seo for engineers

SEO for Engineers

Search Engine Optimization for People Who Know What return

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By Cort Tafoya

SEO for Developers1. UX

2. Webmaster Tools3. HTML and URLs

4. Tools and Best Practices5. Hackers

Table of Contents

Why Care?

1. Engineering Job Ads Now Count SEO Knowledge as a Bonus or Required Skill

2. Essential for Working at Startups3. Improves Your Web Users’ Experience4. Increases Web Traffic and Customer Acquisition5. Improves Your Product If Your Website Is Your Product

SEO - Who Gives a F**K

User Messaging: 3 Things to Think About

1. Is my site simple and intuitive enough for a person who has never seen it

before to easily use the first time?

A first-run experience that concisely explains or shows the user what the product is and/or how to use it is extremely valuable.

Source: https://developers.google.com/speed/articles/usability-latency

1. User Experience

1. User Experience

User Messaging: 3 Things to Think About

2. Does this message interrupt or add steps to the user's workflow?

Think carefully about how messages you display may lengthen the user's workflow. There may be more appropriate times and ways to display a message that won't keep the user from getting things done.

Source: https://developers.google.com/speed/articles/usability-latency

1. User Experience

User Messaging: 3 Things to Think About

3. How can I reassure the user during wait times?

Let's face it: there are going to be times when the user has to wait. There are, however, a few things you can do to make the inevitable wait time a little more bearable.

If the user has to wait more than a few seconds, show a progress bar.

Source: https://developers.google.com/speed/articles/usability-latency

1. User Experience

Bounce Rates

Bounce Rates - If people go to your homepage (or any web page for that matter) but nowhere else, or worse, return to their search engine result page, did Google do its job of giving their user what they wanted?

Probably not. Over time, Google will remember not to return your site for similar search queries/results.

Some analysts believe a bounce rate over 50% is bad.

1. User Experience

Time Spent on Page Nothing indicates quality more than time spent on page. Poor UX and design can greatly impact this number. Track your TSOP averages, and adjust if necessary.

1. User Experience

Plan Your Website:● Create a user-friendly and search engine friendly platform.

● Plan a website with flat architecture.

● Create intuitive information architecture and website navigation.

● Optimize the internal linking structure for SEO, usability, and flow of traffic and authority.

● Plan a site based on keyword research, focusing on page structure and page targets.

● Ensure that all onsite factors have been optimized for SEO based on the keyword research before

launch

Source: “Why You Lose if You Skip Planning a Website.”

1. User Experience

Plan Your Website: Flat Architecture is Best for Search Engines

Source: “Why You Lose if You Skip Planning a Website.”

1. User Experience

Poor Architecture

1. User Experience

For the Love of God, Just Do It Add your website to Webmaster tools while signed into your Gmail account

2. Webmaster Tools

Just Do ItThere are variousmethods of verification:Uploading HTML Files,syncing your Google Analytics or inserting an HTML Tag inyour homepage header

2. Webmaster Tools

Alternate Verification Methods Include using your domain name provider and your Google Tag Manager account.

2. Webmaster Tools

Stuff You’ll See in Webmaster Tools Potential crawl errors, non indexed URLs, options to submit sitemaps

2. Webmaster Tools

Sitemap DataIf there are crawl errors and warnings, Webmaster Tools will provide directions on how to fix all outstanding issues

2. Webmaster Tools

What Else to Look For in Your Dashboard1. Page speed issues?2. HTML improvements?3. Security issues?

2. Webmaster Tools

Submit Video Sitemaps

2. Webmaster Tools

Submit Image Sitemaps, Apply Image SEO1. Add Alt Text so Google can read the image (put keywords in there)2. Change the filename to include your keywords and a description of the imageExample of an image sitemap file via http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

2. Webmaster Tools

PageSpeed Insights: Examples

2. Webmaster Tools

1. No one likes a render blocker

2. Optimize CSS delivery

3. Compress image files

PageSpeed Insights: Examples

via Webmaster Tools

2. Webmaster Tools

PageSpeed Insights: Examples

via Webmaster Tools

2. Webmaster Tools

PageSpeed Insights: Examples

via Webmaster Tools

2. Webmaster Tools

PageSpeed Insights: Examples

via Webmaster Tools

2. Webmaster Tools

PageSpeed Insights: Examples

via Webmaster Tools

2. Webmaster Tools

HTML Improvements Include:

via https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/3069489

3. HTML and URLs

HTML Improvements Include:Removing Duplicate Title Tags, Meta Descriptions etc. - Google looks at duplicate content as keyword stuffing, a black-hat SEO technique used to manipulate search results. Do not have duplicate title tags, meta descriptions or web pages. Be sure to run redirects.

Filling in Missing Title Tags with Keywords - Improves search rankings, expands your keyword eco system

3. HTML and URLs

What Are Schema Tags?

Essentially, the same as rich snippets, structured data markup. They are a collection of tags that define words better for Google. How would Google know what Squirt is unless Cameron added Schema Tags indicating to Google that is a business or product?

Schema Tags let you do that shit. “(Schema.org) provides a collection of schemas, i.e., html tags, that webmasters can use to markup their pages in ways recognized by major search providers.”

3. HTML and URLs

What Are Schema Tags?

Example via Schema.org

3. HTML and URLs

URLs - You Only Need to Know 3 Things:

This is a shitty SEO URL http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/602-9912342-3046240?

_encoding=UTF8&frombrowse=1&asin=B000FN0KWA. Google can’t read that.

This is a great SEO URL - searchengineland.com/seo-friendly-url-syntax-practices. Includes keywords that describe the content.

3. Do not have 404 errors and please run redirects. This affects UX.

Bonus Link: 11 Best Practices for URLs - Read that.

3. HTML and URLs

Properly Including StyleSheets and Scripts

1. Combine external JavaScript files

2. Include external CSS files before external JavaScript files

3. Do not include inline JavaScript between external CSS and other

resources

via https://developers.google.com/speed/articles/include-scripts-properly

4. Developer Best Practices

Compress Your JavaScript With a Closure Compiler

4. Developer Best Practices

“The Closure Compiler finds ways to compress your JavaScript code even further than existing minimization tools. It achieves additional compression by using compiler-like technology to

rewrite your JavaScript into a much smaller form, while ensuring the code still runs correctly. Closure Compiler can condense several files into one single file, and can easily reduce the size of your JavaScript in half. The Closure Compiler also does syntactic checks and static analysis for your program, so it flags potential syntax and type errors and highlights code patterns that

may not work well on all browsers.” - Google Best Practices

http://closure-compiler.appspot.com

PHP Optimization: Via Google

- Avoid writing naive setters and getters

- Don't copy variables for no reason

- Avoid doing SQL queries within a loop

4. Developer Best Practices

Don’t Let Hackers Hack Your Shit

5. Is Your Site Hacked?

Don’t Let Hackers Hack Your Shit

5. Is Your Site Hacked?

Help for Hacked Sites

5. Is Your Site Hacked?

Testing Resources (Links):

1. Android Emulator

2. BlackBerry Device Simulators

3. iPhone

4. Opera Mini Simulator

5. Palm Pre

6. Windows Mobile

7. User Agent Switcher extension for Firefox. Switch your desktop user agent to quickly test how a page may behave behind a different user agent.

8. Page Speed Firefox/Firebug Addon. Evaluate a web page's performance and receive suggestions on how to improve it.

https://developers.google.com/speed/articles/mobile

Bonus: Optimizing Mobile Pages