The abbreviation SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. In other words, you improve your site to increase its visibility when people in Google, Bing, and other search engines for contents, products or services related to your website. The more visible your pages are in search results, the better you are more likely to attract attention and potential and win more visitors for your website.
A word upfront: Jekyll and the template JekyllOne supports SEO through several tools available as plugins. The later chapters of this tutorial discuss how plugins are used with the template system.
10 Minutes to read
All Chapters
Find here an overview on all chapters this tutorial:
You are here · What SEO Is
Factors of Success
Structured Data
Content Optimizations
How Search Engines Work
Search engines use socalled bots to crawl pages on the web. The term bot is short for (software-)robot, a program that performs automated, repetitive, pre-defined tasks for crawling a website. Crawling means the bots go from page to page to collect information and include them in an index. Imagine an index like a large central library in which a librarian places books (websites), so users can find just what they are looking for.
In further steps, algorithms analyze the pages in the index accounting for hundreds of ranking factors. These factors determine in what order and in what form the relevant pages in the Search Result Pages (SERPs) for a specific search query.
| Search engine results pages are the pages that a search engine returns in response to a searcher’s query. They include a mix of search results from organic searches, extra information generated by the engine provider like Rich Text Results, and paid results taken from advertisements. |
In the library analogy, the librarian has cataloged every single book and can thus tell readers precisely which title answers to contains the questions asked. Ranking factors can represent aspects of the user experience that are considered. Appreciate in this way, Searchbots show how well a website can give the searcher what they are looking for.
Search algorithms are designed to find relevant pages and provide users with an efficient search experience. Search engine providers are in fierce competition with each other. Optimizing your website and content can influence the algorithms to analyze your pages better and help you rank higher in search results. See your work on SEO as a win-win situation. As better algorithms can understand your pages, as better are the search results for the users.
How Important Is SEO for Internet Marketing?
SEO is a fundamental part of digital marketing. A search on the Internet using search engines is often the primary source of digital traffic for websites and complements other marketing channels. Greater visibility and ranking higher in search results than your competitors will significantly impact the visibility of your content and, therefore, your success.
The search results of search engine providers have developed significantly in recent years. A key goal of the improvements is to provide more direct answers and information to users, and searchers are more likely to stick to the search engine results page rather than directing them to other websites. The improvements in the search results include features such as Rich Results and Knowledge Panels, which increase the visibility of the results and direct users to the results pages that can provide information.
Overall, SEO is the foundation of a holistic marketing ecosystem. If you understand what your website users want, you can implement this knowledge in your campaigns (paid and organic), your website, social media properties, and more.
Who Should Learn SEO?
What people require knowledge in Digital Marketing? There are a lot of questions many of us using digital products ask once we consider learning Digital Marketing. SEO is a marketing practice that has numerous benefits for everyone, from visitors to websites to web developers to Internet Business Professionals. Learning to optimize websites is crucial to surviving in the current online business world. There is more fierce competition than ever in every field imaginable, and a website or blog that isn’t properly optimized will greatly hurt your business.
Career Opportunity
Learning about SEO is more than just helpful for promoting a business or increasing your online presence. It can also be a great career choice. With internet platforms' growing importance and popularity, SEO is a growing need for the internet industry. Experts for Search Engine Marketing (SEM) have many job opportunities.
| Search Engine Optimization is a great field with excellent pay and a growing marketing cap. SEO is a long-term investment, both for creators and owners. It will not have an instant result, but if you are patient and diligent, you can learn much from SEO. |
The industry is estimated to be worth over 100 billion dollars in 2023 and rapidly growing. Everyone uses the Internet, and search engineers rule our lives. Many brands want to gain organic traffic and users, which is only done through SEO techniques. Since it is a competitive field, regular SEO maintenance is needed, meaning experts are always on the job.
Give Yourselves A Try on SEO
Search Engine Optimization is part of SEM (Search Engine Marketing), a term used whenever all the different search marketing strategies are discussed. Marketing is a major determining factor for users of products and services for their selection.
