{"id":1540,"date":"2017-01-24T12:44:06","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T12:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hiitplc.com\/training\/?p=1540"},"modified":"2017-01-24T17:29:47","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T17:29:47","slug":"why-you-should-learn-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hiitplc.com\/training\/why-you-should-learn-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"Why you should learn SEO (EVEN AS A DEVELOPER)"},"content":{"rendered":"
By: Zak Cagaros<\/span><\/pre>\n
WHAT IS SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION AKA SEO?<\/h3>\n
The techniques used to help your website rank higher in search engine results pages are known as Search Engine Optimization,<\/strong>\u00a0or SEO for short.<\/p>\n
SEO is part of SEM (Search Engine Marketing), which is a term that\u2019s used whenever all the different search marketing strategies are being discussed. Essentially, SEO is a way of getting unpaid\u00a0traffic to your website.\u00a0<\/em>(Unlike using AdWords or other paid advertising in the search engines.)<\/p>\n
WHY IS SEO IMPORTANT?<\/h3>\n
As a programmer or developer, you may\u00a0be wondering why SEO is an important part of the online jigsaw.\u00a0<\/em>(And why it has any relevance to you!)<\/p>\n
Well, on Google alone there are more than 12 Billion<\/a>\u00a0searches a\u00a0month being conducted. And this number is only increasing<\/strong> month to month.<\/p>\n
And, guess what? If your website isn\u2019t being indexed, it\u2019s safe to say you could be missing out on hundreds, or even thousands, <\/strong>of opportunities for people to visit your website.<\/p>\n
Even if you don\u2019t have your own site, being able to implement best SEO practices onto\u00a0the site\u2019s of clients can make you more employable. (And ultimately be better for your pocket!)<\/em><\/p>\n
HOW DO SEARCH ENGINES WORK?<\/h3>\n
The difference between success and failure in any marketing venture has come down to how successful you are online. Moreover, whether or not your product\/service is visible in the ever increasing online competition.<\/strong><\/p>\n
Therefore, to rank well in Google or any other search engine, it is important to have a basic understanding of how search engines work.\u00a0Using an analogy, we can better understand how search engines operate.<\/p>\n
HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORK, USING AN ANALOGY<\/h4>\n
Imagine\u00a0you are a teacher (the search engine) at\u00a0a school.<\/p>\n
At the playground you blow a very loud whistle to get the children\u2019s attention. You, the teacher, make an announcement saying that the local football club (I mean soccer!<\/em>) has offered one\u00a0ticket<\/strong>\u00a0to the cup final for the\u00a0student that is\u00a0most interested in football<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
Of course, all hell is going to break loose and every kid will put his hand up, shouting \u201cPick me!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
You, as the teacher, must\u00a0pick the child\u00a0who plays football (AKA, is relevant)<\/em>, is recognized as a football player (AKA, has authority)<\/em>, and has a certain skill level as well as availability on the day of the game (AKA, technical<\/em>).<\/p>\n
As the teacher, you start by\u00a0sifting through the students and decide on a group of the top ten. You base this list of ten on several components.<\/p>\n
First, you narrow the group down according to the kids who play football. In other words, are relevant.<\/strong><\/p>\n
Then, you check to see if any of the students are recognized as being top football players: in other words, they have authority.\u00a0<\/strong>Of course, you\u00a0will also consider which student\u00a0is the most dedicated<\/strong> to football. As in, the student who lives and breathes the sport.\u00a0<\/em>The teacher will do this by\u00a0seeing who is constantly talking, writing, and sharing football related links on social media.<\/p>\n
Furthermore,\u00a0you will also look at the more technical aspects of the student. In this case, the student\u2019s skill level in the sport\u00a0and if they are available to attend the game on the given day.<\/p>\n
After all these considerations \u2013 relevancy, authority and technical aspects<\/em>\u2013 the teacher will then select a student to be at the first of the group.And that student will get the ticket to the game.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
In a nutshell, this\u00a0is how search engines \u2013 particularly\u00a0Google \u2013 rank websites against a search query.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
HOW DO SEARCH ENGINES FIND YOUR WEBSITE?<\/h3>\n
In order for a search engine to provide results when you type in a query, it has a\u00a0database of information available for it to utilize.<\/strong><\/p>\n
Realize that each search engine has its own way of gathering and prioritizing this information from websites. But regardless of what these techniques may be, the\u00a0process is called \u201cindexing<\/strong>.\u201d Indexing\u00a0is when a search engine attempts to scan everything found online today so that it has that information available in its database whenever a person enters a search query.<\/p>\n
How is this done?<\/strong>\u00a0Basically, every search engine has its own bots or crawlers. These are highly complex software scripts that are constantly\u00a0scanning the web, indexing websites\u2019 content and following links from website to website.<\/p>\n
Whenever your website fails to be indexed, it won\u2019t appear within the search engines.<\/strong><\/p>\n
Don\u2019t worry \u2013 more than likely your site\u00a0will be indexed. Large search engines such as Bing, Google and Yahoo are continually indexing the billions of websites that exist today.<\/p>\n
WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO RANK ON GOOGLE?<\/h3>\n
It really isn\u2019t difficult to get your website indexed within the search engines. However, what can be challenging\u00a0is getting your website to rank on the result pages for specific search queries, or keywords.<\/strong><\/p>\n
The search engines use three\u00a0main factors\u00a0whenever they decide on ranking in the Search Engine Results Pages or SERP\u2019s \u2013 these are:relevance,<\/strong>\u00a0authority\u00a0<\/strong>and technology<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
Basically, relevance has to do with what<\/strong> your website is about (titles, content, etc.). Authority looks at the number<\/strong> of inbound links you have for your site. And technology considers the sitemap, meta information\u00a0and overall structure of your site.<\/p>\n
RELEVANCE<\/h4>\n
One of the most important factors when it comes to SEO is relevance. The search engines don\u2019t only want to see that you\u2019re using specific keywords but it\u00a0also wants to see how relevant your content is when\u00a0it comes to specific search queries.<\/p>\n
In order to do this, search engines\u00a0don\u2019t only<\/strong> look at the text on your website itself. They also look at:<\/p>\n