A Starter Guide to Build an SEO Friendly Website (For 2022 SEO Noobs)
Tags: seo, tutorial, beginners, programming
Published: 2022-06-10 03:01:46

In the aftermath of COVID-19's economic catastrophe, internet companies have become more reliant on SEO than ever before. Such instances demonstrate the power and significance of Search Engine Optimization.

## What exactly is SEO?

SEO is the technique of boosting the volume and quality of visitors to a website via organic search engine results. Organic search results are generated by a search engine's internal algorithm and are not the product of paid advertising. A list of similar terms is provided below.

- The **SERP**, or Search Engine Results Page, is simply the page of results that drives clicks. These pages contain a mix of sponsored and organic search results.
- **SEM**, or Search Engine Marketing, is the technique of marketing a business through paid adverts that display on search engine results pages (SERPs).
- **PPC** is an abbreviation for pay-per-click, an online marketing technique in which advertisers pay a charge each time one of their adverts is clicked.

Learning the fundamentals of SEO and more advanced subjects might be perplexing.

In this piece, we'll look at easy techniques for creating SEO-friendly web pages as well as tools for maintaining them.

## Content That Is Relevant and Meaningful

Unique, relevant, and valuable content is the most critical driver of an SEO friendly website. Although it may appear obvious, it is far easier to make a mistake than it is to get it right.

Understanding the website's consumers is essential for mastering content production. Content that makes a strong connection with the user will increase interaction and decrease bounce rate. Search engines identify the amount of time people spend on a website as well as their degree of involvement.

**Don't try to be too smart**. SEO is not a card game in which you must outwit your opponent. "Over-optimization" refers to age-old practices that aim to fool search engines, such as "link stuffing" and "content stuffing." Some tactics have shown to be useful in the past, but they were ultimately short-lived.

When done correctly, **keyword planning** may lead to SEO success. Finding the correct mix of keyword use and subject relevancy is critical to this accomplishment.

**Changing around the content** and presentation is an efficient technique to keep people's attention. A comprehensive set of information, including pictures, video, tables, and lists, will capture those viewers' attention.

Another critical part of developing an SEO-friendly website is organizing material in a **logical website structure**. Google's Search Console Help page "[Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guidance](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/beginner/seo-starter-guide)" offers a detailed guide on content organization.

## Structured Data with Semantic Markup

Well-written content is essential for SEO, as is well-written code that our browsers and search engines employ to comprehend information.

Many HTML elements have semantic meanings that aid translators in understanding and categorizing different sorts of information. As web developers, we sometimes feel helpless in the marketing-heavy realm of SEO, yet developing semantic markup is one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal.

Why write every HTML element as a div when we have a plethora of tags to distinguish various sorts of content? Some of the most useful semantic tags are listed below.

- Page headings
- Descriptions of pages
- Paragraphs
- Listings
- Article
- Section
- Headers
- Footers
- [and more](https://levelup.gitconnected.com/semantics-how-i-structure-html-without-divitis-dd0d376f193)

Again, it's critical to be as intelligent as possible while producing HTML. A healthy sprinkling of shared keywords in titles, descriptions, h1s, and h2s may go a long way. Titles and descriptions should be unique to each page and appropriate to the content.

**Structured data** is a modern data format that can be included in HTML pages and adheres to the [JSON-LD specification](https://json-ld.org/). As mentioned in "[Understand how structured data works](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/intro-structured-data)," search engines like Google read structured data to understand the content of the page as well as to gather information about the web and the world in general. Here's an easy example. [**Tweet a thanks**](https://twitter.com/SamuelSojin)

![structured data in seo](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/jjr0d5fow623y0z71kbz.png)

## Website Performance and Accessibility

Search engines will very certainly keep raising the bar for acceptable online standards. Google announced the start of its mobile-first indexing migration in 2018, and extended by promising mobile-first indexing for the whole web in 2020. User-centric measures such as web page performance and accessibility might have an influence on SEO.

The user journey is captured by website performance, which marks key points of the user experience. The performance parameters listed below are critical.

**First contentful paint** (FCP): the time between when the page begins to load and when any part of the page's content is rendered on the screen.

**Largest contentful paint** (LCP): the time it takes from the start of the page to produce the largest text block or picture element on the screen.

**First input delay** (FID): the time between when a user first interacts with your site (e.g., when they click a link, push a button, or utilize a custom, JavaScript-powered control) and when the browser is able to reply to that interaction.

**Time to Interactive** (TTI): the time it takes from when the page first loads to when it's visually displayed, its first scripts (if any) have loaded, and it can reliably respond to human interaction fast.

**Total blocking time **(TBT): the period of time between FCP and TTI during which the main thread was stalled long enough to inhibit input responsiveness.

**Cumulative layout shift** (CLS): calculates the sum of all unexpected layout shifts that occur between the time the page begins loading and the time its lifecycle state flips to hidden.

Another crucial consideration when developing a search engine optimized website is **website accessibility**. There are not only a variety of individuals viewing our websites, but also a range of machines, such as screen-readers. [**Tweet a thanks**](https://twitter.com/SamuelSojin)

## SEO Resources

We've looked at strategies to increase SEO in this piece, but how can we keep these standards up over time? Many tools are available to assist us in analyzing and monitoring SEO.

[Foo's Automated Lighthouse Check](https://www.foo.software/lighthouse) uses Lighthouse to monitor the quality of web pages. It offers comprehensive SEO, performance, and accessibility reporting. There are both free and paid options available.

![Foo's Automated Lighthouse Check](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ievbv3ct7vi8h8kxklf3.png)

[Google Search Console](https://search.google.com/) is essential for every website owner concerned with SEO. It gives information on which search phrases are gaining organic traffic as well as comprehensive analyses. You may filter by location, device, and other criteria.

## Closing

SEO is a difficult skill to perfect, but amid the fads that come and go throughout time, the most effective method should come naturally. Meaningful, well-formed content mixed with well-formed code supplied in a performant, user-friendly manner would undoubtedly placate the SEO deities. 

[Buy me one coffee](https://www.buymeacoffee.com/sojinsamuel) before you go.

Read More:

- [5 Proven ways to Solve any Coding Problems Like an Expert in 2022](https://dev.to/sojinsamuel/5-proven-ways-to-solve-any-coding-problems-like-an-expert-in-2022-1adh)
- [Why Website is Important for your Business Success and Failure](https://medium.com/p/860b3511fed)
- [Object Oriented Programming Principles Made Easy For 2022 Noobs](https://sojinsamuel.medium.com/object-oriented-programming-principles-made-easy-for-2022-noobs-f5cd88c960ae)

Sojin out!