the similar type of websites. Take the Heatmap analysis of these sites. This will give you an idea of the items on the site that are getting more attention from the visitors and the things that are being ignored.

Work as a team 

As mentioned above, the entire process of web development should be planned and executed simultaneously. An ideal developer should work as a team along with the designers, testers as well as the marketing personnel. The designers should be aware of the functionality of the pages that they are designing. The marketing team should be aware of each and every function of the site. The testers should know the goal you are working for. This will help them find the gap between what was required and what has been developed. A good team player means understanding the role on a larger scale. Haste brings waste, so instead of going ahead of others, try to take every aspect together and move steadily. 

Have a business sense

The design and development in the real world are all about a good business sense. Regardless of the fact that you are a freelancer or a salaried employee, you need to take the charge. Right from taking the note of the requirement of the client to balancing cost, everything needs to be considered efficiently.  As mentioned above, it is not just about designing the site for the client, it is all about creating a business solution.

Summing up

Wrapping it up in few words, I would say that web development is a fun-filled, but challenging field. It is all about coping up with the ever-changing market scenario and brushing up the skill set with the technological advancements. So, whether you are hiring a PHP developer or aspiring to become one, keep yourself in sync with the changes and be an ideal developer.

4 Types Of Seo Specialists Who Can Work On Your Website

SEO is broad, a single person cannot perform all the SEO tasks that are needed to be done. Most probably you might have already encountered a person claiming as an all in one expert though. Trust me, he is either a rookie or does not know about SEO at all.  

If you even casually divide the work done in a typical SEO, it splits into four different areas and each area can be mastered only if someone works delicately in it. Over the past few years of my experience as a developer and working with the website SEO, I have identified that there are typically four types of SEO specialists. It’s not a formal classification, but my views, you are free to disagree with me.  

In this article, I have tried to explain four major SEO tasks and how they are headed by respective experts. So, let just dive in.  

1. The data Analysts

Data analysis is certainly the most crucial part of the website SEO in every sphere. Whether it's an eCommerce store or a blogging site, understanding of large sets of data and the ways to parse them into useful information is an art, and it requires an analytical mindset.

An SEO specialist with the proficiency in the data sciences, statistics, can work best as an Analytics SEO. Such SEO practitioners have significant experience with data interpretation and can transform a raw data into useful SEO insights.  

For example, it's not that easy to understand most of the data that is shown to you by the Google Analytics. It requires a great mindset to read those data and utilize them to make an interpretation that would guide the teams to make the further strategies for the SEO improvement.  

So, I think it requires the skill sets of both the SEO and analyst to own a task of correlating data, building dashboards, and making audit reports that can be trusted by all.    

2. The Technical SEO 

Technical SEO may come from the development and design backgrounds. These professionals are either former web developers, Web designers, or software engineers. The motive for getting into the SEO task is simply to ensure that SEO is intact right from the development phase of a website. Moreover, due to their technical background, web development experience, and now working for SEO, they can be a useful asset for your website SEO as well as optimization. 

You would hardly find a developer considering the minute SEO aspects in the development phase. With a technical SEO in the team, the same can be made sure, and further more, other aspects like W3C compliance, JavaScript Usage, Image compression, CDN implementation can be well monitored by him.  

You can also expect these SEO professionals to work on On-page SEO, UX, and UI optimization as well. For example, a technical SEO would know the best practices to design the Web forms for optimized UI and UX.  

You might want to give more than just the admin panel access to a technical SEO to thrive and enact the code changes as well.   

3. The content SEO

The content SEOs are well aware of the on the page SEO techniques and their constant focus lay on almost all the aspects that determine the improvement in the search ranking organically and inorganically. From on-page content optimization, keywords research, back-links earning, to Guest blogging, a content SEO can handle every aspect that comes on the page.  

It is mostly due to the previous careers as writers, branding experts, corporate communications, PR, and Social media management, content SEO have a better understanding of how things can be written so that the search engines can rank them well in the SERPs.  

They play an effective part in the content marketing strategy preparation and implementation. They are also well equipped with the analytics skills to discover the content performance issues and prepare a road map to fix them.  

The major aim of the content SEO specialist is always finding the new ways to route website traffic to their sites and earn new backlinks in collaboration with the content developers. This field is not limited as the soul of the on page SEO lies in the content optimization for improved ranking.   

4. All rounders or Novice  

These are the learners class of SEO professionals who often rely on SEO plugins and tools. With lesser experience and willingness to learn new things they are not meant to be discouraged or ignored. I have come across various rookies who with their simple approaches and with the help of popular tools, have succeeded many times.   