All users of digital products, whether a professional in Internet Business or not, is quite often in the role of a user influenced by marketing strategies. The knowledge provided by this workshop can, in particular to normal users, help to understand how the offers of search engines are created, what rich text results like knowledge panels are, or what causes high positions in the search results. With this knowledge, every user of Internet Services can make better decisions by understanding the causes of why search results are ordered that way.
No Website available for trying SEO?
A Jekyll-based website on the Internet is recommended to run the workshop Learning SEO most efficiently. Create a new site in minutes if you need a website on the Internet created by Jekyll or J1. It’s easy to build a website using the template system J1 Theme and deploy in minutes using Netlify’s 1-Click Deployment.
Two service providers are required to run a 1-Click Deployment: Github and Netlify. The platforms provided by Github and Netlify are used to build and control the J1 website on the Internet. Both providers give full access to their services with no limits. Free services with no restrictions are only the case with some digital service providers. Therefore, I recommend these two service providers for entry into modern digital services.
If you do not already have accounts, sign up to be prepared for a 1-Click deployment:
| It is recommended to sign up for Github first. You can use the account data from Github to register on Netlify. |
The people on Netlify prepared a really easy process to bring a website live using a template like J1 on the Internet in minutes. This is magic but real.
| Clicking the button 1-Click Deployment opens a new window, a new tab in your browser. Check the article Rocketstart to find all the steps for this process in all details. To control the deployment process better, place the browser’s windows side-by-side. |
Start the magic:
Manage Your Website Locally
The 1-Click Deployment created a repository at Github for you. To be able to manage the website (you’ve deployed on Netlify) locally on your PC, some additional steps are needed to do so:
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installing a local development system
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cloning the repo of your web to a local project folder
The tutorial J1 in a Day discusses all the required steps. The following chapters from this tutorial explain how to install a local development system and how to manage a website from a local project folder:
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install a Development System
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the Project Management for local websites
Having fun managing your new Website for your work for Search Engine Optimization!
Summarized
A lot you’ve learned. Time to summarize what is behind you has worked on. The last chapter should help with that. Summarize section offers some handy sections to remember what has been presented in this chapter. And gives an outlook of what could be done next, an overview of all chapters of this tutorial, and useful links to learn more.
See all sections below:
Recap · What has been done, what’s explored in current section
What Next · Find to go further, what’s planned next
All Chapters · The full chain, all chapters
Further Reading · List of helpful links to get more
Recap
This first section briefly introduced Search Engine Optimization and how it works. one should be familiar with the general aspects of search engines and the base terms of SEO, such as ranking, result pages, or organic traffic. As the tutorial progresses, the relationships between search engines and SEO techniques will become more complex. Then it will be helpful to assign individual components or work steps to the technical terms.
Remember to consider the opportunities of knowing SEO. SEO may be a great career choice if you have fun analyzing web pages for marketing strategies.
What Next
Has the first section What SEO Is of the Learning SEO workshop sparked your interest in digital marketing topics? I hope you will learn more about the basics of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
The procedures of SEO are not rocket science. Knowing the basic techniques for optimizing search results is the key to becoming a real SEO expert. I encourage you to become an SEO expert for your own needs. In this way, you create the foundation for successful search engine marketing and a new exciting field for professional activity.
Start with the next chapter:
Go for Factors of Success.
All Chapters
Find here an overview on all chapters this tutorial:
You are here · What SEO Is
Factors of Success
Structured Data
Content Optimizations
Further Reading
Reading this chapter is not essential for working on the project first time. Additional links will be helpful to learn more. The references point to important sources of manufacturer documentation. Here you can find out all the possibilities what the products can offer. Experiences from others are extremely important when dealing with software and more complex projects. Links to other sites may answer common questions from the experience of professionals. Here you can think far outside the box of a project currently worked on.
Further links in the current section: