ptg16476052Workshop 70125
Remember that, as mentioned previously, this is not a way to get higher rankings. The
top search engine companies keep their paid search links divisions separate from their
organic search links.
Summary
In this lesson, you learned what SEO is and why it’s important to your website. You
learned about how SEO differs from social networking and got tips for doing your own
SEO. One of the key factors in doing SEO is to apply the rules that you’ve learned in the
earlier lessons in this book: write standards-based HTML, make your pages accessible,
put mobile design first, and make content the most important part of your web pages.
You learned that there is no fool-proof way to make your site appear in the number
one slot on Google or any other search engine, but there are several techniques you can
employ to improve your site for both your customers and search engines.
Workshop
As always, we wrap up the lesson with a few questions, quizzes, and exercises. Here are
some pointers and refreshers on how to promote your website.
Q&A
Q You mentioned analytics were important to SEO, but do I have to use Google
Analytics to be ranked well on the Google search engine?
A No, you are not required to use Google Analytics to rank well in Google search.
Just like their advertising division, this is a separate division of the company.
Google Analytics is a good analytics option that shows you a lot of information
about your site including SEO. But there are other options. Yahoo! offers a free
analytics tool called Yahoo! Web Analytics, and one of my favorite tools is Piwik,
which is open source and runs on your own server.
Q There are so many search engines! Do I have to add my URL to all of them?
A No, in fact, most search engines will ignore your submission if you are able to find
a submission form. They feel that the links they find through natural organic search
are more valuable because they better reflect how real customers might find your
site. So it’s better to focus on writing great content and getting others to link to you
than worrying about whether you’ve submitted a page to every search engine.