1. SEO for
Engineers
Search Engine Optimization for People Who Know What return
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By Cort Tafoya
2. SEO for Developers
1. UX
2. Webmaster Tools
3. HTML and URLs
4. Tools and Best Practices
5. Hackers
Table of Contents
3. Why Care?
1. Engineering Job Ads Now Count SEO Knowledge as a Bonus or
Required Skill
2. Essential for Working at Startups
3. Improves Your Web Users’ Experience
4. Increases Web Traffic and Customer Acquisition
5. Improves Your Product If Your Website Is Your Product
SEO - Who Gives a F**K
4. 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
6. 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
7. 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
8. 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
9. 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
10. 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
1. User Experience
11. Plan Your Website: Flat Architecture is Best for Search
Engines
Source: “Why You Lose if You Skip Planning a Website.”
1. User Experience
13. For the Love of God, Just Do It
Add your website to Webmaster tools while signed into your Gmail account
2. Webmaster Tools
14. Just Do It
There are various
methods of verification:
Uploading HTML Files,
syncing your Google
Analytics or inserting
an HTML Tag in
your homepage header
2. Webmaster Tools
16. Stuff You’ll See in Webmaster Tools
Potential crawl errors, non indexed URLs, options to submit sitemaps
2. Webmaster Tools
17. Sitemap Data
If there are crawl errors and warnings, Webmaster Tools will provide
directions on how to fix all outstanding issues
2. Webmaster Tools
18. What Else to Look For in Your Dashboard
1. Page speed issues?
2. HTML improvements?
3. Security issues?
2. Webmaster Tools
20. Submit Image Sitemaps, Apply Image SEO
1. 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
image
Example of an image sitemap file via http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
2. Webmaster Tools
21. PageSpeed Insights: Examples
2. Webmaster Tools
1. No one likes a render
blocker
2. Optimize CSS delivery
3. Compress image files
28. 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
29. 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
30. What Are Schema Tags?
Example via Schema.org
3. HTML and URLs
31. 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
32. 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
33. 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
34. 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
38. 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
Bonus: Optimizing Mobile Pages