What is SEO (and why you need to worry about it) Part 3: The technical side
This is the final article in our SEO series. In the first article, I gave you a basic introduction to SEO, and in the second we talked about content. This week we’ll focus on the more technical aspects of SEO.
The Technical Side of SEO
SEO isn’t just about content. There are also various behind-the-scenes aspects that you need to pay attention to. Let’s look at some of them.
Page titles
Each of your web pages has a title. From an SEO perspective, you want these titles to accurately reflect the content of the page. That’s because Google examines page titles to make sure they accurately describe the content that is on the page. For example, if your page is about how to maximize tax deductions, then a page title such as “Maximizing tax deductions” is better than “My favourite tips” or “page7”.
It is important to note that a “page title” is not the same as the first line on your page (the title line that is usually in larger, bold letters). Page title is a setting that is hidden, and you must create it separately from any words on your page.
Images
Yes, Google even takes images into account. Here are a few tips to make sure they are SEO friendly.
Make sure they are small (large images take too long to load, and reduce the visitor’s experience). When I say size, I’m referring to the file size, not the dimensions of the image. Ideally, each image should be less than 100 kb.
Have descriptive image file names. If you have a picture of an apple, and the name of the image file is “5b34-small.jpg”, that’s not a descriptive name. Instead, use a name such as “apple.jpg”.
Have descriptive alt-text on each image. Alt-text is a short description of an image. It is used by people with visual disabilities who may not be able to see the image clearly. They may rely on alt-text to tell them what the picture is about. How? They use special software that reads out loud to them what is on the screen. When the software encounters an image, it reads that image’s alt-text. (Note: alt-text is not the same as the name of the file. For example, a picture of a boy eating an apple might have the file name “apple-boy.jpg” and the alt-text of “boy eating an apple”.
Links
Google also looks at the links you have and how you describe them. Here are some tips for maintaining good link SEO.
Use descriptive link text. A lot of people make the mistake of writing a link something like this: “you can read my other article on marketing tips here.” The problem? The link text (the words that are part of the actual link) say only “here”, and that doesn’t describe what the link is about. Even if you say what it’s about in the rest of the sentence (e.g. “my other article on marketing tips”) it doesn’t matter. Google wants the link text itself to describe exactly what readers will get if they click on the link. Google does this to evaluate how relevant the link is. The only way it can do that is to analyze the link text. So you want your links to read something like this: “If you are interested in learning more about this topic, read my article on more marketing tips.”
Have internal links. An internal link is a link on your site that points to another page on your site. Google likes to see you linking to other pages on your site because it’s an indirect measure of how helpful your website is. If you have several internal links, it probably means that you have a lot of helpful information on your site. If you have no links, then it appears as though you don’t have anything worthwhile on your own site to link to.
Have outbound links. An outbound link is a link on your site that points to someone else’s website. Google likes this, especially if the link points to something reputable and helpful. Google figures that links to other sites provide the user with even more potentially helpful content.
Have inbound links. An inbound link is a link on someone else’s site that points to your website. Google figures that if other sites are pointing to your site, then your site must have something worthwhile. If that other site is a reputable one, even better.
Secure website
Google ranks secure websites higher than non-secure websites. (A secure website has various features that help protect visitors’ privacy. Such websites have urls that begin with “https”, with the s standing for “secure”.)
Descriptive url
Google likes urls that actually describe what the site is about. So if you sell tennis lessons, and your website’s url is https://www.johnsmith.com, it’s not as good for SEO as https://www.tennislessons.com would be.
Blog posts
As with page names, Google expects each blog post to have a descriptive url. So a post should have a url like https://www.tennislessons.com/blog/how-to-hold-the-racquet, not https://www.tennislessons.com/blog/sept2021-14.
Meta tags
Meta tags are small pieces of HTML code that tell us something about the information that is on the webpage. Google will use these tags to find out more about your site. Meta tags that are especially important to SEO are the following.
Title tag – each page on your website should have a title. The title tag is the piece of HTML code that contains this title. (We talked about page titles earlier in this SEO article series.)
Description tag. Each page on your site should have a description (a short summary of what the page is about). The description tag is the piece of code that contains this information. For example, the tag might contain: “tennis rules, information, lessons, and equipment sales”.
Load time
People hate waiting for websites to load. Since a site that takes a long time to load provides for a negative user experience, Google rates such sites lower. One of the main ways load speed is slowed down is by having images file sizes that are too large.
Make sure your site is mobile friendly
More people will probably view your site on mobile than desktop, so Google wants to make sure the mobile version of your site is user friendly, displays well, loads quickly, etc. That means it’s important to have a mobile friendly website. Such sites resize your website properly when it is being viewed on a mobile device (phone, table). Otherwise, the information on your site will look squished, out of order, hard to read, etc. when viewed on mobile.
Headings
Google likes information on a page to be well-organized. Therefore, it expects you to use headings. Headings are a specific piece of HTML code that tells search engines a string of text is a title or subtitle for a section of text. And there are different levels for headings (Heading 1, Heading 2…). Here’s an example.
Let’s say the content is about tennis, specifically about the court layout. It may look like this.
The title in red is the main heading, the ones in blue are subheadings. So the HTML tag you want to use would be Heading1 for the red title and heading2 for each of the blue titles. Google likes to see you using headings because it makes the page more organized. Screen reading software also uses heading tags, so it makes the site more user-friendly to those who rely on such software.
Google also expects you to use headings in order. That means if the first heading tag that appears on your page is a heading2, that’s a negative. Google expects headings to be properly nested, in proper order.
Lots of images
Google assumes that helpful and engaging pages should have lots of supporting images. So, generally speaking, a page with few images would score lower than a page with lots of images. However, beware the stuffing syndrome—don’t put images in just for the sake of putting images in.
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So that’s the end of our 3-article series on SEO. Is that everything there is to know about the topic? Absolutely not! It’s just a starting point. There is so much to learn about SEO that people have written whole books on the subject. If it seems like a lot to learn, don’t panic! Remember Google’s principle.
Don’t concentrate on SEO rules. Instead, focus on creating a good experience for your visitors.
Keeping that principle in mind, plus using the tips listed in this series of articles, will be a huge step in making your website SEO friendly. So take the time to learn about the topic, and make sure your website is SEO friendly. It’s one of the essentials of online marketing!
Cheers,
Tim
Helping you engineer the business of you
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