What Is SEO? – Core Website Design
Making SEO work for you is all about getting your ducks in a row. There are a series of steps you need to progress through, to make sure that your website qualifies to rank well in Google. The first of these is your Core Website Design.
Websites are built using html code, php, asp etc. Whatever version of language your website uses, it needs to meet a minimum requirement otherwise all your time and effort optimizing your site will be wasted.
There are a myriad of ways you can quite accidentally harm your efforts to rank. Google especially has a defined range of requirements that it wants to see…… you can read more about them here
For SEO purposes, you need to know if your web design is search engine friendly or not. The easiest way of doing this is to Google your exact URL (www.yoururl.com). If your site is included in Googles main index, your site will appear as the top result. The top result should be your home page, followed by your other website pages.
This is where your website needs to be positioned….. it is your first website goal
If your website doesn’t rank as the top result then your core website design structure may have some problems, Google penalties or readability issues which need to be addressed before you continue with any other SEO activities.
What do Google want to see?
If you do see your website home page listed as the first result in Google then you can be confident that at very least, your site meets a minimal level of compatibility and isn’t being penalised in Google SERP’s.
Google doesn’t include all of the web pages it crawls…… in fact, there are literally billions that it ignores, excludes or removes, based on an ever changing list of strict criteria. For example, if your content is not original (exists elsewhere on older pages), or is considered low value then they won’t even give you a chance of ranking, let alone getting to the top.
If you are happy that your site is included in Google’s index and is at least visible in SERP’s (Search Engine Rank Positions) for your URL then you can proceed to step 2… website structure & navigation