Blog

Spring Approaches

Carl Setzer

underneath the sun
my soul lifted by it’s grace
as spring approaches

Took this photo on a recent walk. It’s been quite lovely the past few days here in Seattle. Though we still have a few days until spring officially begins, it’s presence is felt. And I’ve seen other signs of spring: trees, especially cherry trees, are starting to blossom. Winter’s grip, around here at least, seems to have weakened, perhaps even released. We can hope, at least.

How Search Engines Work: Crawling, Indexing, And Ranking

Carl Setzer
Winter quarter is finished! I just turned in my final project (JavaScript) and my brain is oozing onto the floor. Anyway, this quarter I took Intro To JavaScript, Systems Analysis and one I’m calling a catchall, “Joomla and Introduction To SEO”. Interestingly, this last class featured Amazon Web Services (AWS) heavily, and I’ll write about that, too. So, today I’ll explore more of my thoughts on SEO.
  • Crawling and Indexing:
    • Crawling sites is when a robot, for instance Googlebot, explores a webpage. One of the key problems with crawling and crawlers is simply whether they can find your page. There are some ways to push Google in this regard. One valuable way: you can tell Google how you want the page crawled via the Search Console. A related problem: keeping crawlers from indexing pages you don’t want indexed. Things like special landing pages, promo-code pages, pages for A-B testings and so forth. The tool for this is the robots.txt file which directs the bots on how you want the files analyzed.  Web developers also need to consider the crawl budget, which is the average number of pages the Googlebot will before moving onto another site. It is also important to utilize a clean information architecture and sitemaps.
    • Indexes are where search engines store and process the information found while crawling the internet. Just because a site can be crawled does not mean it will be indexed, or indexed the way you want. Robots can be instructed on this within the meta tags.
  • Matching Queries to Content
    • The goal of the search engine: provide the most relevant results to user queries. Their algorithm uses several things to determine that relevance. One of the main ways is backlinks. These links from other sites assert authority on the subject matter. PageRank is part of the Google core algorithm that analyzes link qualities. More natural backlinks are the most valuable. Other elements that Google considers: page clicks, time on the page, the bounce rate (percentage of user visits where they only viewed one page), and pogo-sticking (where the user goes right back to the Search Engine Results Page after visiting the target site. Additionally, for localized content, Google uses these elements to rank results: relevance, distance, and prominence. Things like Google Reviews and Citations are the biggest influencers of prominence.

Dancing with Sunlight

Carl Setzer

dancing with sunlight

moving across western skies

the motion of spring

Sunlight’s Travels

Carl Setzer

sunlight’s travels

an amazing journey

born from a star

Happy Saturday my friends.

Underneath Sunlight

Carl Setzer

underneath sunlight
springtime’s grace flows through the firs
still need my jacket

Today’s sunlight was very welcome. I’ve been fighting some kind of “bug” since Tuesday night. The worst was Wednesday, but I’m still lacking energy. I was able to get a walk in this after, and get plenty of school stuff done, but I’m now wiped out. I expect to be near 100% by tomorrow, though.

Thursday Morning

Carl Setzer

balancing beauty

droplets of blood on rose thorns

drawn by vanity

What are the seven steps to successful SEO?

Carl Setzer
SEO Graphic
  • “What are the seven steps to successful SEO?”
    • Successful SEO has seven key steps, per MOZ’s “Beginner’s Guide To SEO“. These are valuable ways to help your website be discoverable by new users by ranking high in Search Engine Results Pages.
      • Crawl accessibility so engines can read your website
        • Enabling search engines to find and index my site
      • Compelling content that answers the searchers query
        • The site needs to answer questions in an interesting and engaging way.
      • Keyword optimized to attract searchers & engines
        • Be thoughtful with the composition of the website so that relevant keywords are featured in the articles
      • Great user experience including a fast load speed and compelling UX
        • The site needs to be streamlined so that it loads quickly, yet also has an interesting and engaging design
      • Share-worthy content that earns links, citations, and amplification
        • Content that engages your audience enough that they feel compelled to share it.
      • Title, URL, and description to draw high Click-Through Rates in the rankings
        • Thoughtfully considering article titles, the site’s URL, and description to make it compelling to someone, seeing it in a search, is very interested in clicking on the link and coming to the page.
      • Snippet/scheme markup to stand out in SERPs
        • Make the additional comments that show up on the Search Results Page engaging and encouraging the viewer to click over to the site.

What is SEO?

Carl Setzer
SEO Graphic

This quarter I studied SEO techniques, mainly working off of Moz’s “Beginner’s Guide To SEO”. Let’s take a look at some of my main takeaways. Today, let’s start with the basics: What Is SEO?

  • SEO is otherwise known as Search Engine Optimization. Essentially, this is a technique to strategize your website’s content to place better in the search results of Google and Bing. This requires deeply understanding your target demographics, what they are interested in, what sorts of things they search for, how they search, and the way they structure their searches. Also, you need to understand how search engines work. They crawl the internet, creating indexes of the content they find. Ultimately, SEO is about creating better organic search results, as opposed to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns. SEO has 20 times more traffic opportunities than PPC (via both mobile and desktop). SEO also pays off over a longer time.

Edit: corrected the link to Moz’s “Beginner’s Guide To SEO”. 

A Good Morning Haiku

Carl Setzer

songbirds chattering

a feature of my morning

crocuses waking

I hope your Tuesday brings you closer to your goals.

Winter’s Motion

Carl Setzer

this winter’s motion
sunlight climbing through the sky
crocuses blooming