What is technical SEO?

You createdwebsite, posted useful and high-quality content on it, addedkeywords, selected based on carefulresearchNow you need to make sure that your site is visible to search engines. 

A business owner doesn't have to delve deeply into technical details, but it is important to understand the basics of the work, so to speak, the technical background, in order, firstly, to speak the same language with developers whose help may be needed to optimize the site, and secondly, to understand what is happening in the process and whether the process is going in the right direction.

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To understand how search engines see your site and how to configure it

technical optimization for SEO, we will consider three main questions:

• how sites work;
• how search engines see sites;
• what happens when a user interacts with the site.

How do websites work?

Let's talk about how the site works from the moment of purchasedomainbefore it is displayed in the browser. It is also important to understand how the rendering process works, or how the browser converts HTML code into a visual representation of the page. Because:

• First, the speed of page conversion affects the loading time of the site. And it is important both for the user, who will not wait long for the page to open. And for the ranking of the site by the search engine. Fast sites are ranked better. Here it is also worth paying attention to the choice of high-qualityhosting, which also significantly affects page loading speed.
• Secondly, Google scans sites in several stages. And, for example, JavaScript elements are not scanned the first time, they may be noticed after a few days. That is. important for SEO elements added using JavaScript may not be indexed immediately.

Where does it all begin?

You chose and boughtdomain namethat best suits your type of activity.

It is important to know that the Internet does not accept the usual verbal representations of site names, such as, for example,INFO.NIC.UA. Such names are convenient for better memorization. In the network, information is transmitted using a system of numbers and characters. Therefore, each domain name is tied to an IP address - a unique set of numbers, which is called the Internet Protocol address - IP. These addresses look like this: 145.0.1.2. To link names and digital codes that we can easily read, DNS is used - the domain name system. This is a computer distributed system for obtaining information about domains. Or, to put it simply, an analogue of a phone book, where a name corresponds to a certain number. 

How does a website get from the server to the browser?

1.  The user enters a domain name or keyword query into the search bar.
2.  The browser makes a request. Since names are associated with a numeric code - an IP address, the system requests the desired resource through DNS. The browser then requests the server for the code on which the page is based - HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
3.  Upon receiving a request, the server sends the site's files, which are parsed, organized, and assembled in the search engine's browser, creating a Document Object Model (DOM). You can see it by right-clicking on the page and selecting "View Page Source."

4. A process called rendering occurs – the code is converted into an image. 

What does the site consist of?

Here we will talk about the programming languages ​​used to create a website page. The three most common are:

• HTML is a markup language. It is what a website says. It's the headings, subheadings, and text.
• CSS is a language for describing the appearance of a page. Color, fonts, style, block arrangement. 
• JavaScript is an interaction language. It determines how a website behaves. This includes feedback when you click buttons, entering data into forms, dynamic styles, animations, and games.

Let's talk about each language in more detail.

HTML – what the site is about?

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. This language is the foundation of a website, as it defines its basic elements and structure: text, paragraphs, headings, lists.

The page with HTML code looks like this:

When working with SEO, it is important to understand how HTML works. It is the basis and filling of every website. Adding and changing something on the site, its HTML code also changes. Most likely, when adding a link to the site, you will not write “a href=”. CMS is a content management system for the site, which simplifies this process. But understanding how the car you are going to drive works is definitely worth it.

When a user queries, Google scans HTML elements to determine whether a page is relevant to that query. So, the content of your HTML affects where your page ranks.sitein organic search.

CSS – how the site looks?

The abbreviation CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. They are used to define the appearance of website pages. Fonts, colors, layouts – everything that makes a page more interesting, brighter, more noticeable, makes it unique. All this can be written using HTML, but it would be a very long, complicated and time-consuming process.

What is CSS good for and how does it help SEO?

• The ability to store style directives in external style sheet files – CSS files – makes pages lighter and speeds up loading times, which is one of the ranking factors.
• If a page contains more content than code, it is better indexed by search engines. 

It is worth noting here that using CSS to hide links and content, which is sometimes used for better site indexing, can lead to penalties and removal from Google's index.

JavaScript – how the site behaves?

Programming languages ​​reflect the evolution of website creation capabilities. At the dawn of the Internet, websites were created exclusively using HTML. They were simple text pages. The advent of CSS added color and style to them. JavaScript added interactivity and dynamism. Pop-ups, displaying ad units, the ability to open additional content when you read to the end of the page, likes, notifications of new messages, etc. Everything that creates a process of interaction with the client.

JavaScript can create some difficulties for SEO, because most of its functions are already performed in the user's browser. Important SEO elements configured with JavaScript are already loaded in the user's browser, i.e. not represented in the HTML and invisible in the page code until the moment of loading. Therefore, search engine crawlers will not see this information, at least not at first.

To check if Googlebot can see your site's pages, you can use Google Search Console. For more information on how to understand if search engines can see your site, see our articlematerial.

Resume

Understanding how a website works is the foundation for technical optimization, which will help search engines see and correctly rank your website pages. In the next article, we will talk about how search engines see websites and what happens when a user interacts with a website.

And we remind you: while developing your business and working on optimizing your site, don't forget about your safety and that of your customers. Registration will ensure this.trademark(TM) and SSL certificateThese and other products and services can be found atNIC.UA.