{"id":50,"date":"2023-06-07T18:52:25","date_gmt":"2023-06-07T18:52:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hdplugins.com\/?post_type=documentation&p=50"},"modified":"2026-01-26T12:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-26T17:48:08","slug":"all-about-seo","status":"publish","type":"documentation","link":"https:\/\/hdplugins.com\/learn\/web-development\/all-about-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"All About SEO"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization<\/strong>, and at its core, is all about increasing traffic<\/strong> to your site from search engines<\/strong>. SEO encompasses many aspects of your online presence, including the code and content of your website, your social media accounts, incoming backlinks, and even how your visitors are using and interacting<\/strong> with your site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If you build it, they will come<\/p>\nField of Dreams was a lie!<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

This article will go over the various facets of SEO, and how they affect your overall site\u2019s ranking, traffic, and conversion rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On-Page SEO<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On-Page SEO is primarily about two things: The way your site is coded and structured, and the words that your site says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The way a website is coded will have drastic effects on how well your site performs and ranks in search engines such as Google. A well-coded site will achieve two goals, the latter of which will be discussed in a later section.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A well coded and optimized website makes it easier for search engines to index and understand<\/em> <\/strong>the site and its content. This is crucial<\/strong> to ranking well and serves as the foundation that all SEO is built upon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No matter how much money you throw at an SEO campaign, if a search engine like Google can\u2019t properly index your site, or otherwise cannot determine which content is relevant, you will not rank well. This is why properly structuring your pages and content is so important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Proper Content Structure<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Think of each page on your website as a school course and textbook.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you were to take a class called \u201cIntro to Biology<\/em>\u201c, the name of that class gives you a pretty good indicator of what you can expect to learn in that class. This is the name\/title of your website. Now you get your textbook, and the textbook is called \u201cBiology 101: A beginners guide to high school biology<\/em>\u201c. Great; this reaffirms what we can expect to learn in this class and adds some specificity. This would be the name\/title of one of your pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now you open up your textbook and see that it\u2019s broken down into chapters, and each chapter is broken down into subsections and headings. Important terms are highlighted in bold or italicized to designate that they are important terms. You get the picture. Your website and each page need to be structured similarly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By properly structuring your content<\/strong>, you are taking away the guesswork that search engines have to do in order to prioritize and categorize your content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Words Matter<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words have meaning and matter.<\/p>\nDylan – Harmonic Design<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

We live in an amazing world full of machine learning, digital assistants, and wearable smart devices. These devices have become so good at predicting our needs and intentions that it can sometimes feel like they can actually read our minds! But they can\u2019t. The output of any<\/em> system is limited by the data you input. On a website, the content \u2013 the words you write \u2013 are the input.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s imagine that you own a music store and sell guitars, offer repairs, and have a dedicated staff of teachers at the ready to train the next generation of rock stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You know, exactly like this<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If you want to show up in search results for \u201cMusic lessons near me\u201d or \u201cguitar lessons\u201d, then you\u2019ll need to have relevant, quality written and optimized content on your site. If nowhere on your site do you ever mention that you offer lessons, then how is Google supposed to know that you do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On top of that, offering guitar lessons is something local<\/em> \u2013 IE something that only customers in your city would be interested in. Search engines know where a user is making the search from, and tries to prioritize results from business\u2019 in the same area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is why if you are in Toronto and search for \u201cguitar lessons\u201d, Google doesn\u2019t return results for business\u2019 in London. Because of this, it is important that the content of your website also references your location, and that your Google My Business<\/a> account is properly formatted for local SEO as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Off Page SEO<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Off-Page SEO comes down to determining how popular your website is. Let\u2019s imagine that you are a dentist in Hamilton, and you have a well-coded and optimized site with fantastic and relevant content. The problem is that your competition also<\/em> has a well-designed and coded site with great content. So, how do search engines decide on which site ranks higher?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To go back to the high school analogy, well, the answer is popularity<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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SEO is pretty fetch<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The idea is that if website A is more popular than website B, then users must prefer something<\/em> about it more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Search engines determine a website\u2019s popularity through two methods. The first is how many backlinks a site has, and the second is through user experience<\/strong> metrics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Backlinks<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A backlink is any link from another website, linking back to yours \u2013 but not all backlinks are created equally<\/strong>. Here are some of the more important factors that determine the worth of a single backlink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n