SEO-Optimized Website

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So you are a web developer and built a fantastic website to showcase something to the world.

But unfortunately, nobody is coming to your website :/. Nowadays, as people surf the web, they rely heavily on search engines like Google to discover something.

And most of the time, people only care about the top search results. So, if your website is not on the first page of Google, nobody will notice you. Some people say

The best place to hide a dead body is the second page of Google search results

So today, we will see which factors impact the ranking of your website on the Google search engine.

Basics

Nobody will even find that after you put your website on the web. First, you have to register your website on Google's search console.

Google
Search the world's information, including webpages, images, videos, and more. Google has many special features to help…search.google.com

Then Google will be aware of the existence of your website. After some time, a robot (GoogleBot) will visit your website to gather information about various pages.

After the information is collected, google will use its infamous algorithm to determine the ranking of your website based on various metrics.

So it's your responsibility to make it easy for Google to find out what your website is all about.

Alt Properties for Images

So You have an excellent website with lots of fantastic images to appeal to your users. You are damn sure that your users are going to love those.

<img src = "some_url" />

But Google Bots don't care about your images because they simply can't see them. So what do you do?

You have to provide an alt property for each of your image tags. It should explain what the image is all about.

<img src="some_url" alt ="Profile photo of Mohammad Faisal" />

So when google bot's come to your page, they will read the alt property and try to understand the content of your website.

Proper Meta Tags

Another essential part of an SEO-friendly website is the use of proper meta tags. So what are meta tags?

Sometimes the content of your page isn't enough to understand the whole picture. For example, if your page is about a song, where do you put the additional information about the author, show, price, etc.?

Or how can you make sure that when your page is shared on social media, it will have the proper preview?

Meta tags are simply a concise way to summarize the content of your webpage and provide some additional information.

For example, NextJS you can add the meta tags like the following

<Head>
    <title>SEO Demo with NextJS</title>
    <meta
      name="description"
      content="This is an application to demo the seo features of NextJS"
    />
    <meta name="og:title" content="SEO Demo with NextJS" />
    <link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico" />
</Head>

So when Google bot's come to your page, they will try to read these meta tags to understand more about the page's content.

Performance

Another critical metric is the performance of your application. Which means how fast your page loads. Because there is a specific time limitation on how much the google bot will wait for the page to become responsive.

So if your website is super slow, then google Bots will leave the page before indexing anything, which is not good news for you.

You can measure the performance of your website for free (mostly)

6 Free Websites to Test the Performance of Your Web Application
Find problems and learn the best practices for free!javascript.plainenglish.io

So test your website before putting it out on the web and find out if there are any apparent issues with the site.

Mobile Friendliness

Mobile-friendliness is another crucial factor in terms of SEO. Because most people are on their mobile devices when searching for something.

This is why Google has adopted a mobile-first indexing strategy to produce better results for the users.

You can check if your website is mobile-friendly or not from the following link. Just paste the link on any page, and Google will produce a result for you.

Mobile-Friendly Test - Google Search Console
Is your web page mobile-friendly? Test how easily a visitor can use your page on a mobile device. Just enter a page URL…search.google.com

Make sure to check your website before putting it out to the world.

SSL Certificate

Security is a big concern these days. People are more aware and educated about security. And Google also takes it seriously when indexing any website.

[http://yourwebsite.com](http://yourwebsite.com).  <---- insecure

[https://yourwebsite.com](https://yourwebsite.com)  <----- secure

Notice at the beginning of the URL if there is https , then it means http secure . So you should always serve your content over https

One effortless way to improve the security of your website is to use an SSL certificate for your website. And some free services do that as well (If you don't want to spend money) Like Let’s Encrypt is an outstanding free service.

Let's Encrypt
Let's Encrypt is a free, automated, and open certificate authority brought to you by the nonprofit Internet Security…letsencrypt.org

The caveat is the certificate has to be renewed every three months. But the process is mostly straightforward.

So run a security analysis on your website first.

Actual Content

I have kept this as the last point because no matter what you do with your meta tags or images, it's the content that matters most, so you have to have good valuable content on your page so that people come to your website.

Otherwise, everything else is meaningless. But unfortunately, I can't tell you what to put on your website. That depend's on you :P

Final thoughts

SEO is a really important part of your website so you just can’t overlook it. These are some primary tools that you can use to improve the SEO performance of your application. But you should dig deeper.

Have a great day! :D

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