Last but not least, the topic of “SEO”. The grab bag of “web design practices”. In parts 1, 2 and 3, I looked at the creation of text and images. The last part is about how this content can be optimally prepared for the Internet.
To do this, we need to briefly clarify the term SEO: SEO = Search Engine Optimization, or in non-computer terms: How do I offer content so that it can be found as easily and quickly as possible by other people. Google visits all web pages and remembers the text on this page (however, a page looks different to Google).
For Google (and every other search engine) the website looks like the picture. Google extracts this data and remembers it. When a query is made, Google looks in memory to see if it knows of any pages where this occurs. However, that would be too clumsy, so different text elements have more or less weight.
A page title (what is at the top of the browser window) is classified as very important, then headings in the page and finally normal text (plus many more). Exactly how this mechanism works is not publicly known.
When creating content, you need to ask yourself the following questions:
- What are the keywords for the page to be created?
- Do I use the keywords in the title?
- Do the keywords appear in the URL?
- Do the keywords appear frequently (but not too frequently) in the content?
- Are there whole phrases that the searcher is likely to enter that I can include in the text?
- Do you use the “alt” tag of images (the text that is displayed if the image cannot be loaded)?
And finally, the most important rule: write good quality content so that it is linked to by other websites.
There are many crooks in SEO and nobody can really promise anything. I would be skeptical of promises such as “guaranteed to be number 1” etc. You can start with these basic rules, but don’t think that’s all: not by a long shot.