subject: Learning To Code Is Useful For Seo [print this page] One of the best ways for a beginner to understand how search engine optimization works is to learn how to create a website from scratch. Doing this helps one to acquire a more thorough grasp of the code that lies behind every web page, enabling one to discover just what it is that search robots see.
It is not too difficult to begin building web pages, as there are many books available on the topic and many free tutorials online. It is not even necessary to invest in any expensive web design software. In fact, that would defeat the point, which is to understand how HTML works, as more complex software writes the code for the user. These types of program, WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors, rely on the user moving items around on the page visually, while the code for the page is added automatically at a deeper level. Rather than bothering with these, a beginner can simply use a basic text editor such as Notepad.
Being able to read and understand HTML and to recognise how a web page is structured will reveal exactly which parts of the code are visible to search robots, and which parts of the page are given more weight. With practice, one could soon acquire enough knowledge to tweak a page manually in order to improve its search engine optimization, perhaps by making sure the right keywords were inserted inside title and heading tags. The Meta description, a part of the code which often appears as the text in search results, could easily be rewritten so that it represented a useful and relevant summary of the page.
Learning how to use CSS for styling pages, while not directly linked to improved search results, has a secondary effect by allowing the separation of content from appearance. This means that the HTML of a page can be written in a more concise and meaningful way, which is beneficial for SEO. Also, removing style rules from the HTML leaves a smaller file, which is quicker for search robots to crawl and faster to load for human web visitors.
Separating content from style allows greater flexibility in the way HTML is written, as the order of various content sections does not have to mirror their order of appearance on the page as viewed in a browser. This means that more significant content can be placed towards the top of the HTML code for a page, before navigation, where search engines will judge it as having more importance.
Once the necessary skills have been acquired to make a simple website, it can be instructive to alter various aspects in order to discover the effect on search engine ratings. Ordering and placement of keywords can make quite a difference to results, and this can be understood more readily when those changes can actually be observed.
At SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk we have a thorough knowledge of the code underlying web pages which we can use on your behalf to increase the performance of your website.
