The skills, tools and soft skills web developer job descriptions keep asking for, grouped and ranked, with before/after bullets to show you how to use them.
Web developer postings cover a wider range than frontend engineering roles: agency work, marketing sites, e-commerce stores, CMS themes and small business sites alongside custom JavaScript. Applicant tracking systems match the platform names directly, so a resume that never says "WordPress", "Shopify" or "PHP" can miss many agency and in-house marketing roles in the US and Canada. Employers also look for the business side of web work: SEO, analytics, page speed, accessibility and client communication. The lists below separate the coding, CMS, hosting and marketing vocabulary so you can mirror the kind of web development each posting actually means.
Most mid-size and large employers in the US and Canada receive applications through an applicant tracking system such as Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, iCIMS or Taleo. The system parses your resume into fields (titles, dates, skills) and lets recruiters search and rank candidates by the terms in the job description. Some systems only match exact words; others recognize close variants. Either way, the safest approach is to use the same wording as the posting for every skill you genuinely have — inside a bullet that explains what you did with it.
Methods, domain knowledge and techniques that describe what you can do as a web developer.
Agency and marketing postings still list jQuery and PHP. Include them if you maintain sites that use them; they are honest, searchable keywords.
Web developers who understand SEO and tracking are valued by marketing teams. Mention what you set up and what improved.
Named software and platforms. Spell them exactly as the posting does — "WordPress", not a generic description.
Name the platform and what you built on it: a custom theme, a plugin, a store migration. "Built custom WordPress themes" is stronger than "WordPress".
Hosting keywords matter for small teams where the developer is also the one launching the site.
Many web developer roles sit between design and code. Show that you can turn a mockup into a working, responsive page.
Postings name them, but a single word proves little: pair each one with an action in a bullet.
Soft skills are hard to prove with a single word. Show each one through an action: who you worked with, what you explained, what you resolved. An ATS may still match the phrase, and the recruiter gets evidence instead of a claim.
Certifications are optional. Platform credentials can help for agency and e-commerce roles: Google Analytics Certification (Skillshop), Shopify Partner Academy courses, HubSpot CMS for Developers, or the W3Schools certificates some juniors list. The IAAP WAS supports accessibility-focused work. All are read the same way in the US and Canada.
Platform and coding keywords are the same in both countries. Accessibility laws differ: US clients refer to the ADA and Section 508, Canadian ones to AODA in Ontario or the Accessible Canada Act. Bilingual (English/French) site work is a real asset for Canadian roles, especially in Quebec where French-language rules apply to commercial websites. Privacy and cookie consent tracking is framed by CCPA/state laws in the US and PIPEDA or Quebec's Law 25 in Canada; mention these only if you implemented them.
In both countries, leave out your photo, date of birth and marital status, keep the resume to one or two pages, and list experience in reverse chronological order.
Vague lines hide your keywords. Name the skill, the tool and what it was for. Keywords are highlighted in each rewrite.
Made websites for clients.
Built and launched 12 client sites with custom WordPress themes and WooCommerce, handling DNS and SSL setup and site migrations from legacy hosts.
Moved an online store to a new platform.
Migrated a retailer from Magento to Shopify, customizing Liquid templates and setting up Google Analytics 4 (GA4) e-commerce tracking with Google Tag Manager.
Made the website faster and better for Google.
Improved page speed optimization and Core Web Vitals on the marketing site with image compression and lazy loading, and added schema markup for technical SEO.
Passionate web designer and developer.
Web Developer building responsive WordPress and Shopify sites with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP, comfortable with technical SEO, GA4 tracking, hosting and client communication from mockup to launch.
These are examples to adapt, not real employer results: change the tools, scope and outcome to what you actually did. To see the keywords inside complete resumes, look at our web developer resume examples (entry level, mid level and senior). Browse all tech resume examples too.
Four places carry keywords. Use each for what it does best.
Two or three lines that repeat the job title from the posting and the three or four skills it stresses most. The first text the parser and the recruiter read.
They carry the most weight because they show the keyword in use. Start with an action verb, name the tool or skill, say what it was for.
A short list grouped by type, in the posting's exact spelling. No stars or percentage bars: parsers cannot read them.
Keep your real job titles and use standard section names (Experience, Education, Skills, Certifications) so keywords land in the right field.
Keyword lists are a starting point. The job you are applying to is the real test.
Read the posting once for meaning, then a second time with a highlighter: mark every tool, method, certification and responsibility it names, and note which ones appear under "required" versus "nice to have". Compare that list with your resume. For each required term you genuinely have, make sure it appears at least once in a bullet; for each one you lack, do not add it — prepare to address it in the interview instead.
The free ATS resume checker does this comparison for you: paste the job description and your resume and it lists the matched and missing keywords. If you want a version of your resume rewritten for that posting, the AutoApplyMax AI resume builder can generate a tailored resume from your own experience (the free plan includes 1 AI credit per month) — it reorders and rephrases what is already true rather than inventing experience. Still looking for openings? Browse web developer-related jobs.
Short answers to the questions people ask before tailoring their resume.
The most important keywords are the ones in the job description you are applying to. This page groups the terms that web developer postings in the US and Canada use again and again — for example HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, PHP — but each employer weights them differently. Copy the required skills from the posting, then check which of them you can honestly show.
Not always. Web developer postings lean toward CMS, e-commerce and marketing sites, frontend postings toward application frameworks. Match the title and keywords of the posting you are applying to.
Yes, list WordPress and the builder (Elementor, Divi) honestly. If you also wrote custom PHP or themes, say so separately, because that is what developer roles screen for.
Group them under one entry (for example "Freelance Web Developer") with bullets per notable project: client type, platform, what you built and the result you know.
If you did technical SEO work (site speed, schema, redirects, Search Console), yes. Marketing-led employers search for it.
No. Repeating a word many times, or hiding keywords in white text, does not help with modern ATS ranking and is obvious to the recruiter who reads the resume next. Each keyword should appear where you actually used the skill.
Many of these skills transfer. Compare lists if you are switching roles.