robots.txt, security.txt, sitemap.xml, sitemap.html

Introduction

SEO stands for search engine optimization, which is a set of practices assigned to improve the appearence and positioning of webpages in organic search engines.

Practices in SEO recommended by Google for Google’s search engine can be categorized as:

• On Page SEO
• Off Page SEO
• Technical SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is exceeded only by your willingness to execute and test concepts.

Maslow's hierarchy is a theory of psychology that prioritizes the most fundamental human needs (like air, water, and physical safety) over more advanced needs (like esteem and social belonging). The theory is that you can't achieve the needs at the top without ensuring the more fundamental needs are met first. Love doesn't matter if you don't have food.

As a beginner one should make sure the website is:

1. Crawl accessibility so engines can read your website
2. Compelling content that answers the searcher’s query
3. Keyword optimized to attract searchers & engines
4. Great user experience including a fast load speed and compelling UX
5. Share-worthy content that earns links, citations, and amplification
6. Title, URL, & description to draw high CTR in the rankings
7. Snippet/schema markup to stand out in SERPs

Gather Your SEO Data

Data is everywhere in SEO, from visitor analytics to keyword research, and especially link building. Your most important data is going to come from your website itself.

Data requires data sources so make sure you atleast have these basic ones set up:

• Install Analytics: Web analytics gives you information about who visits your site, how much traffic you receive and from where, what pages people visit, how they engage with your content, and more.
• Register with search engines: Search engines like Bing and Google offer a wealth of information about your website that you simply can’t get anywhere else. This data often includes the keywords you rank for in search, how each search engine crawls your site and more.

<aside> ⚠️ To be clear, registering your site with search engines doesn’t necessarily get you more traffic, but it can give you access to special tools to help you get there.

</aside>

• Run a Crawl: Run a crawl of your website in order to highlight SEO issues that may not be obvious. This will also help you see your site like a search engine does.

Check How Your Site Is Indexed

To be eligible to show up in search results, the pages of your site first must be “indexed” by search engines.

Indexing basically means a search engine has crawled a page and made a record of its content.

The simplest way to check if a site or page is indexed is to perform a site: search. This works for both Google and Bing.

If you find your site isn’t indexed, there are typically a few reasons for that:

• It takes time for search engines to crawl and index sites, so new sites or pages may not show up right away.
• Spam, non-original, or low-value content may be excluded by search engines by default.
• The page isn’t crawlable and/or doesn’t return a 200 status code.
• Robots meta directive doesn’t allow indexing.
• Page is blocked by robots.txt.
• Page isn’t listed in the sitemap file.