Most often these SEO plugins and tools claim to provide an all in one SEO for the less experienced practitioners. And due to the extreme success of some of these tools, they might come to you with one-size fits all approach. Eventually, the learners do become the experts as the time passes and they find that there is nothing like one tool can fix all issues.   

So, if you ever encounter any such SEO- be encouraging with them! In fact, if your SEO budget allows you to hire just a single person to run the SEO marketing, this novice class of SEO practitioners would work the hardest and cover most of the things. 

Everyone starts as a novice, every SEO learns through the wining history and SEO mistakes as well. Eventually, the learning curve increases and with the experience the novice becomes an expert. So never under estimate them. They are enthusiastic and always ready to fly higher without fear.

Are You Optimizing For Google Image Search Results?

We have been making enormous efforts in improving the SEO for web search results on Google search engine. We have also been applying the same intensity of efforts on Google Voice search results. But, there is really a lesser segment that really cares about the Google Image search results. 

It has been so underutilized without knowing that Google image search is the second most used search platform after the Google web search or so called Google.com. That say’s an article on Moz.com. 

Are you really taking images seriously?

The image searches on Google Image is more than that of the search queries that are performed on any of the top websites like YouTube, Google Maps, Amazon, and also the Facebook. This information clearly means that Google image search shares a huge proportion of overall searches on the internet. However, knowingly or unknowingly, we often make mistakes with the images that we use and thus lose the visibility on this massive search platform.

How we post images and what mistakes we make?

Wrong Names:  People posting the images often overlook to optimize the images to show on the Image search results. They give some really unique names to their images which no searcher will use in the query. They give the names like "IMG_000023", "Image_1", "IMG_Edited_0012" etc. The probability of any user searching on the internet or Google image search with these strings is nearly zero. This means the image will never show up in the search result at least for the keywords wasted in naming it wrongly. And even if the image comes up in any random search result, it is due to the extra information feed (If given) like Caption, description etc. in Image SEO.

Unrealistic image file names can put you at a disadvantage in image SEO.

Wrong Keywords:  Some uploaders use the wrong names or random phrases in the image name, not even relevant to the image. Putting keywords not relevant to the image will push your image to show in the irrelevant search results. So, despite your image get listed on the top, it will hardly get a click.  Below is an example of an image labeled with the wrong keyword that made it appear in a search query for Smart-watches. Would a person searching for a Smartphone image click on it?

Irrelevant keywords can make your images end up in an irrelevant search result.

Stock photos:  Stock photos can be used in various events. However, overuse will make your search image listing unauthentic and unrealistic. Especially in the cases where you put an image to say something about you or your business. For example, the below image screen shot was taken for a search made for "Lawyers in Delhi". The circled images are stock photos which you might have seen many a time on different websites. They do not appeal you to click on them. Hence, Google will eventually lower the ranking of these images. 

Stock images don’t provide the kind of authenticity and authority your image needs to have.

Overly sized:  Large sized images take a longer time to load. You can't expect the users to wait for more than 2-3 seconds. Reducing the file size will considerably reduce the page loading time, but that does not mean you need to compromise with the image quality. There are various free online programs that can be used to cut short the unnecessary data and reduce the file size without losing the image quality. Use these tools to compress the file size and reduce the page loading time. 

Wrong image ratios:  It's important to post the images in a standard expected ratio such as 16:9, 4:3. Google in the search results view, uses the thumbnail views reduced to a small size. In the case of using the images in the non-standard ratios, Google will automatically resize the image to fit the standard ratio frame. Due to this resizing, the image thumbnail might loose the focus and valuable details might get omitted.

What should you do for better indexing and ranking with images?

Google doesn't see the images as it reads the textual contents. So the meta-data, labels, and descriptions provided with the images become crucial for indexing by the Google image search. Google uses this data to identify the images and their context of usage. 

The more easily and deeply the images are indexed, the more is the chances for better ranking in the search results. The following listed details are the main content that you should provide while uploading the images:

File name

As explained above, the file name is a fundamental and crucial entry that can give a context to your image. Never use irrelevant and unrealistic (IMG_00023) file names for your images. You should leverage this entry and provide a more appropriate file name that defines the image and its context. You can use your main keyword relevant to the image in the file name. 

ALT tags

ALT tags or Alternate Texts are the HTML tags that are used with the images to show up in case the image does not load or rendered properly. For example, in a browser where images have been disabled, the ALT tag will show up in place of the images. Also, if your image takes a longer time to load, till the image gets loaded, the ALT text will show up. 

This makes sure the search engines do not feel fishy about your images even if they are not rendered properly. Moreover, it will also give the user an idea of the image till it gets loaded completely on the browser. 

