Hello and welcome to this course. You will learn about the technical optimizations needed for a good ranking in search engine results.
Familiarize Yourself With the Lesson Plan
This course is divided into four distinct parts, each made up of several chapters. Although they function independently, I suggest that you study the first two parts in order. They cover the essentials of website optimization.
Correct technical errors to improve the crawlability of a site.
Increase the speed of a site.
Optimize the SEO of a site built in JavaScript.
Optimize the SEO of a multilingual site.
At the end of each part, you can practice by taking a quiz or doing an activity. When you have completed the whole course, you will receive a certificate of achievement! 💪
Feel free to go at your own pace. To help you along, each chapter has an introductory video with accompanying text. The videos recap the key points or go into the more complicated aspects of the course in greater detail. The text below the videos offers concrete examples, explanations, and anecdotes.
Examples
There are dozens of different web technologies: languages such as PHP, JavaScript, Ruby, or server technologies such as Nginx or Apache. So, it is impossible to provide sample code for all of them.
Therefore, we have chosen examples for the most-used technologies:
PHP and JavaScript for web languages.
Apache for server software, because it is the most common among hosts.
Wordpress CMS (represents 60% of the CMS market in 2019).
However, the basic principles remain the same, and if you understand them, you will only have to find the corresponding syntax.
Topics That Will not Be Covered
You will face other challenges as an SEO expert. However, more experienced IT people with years of experience usually handle them. The actions below can impact your ranking in search engines, or even make your website completely unfindable if not done correctly.
This is particularly true for changes in design, architecture, or domain name. These changes are not trivial. For example, links point to a specific domain, and if you change the name, it won't be transferred to the new one.
Before you take that step, think about the impact on your business. Here are some quick tips:
You must retain ownership of the old domain.
Do not leave pages with 404 error messages and/or anticipate 301 redirects before migrating the website.
Do not make several changes to your site at once. Do them in several steps, giving Google time to record the changes.
If possible, practice on small websites before taking on large projects.
Put Your Skills to Use
No Better Practice Than Doing
Don't worry about finishing as quickly as possible. Take advantage of the benefits of online courses, which allow you to go at your own pace. Reflect on the advice given, and apply what you learn to your own personal or professional project!
You won't get all the benefits of this course if you don't practice. Take the time at the end of each part to test your knowledge with a quiz or activity, and then apply what you have learned.
Regular Practice Is Key to Success
Study and practice regularly to make the most of this course!
It is better to do a chapter a day and take a short break between each part to practice what you learned than to do everything in one day and not practice for two weeks.
Why This Course Focuses on Google and Googlebot.
As with the course Boost Your Traffic With SEO, we will focus primarily on Google. It is the search engine with the largest market share, as well as being one of the most sophisticated and technically advanced.
The advantage of starting with Google is that optimization for other search engines will be simplified. Who can do the most, can do the least! Optimizing for Google will encourage you to improve the quality of the content as well as the more technical aspects of your site. Once that is done, you will have a head start with other search engines.
In this course, we will talk mainly about Googlebot, the Google search engine robot for exploring and indexing the pages on your website. It's also called Google Spider.
How often does Googlebot visit my website?
It all depends on your site and how important it is to Google. The more they value you, the more they will visit your site! Google uses algorithms to decide the frequency of visits and the number of pages indexed each time. However, they don't share them. The Search Console shows when a Googlebot has passed, but you can’t predict when the next time will be!
Let's Recap!
You should know web development and SEO to take full advantage of everything in this course.
Each chapter includes a video and detailed explanations in the form of text.
You will get more out of this course if you have a project to test the concepts and practice regularly!
Googlebot is Google's search engine robot. It explores and indexes the pages on your website.
Now, we are ready to start. :D
