SEO

SEO - SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

You have to implement the following methods into your website

SEO is a technique which helps search engines find your site by giving it a high-ranking placement in response to a search query. SEO thus helps you get traffic from search engines.
SEO guidelines are constantly changing, and you always have to keep your knowledge up to date.

When building your website, you have to follow these minimum suggestions to help it with the search engine rankings; the most important among them is including keywords (targeted words that determine under which category your site will be listed in search engines) in your content and source code. Users use keywords, and the better optimized your site, the sooner they'll find you.

Note: red asterisk * means - you must do it; no asterisk - your decision

MEANINGFUL URL (You purchased it already)
Clear, semantic URL (ideally including subject)
http://www.mygarden.com/flowers
(Bad example: "http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569")

META TAGS AND META DESCRIPTION*
The Meta tags and Meta descriptions provide metadata about the HTML document. Metadata is located inside your html’s head area, and will not be displayed on the page. Meta elements are typically used to specify relevant keywords, page description, author of the site, etc.
The importance of Meta tags: it is a big factor in Google page rank, the search engines read them in order to compare if these keywords and the description are related with the visible content, etc.
Examples:
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="description" content="Free Web tutorials">
<meta name="keywords" content="HTML,CSS,XML,JavaScript">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
</head>

<TITLE> TAG*
Include the subject in the title tag
<title>Samantha Smith, graphic/web designer, creative portfolio</title>

RELEVANT CONTENT*
Provide content relevant to the subject by inserting keywords into the body text. Include a 150 -200 words paragraph (ideally on the index page) explaining what your site is about. Content must sound natural, not simply a list of keywords.
Note: regularly updating your site content will help SEO

<H1> TAG
The H1 tag - the highest level tag that shows what your specific page is about. Search engines generally give this tag more weight over other headings. (You can alter its appearance with CSS)
<H1> About Samantha Smith</H1>

<ALT> TAG*
Alt (alternative) text – text describing image (and ideally including subject); use no more than several words
For example: <img src="laughing-baby.jpg" alt="Baby Laughing" />

FILE NAMES*
Filenames have to be meaningful, descriptive and short.
For example: "Big-tiger.jpg"
(Bad example: "UbrEvl676pYmaxresdefault.jpg")
Note: use hyphens rather than underscores for names.

LINK NAMES*
Name links meaningfully (not “click here”)
For example: “… you will find information about tigers in National Geographic Magazine”
Instead of: “… click here to find the information …"

LIST METHOD FOR NAVIGATION
A navigation bar is a list of links. Unordered lists are semantically closest to what navigation menus actually are - they're both hierarchical representations of data. Also, list method is used for accessibility reasons.
Note: with HTML5 <nav> tags the list method is a debatable subject now.

LINKS
- Internal links*
The pages of your site should be interlinked so that the search engine’s crawlers will be able to find its way around your site
- Get other sites to link to yours:
The more legitimate sites linking to your site and the bigger those sites are, the better it is for your SEO.

EXTERNAL CSS*
Using external JavaScript and CSS files in the real world generally produces faster pages because the JavaScript and CSS files are cached by the browser, and also amount of codes decreased dramatically.

E-A-T
In March 2014, Google created a new manual for ranking websites E-A-T (expertise, authority and trust)
The site content should be useful and trustworthy (grammatically correct and well-edited); references, reviews by experts, testimonials, contact information etc.

SEO PROBLEMS:

POORLY ORGANIZED SITE
If the site is poorly organized and designed, search engine crawlers can't easily navigate (plus, users don't have the patience to navigate a poorly designed site).
To avoid this problem:
- Carefully plan the site structure and its hierarchy*
- Create a logical links’ structure that follows your navigation hierarchy*
- Use a shallow depth navigation structure, which requires three or fewer clicks to reach every page*

DOWNLOADING TIME PROBLEM
If the files that you use for your webpage (images, videos, etc.) have big sizes, it takes long time to load the page.
To avoid this problem, you have to reduce their file sizes (among other things) professionally optimizing images and videos*
Note: DO NOT use HTML or CSS to make large images smaller because their file size (and thus loading time) will still remain large. Always use an image editing program to make your image the desired size, before writing the codes and uploading images.*

DROPDOWN MENUS
If you use drop down menus, they must be in HTML and CSS (not Flash, Javascript or anything else)
Note: if it is possible, try to avoid drop downs (unless you are a huge company and need a mega menu); according to usability studies, drop down menus are annoying for the user: we move our eyes much faster than we move the mouse. When we move the mouse to a menu item, we’ve already decided to click…and then the drop down gives us more options. It’s a moment of friction in our minds as visitors.