Captions

Captions are simply the text that appears with the image on the browser. Captions will always show up. They are generally shown just below the image. You must provide the captions to describe the context of the image to the users.

Captions provide the contextual meaning to the images.

Description

Descriptions allow you to put an explanation of the image by providing additional details like links, keywords, and context. They are generally used by the search engines to read the context of the image. They show up in the search results when an image is listed in the SERPs.

Descriptions help the search engines to read your images and their context more easily.

Contextual information

In addition to the meta information, keywords, and description, Google utilize various other supporting contents and information to rank the images. The contextual information can be the page content, Page URL, other images around it, the image site map, Page title etc. You should keep these optimized to render a unified, relevant, consistent and related context of the image. 

Summing up

Images have always been an important element on the web. Though Google cannot index the images like the textual contents, it still uses the supporting texts to identify and judge the context of the images. It's really important to understand the role of images in SEO and do not overlook them as something less important. 

Optimize your images everywhere you use them; Articles, product pages, landing pages etc. A proper SEO of images will also ensure the better performance of the contents related to them. Moreover, they can promote your brand, store, products or services in the search results as well. It's time to invest the deserving time on images and unlock the uncharted potentials that you overlook now.

Http Status Codes To Know From SEO And Development Perspective

HTTP status code or call them HTTP response status codes, they are returned to the browser to inform it about a web page or resource it requested from the server. When a browser or a search engine makes a request to the server, it responds to the request with a status code. Now the code it returns depends on the status of the resource or request.

If the request is served successfully by the server, the response status code will return 200. Similarly, there are other response codes as well. All these codes play a great role in both the website design & development and SEO of your website.

Knowing these status codes is very important for the website developers and designers. Skills to read these code will help them identify an error on the page and do the needful to fix it. Moreover, even the SEO professionals should also be familiar with the response code, as some of these are really crucial from the SEO point of view.

So, it’s undoubtedly an important thing to know about your website. So, let just understand them and improve the knowledge base. At least, next time when you see any such code, you can easily identify that error and ask the website development team to look into it.

HTTP Response Status Code Groups

The HTTP status codes are formally divided into 5 groups

100s: Progress- Request received and in process

200s: Successful- Request received and processed successfully.

300s: Redirects- Request received but a redirection required to serve the resource.

400s: Browser errors- Also referred as client errors. The request made by the client, but the page is not valid.

500s: Server errors- Server failed to complete the request

HTTP Response Status Codes- SEO perspective

While there are many more codes in these groups, there are abundant that are important from the SEO point of view. Let’s understand these codes in detail.

200 OK response code

This HTTP response code means the request has been served successfully by the server. Generally, it means no error in the request or from the server side.

301 Moved Permanently

This HTTP response status code is often used by the webmasters from the SEO perspective. It means that the requested resource is not available on current URL. The user must use one of the returned URLs to get the desired resource. In Simple terms, the page your are visiting have been permanently shifted to a new URL, Please use this new URL to visit the particular page from now onwards.

PS: When you move to a new URL and apply 302 redirects on it, It carries forward the SEO of your old URL to the new URL. That is, it does not kill your SEO. 301 redirect is often used in the creation of SEO-friendly URLs.

Read: How To Enable Seo Friendly URLs On Opencart 2.x?

302 Found/ Moved Temporarily

 

This response status code is returned in a similar condition as of 301 but on a temporary basis. It means the page you are requesting for has been moved to a different URL, but you need not use the new URL for future requests as this is just a temporary redirection.

PS: 302 redirection is not a recommended approach. Unlike 301 redirects, it does not carry forward your SEO to the new URL. Pages redirected with 302 codes are not ranked well on the search engines.

404 File Not Found

This is an error code which means that the requested resource was not found on the server. This can happen anytime when the server fails to find a requested page on the site.

A site with too many 404 errors is always seen by the search engines with that doubtful look. This affects the SEO as well. To handle this, webmasters often create a separate page with text written 404 error on it and redirect all the 404 pages to this particular page. In this way, the actual response code received will be now 200 OK but it will show as 404 on the page.

There are some nice solutions given here on this stack overflow discussion thread for Redirecting 404 error with .htaccess via 301 for SEO.

410 Gone

This HTTP response status code means that the requested resource in no longer there on the URL you are looking at and there is no redirection to any new URL to find the resource.

This code is a bit similar to 404. When server knows that the resource is no more available and it's not going to be available in the future as well on this URL, then it gives the 410 Gone response code.

However, when the server does not know if the missing resource will ever be available on this requested URL, then it gives the 404 response.

