SEO for beginners
Idea
This project was initiated to enable ordinary developers to learn how to perform SEO. We will create an application that addresses issues related to text files, including validation, formatting, conversion, and comparison. We will work with all text file formats such as plain text, JSON, XML, YAML (YML), and others.
Traffic Types
To bring people to the site, we must explore effective ways of attracting them. This involves understanding the various types of online traffic:
- Direct traffic occurs when a user types the exact URL of a website into browser’s address bar, without taking a journey through a search engine.
- Organic traffic refers to visitors who come to a website by clicking on a non-ad search result.
- Paid traffic is the traffic that comes from paid advertising, positioning the service at the top of search results and labeled as ‘Sponsored.’
- Referral traffic refers to visits to a website that occur through links posted on other sites.. If you follow such a link, it is considered that you came to the site through a referral. Also, If another site has posted a link to yours, it means that your site has an external backlink.
- Social traffic is when people visit a website through social media. If someone comes to a site directly from a social media platform, it’s considered social traffic, whether it’s from a regular post or a paid promotion.
- Email marketing occurs when a visitor comes to a website from an email letter.
Certainly, for each product, the focus on the type of traffic is selected individually. In our case, the emphasis is on organic search traffic.
Since organic search traffic is crucial for Difff, we can check keywords into Ahrefs Keywords explorer to see how difficult it is to reach the top of Google.
The difficulty of getting to the top of Google for this keyword is extreme. But we do all this to learn how to work with products and gain product experience.
What Is Search Index and How Search Engine Bots Work
The order of an application in search engine results is influenced by the search index.
Search index is a structured storage that helps quickly and efficiently return relevant results in the correct order.
The website will be ranked among the search results once it is added to the search index. Before being added to the search index, a website will go through three processes.
- Discovery - search bots find pages on the Internet.
- Crawling - bot visits and downloads website URLs.
- Indexing - adding processed information from scanned pages to the search index.
The search index wait time depends on the number of pages in the application. It takes from 2 weeks to 12 months. To decrease waiting time, after developing the MVP version, you can implement a web application placeholder. In this way, website discovery will begin before adding any functionality. To create a site placeholder:
- Buy domain.
- Create an app with a homepage.
- Add meta tags, such as title and description.
- Include meta tags, such as title and description.
- Add heading (H1) and content if needed.
- Deploy an app.
How to create meta title
The title is displayed as the headings of the search result card. Here are some tips on how to create a title:
- To prevent truncation, ensure that your title is shorter than 70 characters. This will help display the full title on the search result card.
- Align content with search intent. Ensure that the page contains what search engines seek.
- Align title with page content. Bots validate clickbait
- Include the keywords
- Add the date for topics that require up-to-date information.
How to create meta description?
Search engines often uses description for the descriptive snippet in the search results. Here are a few tips for writing them:
- Description should be from 110, and to 160 characters to avoid truncation.
- Expand on the title tag
- Match search intent.
- Use an active voice.
- Include your keyword – Google often bolds this in the results.
Ahrefs keywords explorer is helpful for checking keyword traffic and understanding what people are searching for.
Backlinks
Backlinks are external links from other sites to your resource. Backlinks are placed to increase referral traffic or to speed up the discovery of your site by search bots. Backlinks can be purchased or received for free.
How to buy backlinks
Services for placing backlinks. Some services generate backlinks to your website by placing links on other online resources. If such a service spams with backlinks, it can lead to restrictions from search engines and website may drop in search engine rankings.
Buy backlinks directly. You can purchase backlinks for your website directly from platforms that are open to featuring a link to your application. It’s crucial to consider the trust factor of the site, as this can impact the trust and health score of your own site.
How to get backlinks for free
Some sites use a script that adds the value “nofollow” to the “rel” attribute. In this scenario, search bots refrain from following such a link, thereby preventing a decrease in indicators that impact the trust factor of the site. Then we will simply receive organic referral traffic from backlinks. A link is called “dofollow” if the rel attribute does not have the value “nofollow.”