Author: Richard Conway

ISBN: 978-0-14-377353-5

Year: 2019

Overview

If you want to know more about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), then this book is for you. It does a short look into the tools and techniques to use when you want to make your website more noticable. Search engines are one of the biggest tools we want to lean on in getting our message out into the general public. If you’re a business owner trying to attract customers, or a blogger trying to get more eyes on your content, then this book will give you a couple of tips.

At the end of each chapter in this book, there is a summary of the key tips in the chapter. I recommend reading those tips before you read the chapter because some chapter will be less relevant to what you want to learn. For example, chapters 10 to 12 are specific for businesses and people who work in corporations. While the ideas in these chapter may be transferable to other industries and contexts, you may end up wasting your time.

The Tips for a Blogger

I read this book through the eyes of someone starting out in blogging, so the tips I gleaned from it are specific to this context. There are a couple of chapters on different use cases, and I recommend reading the book if you want those specific tips.

Search engines use this meta content to inform who relevant it is to search users. Keep meta titles from 50 to 60 words long, and meta descriptions from 120 - 160 words long.

Schema.org can help in explaining the meta data required for your website. This meta data is useful for the search engines that trawl the Internet. Once they come across your website, and scan through the pages, you want to give the information to it in a way that meets common standards. On top of this, there are ways to help the search engine in showing your website is trustworthy and has the information that users are looking for.

Be creative with the use of anchour texts for your hyperlinks. Don’t just write “click here”.

For images, use alternative text to describe the image. On top of this, optimise the image appropriately so that it doesn’t take a long time to load. Websites should be quick to load or the potential viewer will get bored, or think it isn’t working.

Use the breadcrumb format when possible, it helps the website viewer get a sense of where they are in the website.

HTTPS is essential, don’t settle for HTTP.

Categorise your content, it needs to have a place on your website, and have a context. If there is no context, and your content just looks like it is random postings, then your website viewers will get confused.

If you are going to use one page in several different places, then you need canonicalisation . Essentially you need to tell any search engine which is the original page location.

Validator.w3.org is an online tool that can check if your webpage meets the standards set by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).

Mobile phone browsing makes up a significant proportion of website viewership. So make sure your website is dynamic, this means it provides a mobile friendly and accessible view of your website.

  • one browser window - don’t open up several windows
  • keep your website simple in design and fast to load
  • make it easy to interact - are any buttons easy to press with a finger?
  • no pop ups
  • expandable images
  • vertical scrolling only (not horizontal)

If you want a simple check if your website is mobile friendly, you can use the Google Mobile Friendly Test Tool .

Regarding your content, aim for quality over quantity. Inforgraphics are packed full of information that people want to see and use, so it’ll turn up in search engines. Adding embeded video is a great option to get more eyes on your pages as well. When writing content you want to aim for more than 300 and less than 2500. The amount of words will depend on the kind of traffic you are looking for. Different market niches will expect longer or shorter word counts, so have a read around popular websites that are in the type of niche you are wanting to get into.

Conclusion

So there are some tips, most of these are for me. A lot of them just point towards the idea of giving added value to the search engine and to the people you are trying to reach with your website.

I hope it helped. I recommend the book itself as a read, but again, don’t waste your time on a chapter if the end summary doesn’t appeal to you.