500 Internal Server Error

When something goes wrong on the server. It's a server side error that has to be fixed on the server. This could be temporary or even permanent till it is fixed.

502 Bad Gateway

When a server communicates with another server, and if the other server fails to respond successfully, then the first server sends this 502 error code to the client/browser.

503 Service Unavailable

When this response code shows on your browser, it means that the server is currently unable to serve the request due to a temporary failure. Generally due to overloading. It generally means that server has gone unresponsive for a temporary period of time.  For example, when the server has to be put down for a short time for maintenance purposes, it's a 503 condition.

Over to you

So, these are some HTTP response status codes which you generally see while browsing the internet or diagnosing your website. Now that you have an understanding of what these error codes mean, you should run the HTTP Response Status Codes Check for your website and find out if there are any error codes. If there is any, ask your web developer to look into it. You should also ask your SEO service provider to keep a track of such error codes, and also check if the redirection has been used correctly.

Looking for OpenCart Development Company? Things to Know

In eCommerce business, nothing matters as much as always staying ahead of the rival sites. This becomes even more important when you are using an eCommerce platform like OpenCart which already possess a huge base of eCommerce websites- 651,533 to be exact. So, unless your OpenCart store has an edge over the other competitors, it won’t be possible to grow up to the fullest potential. 

How to acquire that edge?  

For a competitive business, it is always a wise choice to have an professional development company by your side. Through the efforts and experience of OpenCart experts by your side, it becomes smoother to run the website and your business without any hassle. Here are five important reasons for why it is important to have a professional OpenCart development company holding your back:  

1. An eCommerce website maintenance is not a one man job- 

A professional development company in-houses a team of experienced developers, designers, content writers, and SEO experts who work collectively to develop an eCommerce site. With the combined efforts and expertise, the OpenCart development company can make sure that nothing goes wrong and website remains functional in any condition.

2. Time is a crucial factor in eCommerce business-

Today competition in eCommerce market is touching the skies. A right implementation at a right time can gain you the fortunes, while a right decision after a right time would gain nothing. So, it becomes very important to stay updated with the latest requirements and trends, and implement the profitable features whenever required. The OpenCart development company by your side is always ready for the same and they can complete the task in a very quick time as compared to the situation when you are only one managing your site. 

3. Continuous service- 

As explained in the previous point, time is important. If your website goes down even for a short time, you might loose some real big sales and a negative effect on your reputation is inevitable. So, it’s important that the OpenCart site remains live and never goes down by itself. The OpenCart experts by your side would be the one who can look for the same and keep your website error free and ready.  

4. Latest updates and security patches- 

Internet is extremely volatile and it keeps changing everyday. Only a professional team of web developers would know the changing trends and technologies. They know how to add a new feature, which feature has become outdated, which plugin needs an update, which OpenCart plugin would be useful for the business, and much more. They have the idea to make your website user-friendly and they can implement those ideas on the website. So, you can trust your hired OpenCart development services for keeping your website updated and regularly applying the required patches.

5. Search engine visibility-

The SEO experts can look after the search engine optimization of your OpenCart store and make sure it is visible to the users on the search engines. We already know how important is the SEO for surviving the competition and generating sales. An OpenCart development company leverages its team of OpenCart developers and SEO experts to prepare and implement latest SEO tactics to keep your website and products among visible listings in different SERPs.  

Investment in a good OpenCart development company never let you back-down from the competition. The support from the experts makes you feel relaxed that nothing bad would happen as they have an eye on the site. The ROI from an OpenCart development company is always better than what you invest-in.

5 Reasons why should you hire a Professional eCommerce Website Development Company

An eCommerce Website Development Company is all you need for a solution to various problems.

An eCommerce business that seeks success in the online shopping world must be a professional website in all the aspects. The Internet has become so accessible that anyone with a decent idea can launch his own website and showcase what he is offering to the market. However, to become a successful eCommerce website you need a professional approach right from the phase of the eCommerce website development.

An eCommerce website that does not have a professional eCommerce website development company by its side is vulnerable to various risks and challenges. These risks and challenges will ultimately result in losing customers ion the storefront. Consumers today have gone very smart and they will never trust an eCommerce website that does not seem to be professional and secure to them. As a result, you will often loose the customers and your rivals will win them with their professional presentations.

The following five explanations will help you to understand the importance of a professional eCommerce website development company for your online business:

1. Customized Website Designing- 

Wen you hire a professional eCommerce website development company you have the liberty to ask them to create a website design that suits your online business. The look and feel of an eCommerce website play a great role in the usability of the website for the visitors. The eCommerce website development company deploys is website designers to work on the design of the website strictly according to your goal with the online business.

