“On-Page SEO for New Website Developers: 3 Content Tips from a Student Web Developer (Part 1)”

As a 4th-year Communications Student and the iWorks Agency Web developer, to say I was a little overwhelmed with the planning of our SEO strategy for our Isaacson Works Creative Agency Website was an understatement. LinkedIn Learning and YouTube can only take you so far. Sometimes, you just need some sage experience-informed guidance from people who have actually launched SEO strategies. Through my journey of building our WordPress iWorks Agency website, absorbing all the SEO content strategy information on the web that I could stomach. I connected with some experts in the field. And here’s what I learned. Here are three takeaways to help you on your on-page SEO journey as a new web developer.

1. Before you build do a little research, SEO strategy unlocked

Research

Research and develop your keyword strategy before you build your site. This might seem counterintuitive. But when you get into writing content for each page, you will already know the keywords/phrases that you want to use. Then you can easily write it into your titles, headings, and content.

Not convinced. It’s easy enough to create a spreadsheet with your site structure, i.e., homepage, about page, etc. Then just decide how people will find every page on your site. What phrases or words will they need to type into a search engine to find your exact webpage or website? for example, “SEO strategy for new website developers” or “SEO tips for new web developers”

Create a keyword list

Now that you have a nice robust list. Next you will go to Google Keywords and collect some data and research. Test your keywords and phrases, and start to narrow down your list. The thing that can feel overwhelming, at least to me, is that you are building keywords to connect with a machine that is trying to connect to a human on the other side of that search query. But the most important part of the equation is that ultimately it will be a human connecting with a human.

Think human first, machine second

So, for the machine part, you need to be very clear and concise. All of your keyword phrases need to be focused but also need to engage the person on the other side of the search query. That means using the “KISS” method, thank you Ted Lasso. If you’re not familiar with this method, it means Keep It Simple Stupid.

So with that in mind, choose a keyword/ phrase for each page. Like for this post, “SEO strategy for new website developers” is an example. And a more specific long-tail phrases like “WordPress SEO with Yoast for new web developers” on a blog post. Nest these keywords into alt-image tagging, metadata, and text on each page. Voila. Well, not quite.

2. Get on-page SEO help from the Yoast SEO plugin.

In WordPress, the Yoast plugin is king for new web developers just getting started with an SEO strategy. Yoast is a great plugin for SEO, get more tips here. It helpfully gives you a little happy face, meh face, and sad/angry face when you start typing words into the Yoast workspace, including your focus keyphrase. 

Character limits

Some other things that are helpful for getting Yoast to make that little green happy face are: keeping the focus keyphrase to approximately 50–60 characters, keeping the meta description to 150–160 characters, and abusing the Yoast Schema tab. So why character targets? For the focus keyphrase, Yoast wants it to be a short enough phrase to be easily used throughout your page content. For your meta description, we want to keep it at a length that won’t get cut off in most browsers. 

Schema

Now schema is a gem that I just learned about. Yoast allows you to identify the schema for each page of your site. So for this blog post, I will choose Page Type: WebPage followed by Article Type: Blog post. This allows the browser to identify the purpose and outline of your website and each page, making it easier for a browser to verify that you are a trusted source and likely to help the human on the other end who just searched “SEO strategy for new website developers.” We like that. See, SEO is not so scary. Here’s another resource I found helpful for SEO Best Practices.

3. Optimize your on-page SEO strategy with AI tools

Optimize for AI! Just when you get comfortable with a tool, something new comes out and screws it all up. You are probably already used to using AI for many of your workflows. But if you’re not using it for SEO optimization for your websites, the time has come, my friend.

Get to know your AI pal

AI is becoming the new browser interface, so why not work with our AI partners to fine-tune our SEO strategy for our new websites? Remember my anxiety of trying to figure out the best way to communicate with a machine that’s trying to communicate with a human in Tip 1? Problem solved. Hopefully, you have some dedicated AI platforms that you like to work with; if not, start to develop a relationship with a few. My favorites are Perplexity and Gemini, but it’s mostly about getting comfortable with what kinds of prompts work best with each LLM to get the desired outcome. 

So try a few. Next, what you want to do here is take the content from your entire page and upload it into your AI prompt bar. This can be done as a screenshot or a text doc. Make sure to include your current keyword strategy, metadata, and alt text. Before you hit enter, type in that you want your AI assistant to carefully read through all of the content that you have uploaded.

Then tell your buddy that you would like it to evaluate your current SEO strategy for this page. Ask it to please note where and how your SEO strategy could be improved. Continue on with this conversation until you have some results that feel like they work for your site/page. Here is a great time to take everything AI gave you and do a little more research with Google Keywords and Semrush.

All right, my new web developer friends, with these three tips, you should have a strong on-page content SEO strategy to launch your site. Now, you can get to all the fun designing and link building. Speaking of link building, that’s a whole other part of building a strong SEO strategy, but that will have to wait for another blog post. Know that you can start this entire process first with AI, but I personally feel it’s best to think like a human first, and then think like a machine second. But find the workflow that feels best to you. Happy website building and SEO strategizing. Let us know if this post was helpful for you or your project.