Most people view Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as a way to increase traffic to their site. A better understanding of SEO is the process of optimizing your content to be easier to find for potential visitors looking for the information you have published or the service you provide. In other words, it is more appropriate to view visitors as a result of well-executed content/website optimization, not as SEO itself.
It is important to understand that SEO can be considered a science nowadays, just like mathematics and physics, for example. Since it would be almost impossible to cover all the points that make a website well-search engine optimized, we provide you with some basic SEO tips on how to improve your website and certain things to avoid while creating the website.
Content & SEO
Whatever design you choose for your website, the most important thing for your website is the content itself. Therefore, offering high-quality, useful, complete, and accurate information on your website will certainly make it popular, and webmasters and website owners will link to and refer visitors to your website, which is one of the most important factors for site optimization.
Most crawlers have very sophisticated algorithms and can distinguish natural from unnatural links. Natural links to your website are generated when other webmasters include links to your content or products in their articles or comments, rather than just including you in their blogroll, for example. If a specific page is considered "important" by a search engine and there is a natural referral link to your website content, your page will most likely also be crawled and marked as "important" if the content is relevant to the topic of the original page.
Furthermore, do not rely on AI content generators to produce quality content for you. Google's algorithms are designed to assess the excellence and relevance of content, and content generated by AI may not always meet these standards.
Titles
Another important topic to consider when creating your content is the title of your pages and articles. Please note: we are not referring to your URLs and links here. You must choose your posts, articles, pages, and category titles carefully to make them more search engine friendly. When creating content on a topic, consider which words potential visitors will use on search engine websites when looking for this information and try to include them in your title.
For example, if you are writing a tutorial on installing WordPress, it is not appropriate to title it "WP Configuration, Customization, and Installation." This is because people looking for this information will use more common words to describe the information they need – "How to install WordPress." Think about the phrases users would use to find your pages and include them on your site – this is certainly a good SEO practice and will improve your website's visibility in search engines. In addition to your title and keywords, meta tags are another important part of your page. They are read by search engines but are not displayed as part of your webpage design.
Furthermore, you should always try to write unique titles that best describe the page's content, with a maximum of 60-65 characters, so that the title appears on the search results page (SERP) without periods at the end. If the page title exceeds the limit mentioned above, the search engine will shorten it.
Problems with dynamic pages
People love eye candy, but bots don't. Yes, indeed, people love colorful websites, Flash, AJAX, JavaScript, and so on, but you should know that these technologies are quite difficult for crawlers to assimilate because they are not plain text. Moreover, most bots can only be directed to another page via static text links, which means you must ensure that all pages on your website are accessible via at least one simple text link on another page. This is a very good practice and ensures that all pages on your website are crawled by search engine bots. Generally, the best way to do this is to create a Sitemap of your website that is easily accessible via a text link on your homepage. Furthermore, you must submit your sitemap to Google Search Console to speed up the indexing process.
The simplest way to imagine how the search engine bot actually "sees" your website is to view it as a text browser. If you are a Unix/Linux user, use a text browser via your shell, such as Lynx (http://www.google.com/search?q=lynx+browser). However, if you are a Windows user, you need a text browser or program that can visualize your website to get a general idea of how the bot "sees" your pages.
The website above acts as a web proxy but only provides text output. To use this website, however, create a simple file named delorie.htm in your public_html folder. Keep in mind that it can simply be an empty file—it is only used to verify that you are the owner of the website and not a bot using the proxy service.
Once you have created the file, type your domain name and click "View Page". You will be shown a text page containing the text content of your website. All information that cannot be seen via this proxy is most likely not crawled by search engine bots – this includes all Flash, images, or other graphic/dynamic content.
SSL & HTTPS
Google has officially stated that HTTPS is considered a minor ranking factor. Therefore, you should consider enabling HTTPS on your website as one of the first things you need to do in terms of basic SEO.
This can be done via the .htaccess file. If you do not know how to enable HTTPS, you can read this article on how to enforce HTTPS.
Also, ensure that you have an SSL certificate installed on your website. If you are an MDWX customer, you get free SSL with every hosting package and can easily install it with a few clicks.
Mobile-friendly website
Most searches are performed from mobile devices these days. You must ensure that your website and content are well optimized for mobile devices.
You can test your pages with Google's mobile-friendly test tool.
Conclusion
There you have the SEO basics! We hope this beginner's guide to SEO has given you a good starting point for optimizing your website and improving your online visibility. Keep in mind that SEO may seem like a complex and technical subject, but ultimately it comes down to creating high-quality content that is easy for both people and search engine crawlers to understand.