Which kind of products do you intend to sell? How many products will be there? How you want your home page to look? How many landing pages you want to create? After answering the question like these, the website designer will analyze the requirements and prepare a customized website design to suit your business needs.

2. Visual presentation of the site- 

After the website structure next, comes the look and feel of the site. As explained earlier, look and feel of the eCommerce website is very important and it should suit the kind of products you want to sell. The conversion optimization is another important factor that should be always in mind while designing the look and feel. Website template and theme design is the process we are talking about here.

You will find millions of themes and templates available for purchase and download on various websites. However, it is not essential that all of them will suit your business activity. For that reason, an eCommerce website development company can be handy here. The company's webs designers will design personalized theme for your website which will fulfill your business requirement and will be strictly according to the CRO standards for better conversion rates with the eCommerce site.

3. Updated technologies- 

The internet is extremely volatile, it is changing on daily basis. What is in trend today, will become outdated tomorrow. In addition to this eCommerce, segment is the most volatile part of the internet. As an eCommerce website owner, you will always need to stay updated with the latest technologies that you can leverage to improve your conversion and sales. However, as an eCommerce website owner do not have just these duties, yo have several other aspects that you need to handle so that your business can grow. So, it might be a real tough job to look on all these aspects just by yourself.

It is where the eCommerce website development company comes to the picture. It will take over the tension of keeping your website always updated with the latest happenings. You will not have to worry about any technical aspect, the eCommerce website development company will keep all intact by updating your website with the latest techs and optimizations.

4. SEO aspects of development-  

SEO is a technique used by webmasters to make your website visible among the SERPs of different search engines. An eCommerce website with no visibility on search engines is no different than not having a website at all. The benefit of hiring a professional eCommerce website development company here is that it will take care of the SEO aspects right from the development phase and will provide everything that needs to be done to develop an SEO friendly website.

5. SEO and webmaster services- 

Some of the professional eCommerce website development companies like Velocity provide SEO services too. The SEO services are used by the website owners to make their website visible among the top search results in the SERPs. An SEO service is a different segment of service which is not part of the website development. However, it can be provided by stand-alone SEO companies or even the professional eCommerce website development companies.

The webmaster services can also be provided the same website development company which will take care of the maintenance of your website and will make sure that the website never goes down. In case if any issue is the, the company will work them out and fix them as soon as possible.

It is not necessary that every eCommerce website development company will provide all these services in a single package, but is a fact that you need a company by your side always. Each company has its own way of providing these services, you must always clarify all the aspects before hiring them. Having an eCommerce website development company by your side will make sure your website is professional right from the beginning and provides an uninterrupted service to the customers.

Things to ponder regarding Online Reputation Management of your Business

ORM is one thing you cannot shy away from.

Reputation is one thing which takes years to build and seconds to get destroyed. Same goes true for your business. It takes the combo of some real hard and smart work to deliver results for you. In today’s world where most of the business has shifted to online mode, reputation management too has shifted its base. Now online reputation management is as crucial as it is for the offline audience. However, most of the business firms miss out on certain general aspects while framing out their online reputation management (ORM) strategy. Here, we will take a look at those aspects which affect the online reputation management of your company.

Things that you should take care regarding ORM 

Reputation management and business go hand in hand.

Now, we will see those aspects which have some real effects on online reputation management.

1. Consolidate SERPs: The first and foremost sign of your business’s reputation in the digital arena is higher SERP ranking. You should make sure that your website complies with the webmasters guidelines and should not attract its penalization. A well designed and user-centric website is a key to climb high in the ranking charts.

2. Clear the negativity: The negative reviews of the customers/visitors in regards to your products and services should be looked upon immediately. A negative publicity online is a severe blow to your business. This can be substantiated by the fact that 90% of the online customers prefer to analyze reviews before making a move. So, you should take care that those negative reviews are wiped out and the reasons for their generation shall be curtailed.

3. Develop social presence: In today’s digital market to be successful you need to be visible. Highlighting your presence is a first move towards building a reputation. Social media is one such place which will surely bring you loads of visibility. You should focus on creating a firm social presence so as to connect with target audience effectively.  

4. Blogging to the effect: Having blogs written on your web page related to your functional area is a master tool to grab some attention. A blog helps you to market and define your products in an effective manner. They develop a visitor connect and aim at providing a certain solution to a problem. This will provide you the space to sneak in the utility of your products and services. Moreover, they also attract and retain audience who are looking for some solution and are searching for some genuine response.

Final say

By now you might have realized the importance of ORM and the area where your ORM strategy falls short. In case you are not having enough time or online marketing skill, then, you can opt for the services of an online reputation management company who are providing these services full time.