Better SEO? What does that mean?

While I have been browsing the network, I have found many requests of people looking for "SEO experts" for their websites. But exactly, what does is having a better SEO mean? I will try to answer this question and to explain my view.

Currently, I manage no less than 5 websites and I can proudly say that I got enough traffic on some of them with the correct keywords. However, I will recognize that this is not enough. Until I get enough traffic and enough conversion rate, I can not say I get what I want.

Better SEO does not mean to have more incoming traffic

Having incoming organic traffic is good! If you get it you are almost halfway. What I mean is, that the incoming traffic is not good if you can not monetize it. If my website is selling chocolate cakes  and people don't buy then something is wrong.

SEO is to know how to Write

It is well known that google will read your web page, and it will index it based on its contents. So, the first thing you will need to know is to choose the correct keywords to use. Choosing a good set of keywords it is not a systematic thing, it is more an art. If I am selling chocolate cakes, of course, my first keyword will be "chocolate cake" but there is more. I can choose "cacao cakes", "chocolate diet cakes" and many others. Choosing the correct set will help you to have the proper traffic of people who is looking things you offer.

More than that, getting the correct set of keywords is not enough. Using them correctly is as important as getting it. For example, first tip: using keywords in the beginning of a paragraph or a title will boost your rank. For example, "Chocolate cakes are done with the best milk in town" will get a better rank than "We are using the best milk in town for our chocolate cakes". Both sentences have the same meaning, but in terms of SEO, the first one will have the preference.

As I was reading a study, articles longer than 1500 words will have a better rank.

SEO is to know how to Optimize your Servers

Not only having a good writing is enough. As always, Google will give a better rank to faster servers. Don't worry, you don't need to waste money in huge servers to have this. This can be done by knowing what to do.

There are several caching techniques you can use in order to speed things up. Regardless the technology you are using, you can do the following:

• Inverse HTTP Proxy caching
• Shared memory caching
• Local browser caching

There are other techniques, not related to caching that will help you. Such as:

• Content Delivery Network
• Image size optimization
• Code minimization
• PHP configuration

I will talk about then and link them later.

SEO is to know how to Use the HTML Tags

And I am talking specifically about the meta tags. The correct use of the <title>, <H1>, <H2>, <H3> and description meta tag is crucial. The content of this tags will allow Google to index your keywords properly.

Talking about speed, the correct use of the script and style tags will help. You can always put all the Javascript and CSS code hard coded in the page. But if you refer it to an external file, it will take advantage of the local browser cache in first place. 

Specifically speaking about the <script> tag, you can use the async and defer flags. If you don't use them, the browser will execute the javascript code when it finds it. The page render will be held until that code is finished; by using the async flag it will allow the browser to execute it in the background in an asynchronous mode; by using the defer flag, it will tell the browser to continue the page render and it will execute the javascript code at the end. Not all codes are async or defer compatible, so it is up to you to know when to apply them.

If you are going to load a long CSS sheet, you can use the <link> tag to point the external file, and use the <style> tag to include a short subset of it. Short enough to allow the correct render of the page.

When talking about images, using the alt property is more than important. This tag allows you to be indexed not only by text but by your image. More important, it is not to use resized images. The browser can resize them for you, but this takes CPU time and as a consequence it slows down your page rendering.

There are many other techniques to optimize your SEO using the HTML code properly. I will talk about them later.

SEO is to know how to Organize your WEB Page

And maybe this is the most important if we are talking about monetizing. In one of my jobs in Mexico, there was a study done where they state that having a menu deeper than 2 levels is useless and drives to nothing. So, whatever it is your website menu structure, don't make it deeper. Things should be handy.