Lesson 6 SEO Basics

In this lesson you learn about Search Engine Optimization

Sub Objective

This lesson will consist of some of the basics of SEO and help get ur sites ready for google

You should have a basic knowledge of html and css .

Get the code for this lesson download here this same link will be at the bottom. This code will have obvious mistakes for you to fix as well it's just a way for you to work on your trouble shooting .

Create unique, accurate page titles

Indicate page titles by using title tags

"A title tag tells both users and search engines what the topic of a particular page is. The <title> tag should be placed within the <head> tag of the HTML document . Ideally, you should create a unique title for each page on your site."

When Making a page we make sure to give our page titles unique and descriptive titles this allows our users the ability to easily understand what page they are on and allows for them to know what page they had been on before by giving your pages unique titles that title also shows up were else besides the bar at the top ?

Give up yet its in the browsers history and when you look back on the back button it shows each title of each page you just visited most of the time people don't make unique name for each page so then you see something like this.


<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>

<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<meta name="keywords" content=" Computer based training, code trainer, dan mentzer, semantic html, html5, css3, html training,css3 psuedo selector ">
<meta name="description" content="Lesson 6 teaches about search engine optimization and how it benefits your sites .">
<meta name="designer" content="Dan Mentzer">

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>Lesson 6 SEO Basics-Codetrainer</title>

When you have a unique title name for your page you can easily tell where you were.

Improving Site Structure

Improve the structure of your URLs

Simple-to-understand URLs will convey content information easily

"Creating descriptive categories and filenames for the documents on your website can not only help you keep your site better organized, but it could also lead to better crawling of your documents by search engines. "

In short make your urls make sense to everyone not just you; use words that describe your content and make sense to be used in your url.

Make your site easier to navigate

Navigation is very important for search engines

Your page structure Should be well organized and should be simple to navigate through you should also run tests to see if your naming conventions make sense before sticking with names.

One way to make sure your names work is to do user test cases.

Navigation is key for your user to find what content they require search engines also require good navigation so they can get to every page.

Optimizing Content

Offer quality content and services

Interesting sites will increase their recognition on their own

Give the user good content they know what it looks like and if they find it your site reputation will keep going up because they have something to keep coming back for.

Write better anchor text

Suitable anchor text makes it easy to convey the contents linked

Anchor text is the clickable text that users will see as a result of a link, and is placed within the anchor tag <a href="..."></a>.

This text tells users and Google something about the page you're linking to. Links on your page maybe internal—pointing to other pages on your site—or external—leading to content on other sites. In either of these cases, the better your anchor text is, the easier it is for users to navigate and for Google to understand what the page you're linking to is about.

Stay away from using click here and putting a tags around it using click here gives users no idea were they are going.

Dealing with Crawlers

Make effective use of robots.txt

Restrict crawling where it's not needed with robots.txt

A "robots.txt" file tells search engines whether they can access and therefore crawl parts of your site . This file, which must be named "robots.txt", is placed in the root directory of your site .

Be aware of rel="nofollow"for links

Combat comment spam with "nofollow"

Setting the value of the "rel" attribute of a link to "nofollow" will tell Google that certain links on your site shouldn't be followed or pass your page's reputation to the pages linked to. Nofollowing a link is adding rel="nofollow" inside of the link's anchor tag

SEO for Mobile Phones

Notify Google of mobile sites

Configure mobile sites so that they can be indexed accurately

It seems the world is going mobile, with many people using mobile phones on a daily basis, and a large user base searching on Google's mobile search page. However, as a webmaster, running a mobile site and tapping into the mobile search audience isn't easy. Mobile sites not only use a different format from normal desktop sites, but the management methods and expertise required are also quite different. This results in a variety of new challenges. While many mobile sites were designed with mobile viewing in mind, they weren't designed to be search friendly.

Guide mobile users accurately

Running desktop and mobile versions of your site

When running a desktop and mobile version of your site you should make sure you can redirect people that end up on the wrong version to there respective areas with little to no confusion for the user so they can continue on with whatever it is that they are doing.

On the other hand, when there's an access to a mobile-version URL from a desktop browser or by our web crawler, Googlebot, it's not necessary to redirect them to the desktop-version. For instance, Google doesn't automatically redirect desktop users from their mobile site to their desktop site; instead they include a link on the mobile version page to the desktop version. These links are especially helpful when a mobile site doesn't provide the full functionality of the desktop version—users can easily navigate to the desktop-version if they prefer.

Promotions and Analysis

Promote your website in the right ways

About increasing backlinks with an intention to increase the value of the site

While most of the links to your site will be gained gradually, as people discover your content through search or other ways and link to it, Google understands that you'd like to let others know about the hard work you've put into your content. Effectively promoting your new content will lead to faster discovery by those who are interested in the same subject . As with most points covered in this document, taking these recommendations to an extreme could actually harm the reputation of your site.

Make use of free webmaster tools

Make Googlebot crawling smoother by using Webmaster Tools

Major search engines, including Google, provide free tools for webmasters. Google's Webmaster Tools help webmasters better control how Google interacts with their websites and get useful information from Google about their site. Using Webmaster Tools won't help your site get preferential treatment; however, it can help you identify issues that, if addressed, can help your site perform better in search results. With the service, webmasters can:

So lets give a try once Google Webmaster Tools when you get to the site either create a google account or use a account you already have and then submit your url for google it will tell you to add robots.txt file to your server and once you verify its there google will check out your site.

Google Webmaster Tools

Check out W3 Schools for more SEO info.