Create Websites with CHEETAH
Thinking about SEO (1)
As soon as you want your painstakingly created website to be found natively in search engines such as Google or Bing, i.e. without additional paid or unpaid advertising in social networks, you can no longer avoid the topic of "search engine optimization" (SEO). And with this, we enter a complex and also highly competitive field, because every website operator ultimately wants to land on the first results page of Google for certain search terms or phrases, if possible, in order to generate traffic for their website. Because it is like this:
A website that is not found by potential customers is a non-existent website and all the efforts you have put into it do not pay off...
Therefore, one of the most important priorities is to design the website or the web pages that build it (because this is essentially what optimization is for) in such a way that they are as far "ahead" as possible in the search results for certain search terms ("keywords") - preferably on the first results page. Because only a very good position ensures that your web pages also receive many visitors interested in the search term. And more visitors also means more sales for sales pages...
How search engines work and which algorithms they use to rank websites is one of the trade secrets of their operators. The paradigms according to which they work have also changed over time. Today, for example, the content and the associated benefits of a website are in the foreground when it comes to its evaluation and thus its ranking.
In short, SEO is a real challenge that you have to face as a web designer. It is always possible to adjust a website in terms of SEO afterwards or to have it optimized by an experienced SEO agency for an appropriate fee. But it is better if you are familiar with the most important basic principles of search engine optimization yourself, know how to use the appropriate tools and always make sure to carry out the necessary OnPage optimizations already during the development of the web pages (and not to postpone them further and further to the "back").
Note: SEO optimizations usually only have an effect on ranking results in the medium and long term (i.e. weeks and months). Therefore, patience is required here. It also depends very much on the keywords for which you optimize. For example, if they have only a low search volume, then of course only a few visitors will be generated.
Of course, this chapter can only touch on some aspects of search engine optimization. But if you take them to heart, it should have a great impact on the ranking of your web pages created with "Cheetah". And if you are serious about the topic, you will find instructions and suggestions in large numbers on the Internet. But please use only up-to-date instructions, because search engine operators often make changes in their algorithms, which has often resulted in a "crash" of a previously highly ranked website. This is because website optimization is not a business that, once you have achieved a good rank, you can simply leave to your own devices. You have to constantly check, change and adapt your website to new ranking paradigms if you want to be successful over a long period of time. And there are always competitors doing everything they can to take or outrank your place in the results list...
OnPage optimization
This book can only deal with the so-called "OnPage Optimization" of websites. This usually refers to all the measures that web designers can take themselves to optimize the content and structure of a website so that the search engine crawlers index the pages in such a way that they appear as high up as possible in the results lists for the selected keywords. All these measures should be constantly kept in mind during the web design and regularly checked by means of special programs. This brings us to the topic of "tools" for search engine optimization.