Does SEO matter and what even is it?
You probably heard SEO mentioned, but not sure what it is and if it even matters
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization, better known as SEO. Is when you follow best practices designing a website and providing necessary details, so that you can be listed on search engines such as, but not limited to; Google, Bing, Duck Duck Go and Yandex
Does SEO matter?
If it matters to your site, will depend on what the goal of the site is and if you're trying to get additional visitors to your site
If the site is for a closed community or more internally for a business, then SEO doesn't really matter for you. It might actually be a benefit not to be listed on a search engine
On the other hand, if you try to grow your audience. SEO can be really important, as it will help send traffic to your site and is a free way to gain more audience
For this site, we can see most external traffic comes from search engines and especially Google in our case
Caring about SEO is definitely important, but it's not everything. SEO rules also change over time and can vary between search engines. If you have a fairly new site, Google is important (unless you're in China) and whatever search engine is popular in your country or the country the audience your target is located
Improving SEO score
Beyond just follow best practices, when it comes to web development. We recommend using different tools from the different search engines, to help you optimize your site. There's also lots of good articles and videos on the topic out there
For tools, a good place to start is with Google Chrome on a computer. Open your site and press F12 on the keyboard, this will open the Developer Console. Here you'll find something called Lighthouse, this tool can scan your site in either desktop or mobile mode. Then provide your a ranking and what can be improved upon, so you can optimize your site both for search engines and for your normal visitors
Other search engines also have tools, such as bing have a Webmaster Tools pages. On this page, you can review how your site is doing on bing and if bing have encountered any errors with your site
Beyond SEO
Even if you get your site listed on Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines. It doesn't matter if your title, description and thumbnail isn't interesting enough for people to click on
One of our best articles, is with a thumbnail that easily describes the article it represents. So don't underestimate the value of a good thumbnail and title. There's also no shame in changing thumbnail / title, if the article isn't doing as well as you hoped for
Tags: #SEO #SearchEngineOptimization
