What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?

back in the day if you wanted to get
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noticed it meant renting a billboard
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taking out an ad in a newspaper or
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failing that just standing on a soapbox
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in the park and pontificating but now
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with large search engines being the
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go-to fonts of information for most of
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us to make themselves heard people
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companies and other organizations have
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been seeking ways to fight and claw to
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the top of search results using a
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process called search engine
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optimization or SEO but what is that
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well you see giant search engines like
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Google use algorithms to try to push
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relevant results to the top of the page
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so that when a user types in computer
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mouse they’ll get links to buy a new
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input device rather than pictures of
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Stewart little trying to use a PC now
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how exactly these algorithms work are
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usually closely guarded trade secrets
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but there’s enough public knowledge for
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webmasters to attempt to tune their
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pages to boost their position in the
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search results in fact Google even puts
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out a search engine optimization starter
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guide to help website owners improve
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their chances of earning the coveted top
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result so then for starters it’s a good
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idea to optimize your pages metadata
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metadata is all the stuff other than the
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actual content people will see in their
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browser window and accurate metadata
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things like descriptive page titles or
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embedding a short explanation of what’s
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on the page into your HTML which you can
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often end up seeing underneath the
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Google result can help push your site up
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to the top a more recent development is
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making URLs themselves more informative
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you’ve probably seen this on news sites
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which have started to use file names
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that indicate what the article is about
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like tasteless youtuber where socks and
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sandals dot HTML which is a lot more
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helpful to a search engine than just
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assigning some random number
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another pro tip is to nest your pages in
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some sort of sensible directory
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structure organized by things like
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topics and dates but what about the page
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itself
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well since most modern search engines
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use how often a page is linked to as a
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key metric of its importance
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providing descriptive text links in the
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body of a webpage to other pages on your
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site can be very helpful and search
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engines are also aware of things like
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topic headers and alt text for images to
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help categorize the site the key as with
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any metadata is to keep these as short
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but also as informative and descriptive
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as possible to make it easier for a
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search engine to determine that your
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site is relevant to a particular topic
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of course though everything we’ve
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outlined so far is a legitimate SEO
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strategy there are plenty of other
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tricks that might be employed by
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unscrupulous site owners these
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collectively are known as blackhat SEO
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or spam dexing and their goal is to try
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to make the page seem more relevant to a
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topic than it actually is and these
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tricks can take the form of anything
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from citing keywords in invisible text
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that a user would have to highlight to
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see to buying link backs or even traffic
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from other sites for using irrelevant
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keywords that might just be trending at
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the moment or even just overusing the
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relevant ones this kind of behavior has
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resulted in a bit of a digital arms race
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between search engine developers who are
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trying to weed out these pages for their
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users and spammers or site owners who
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are desperate for clicks and aren’t
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above using shady tactics so who will
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ultimately win well let me put it this
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way as search giants like Google deploy
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more sophisticated methods to separate
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the signal from the noise my advice is
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if you want your website to be around
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for a long time
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stick to the honest tried-and-true
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tactics even if your website does
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feature material of ill repute
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speaking of SEO tricks if that’s just
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yet another thing that you don’t want to
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deal with when you want to build your
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own website
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Squarespace actually does a lot of this
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stuff automatically Squarespace is the
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way to go if you want to build a simple
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okay I want a picture there you type up
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your text the whole thing has got a
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cloud interface that is really clean and
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if you have trouble with it they’ve got
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it’s just 12 bucks a month and every
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Squarespace site features responsive
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design so your website scales to look
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for watching guys like dislike leave a
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comment subscribe and uh ah damn it I’m
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sure I’m missing something but you know
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the drill anyway