SEO For Dummies®, 7th Edition
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Trademarks: Wiley, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: THE PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS WORK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. NO WARRANTY MAY BE CREATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES OR PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS. THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CONTAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR EVERY SITUATION. THIS WORK IS SOLD WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE PUBLISHER IS NOT ENGAGED IN RENDERING LEGAL, ACCOUNTING, OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES. IF PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE IS REQUIRED, THE SERVICES OF A COMPETENT PROFESSIONAL PERSON SHOULD BE SOUGHT. NEITHER THE PUBLISHER NOR THE AUTHOR SHALL BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES ARISING HEREFROM. THE FACT THAT AN ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE IS REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK AS A CITATION AND/OR A POTENTIAL SOURCE OF FURTHER INFORMATION DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE AUTHOR OR THE PUBLISHER ENDORSES THE INFORMATION THE ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE MAY PROVIDE OR RECOMMENDATIONS IT MAY MAKE. FURTHER, READERS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT INTERNET WEBSITES LISTED IN THIS WORK MAY HAVE CHANGED OR DISAPPEARED BETWEEN WHEN THIS WORK WAS WRITTEN AND WHEN IT IS READ.
For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002. For technical support, please visit https://hub.wiley.com/community/support/dummies.
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019918161
ISBN 978-1-119-57957-1 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-57959-5 (ePDF); ISBN 978-1-119-57960-1 (epub)
Welcome to SEO For Dummies, 7th Edition. What on earth would you want this book for? Can’t you just build a website and let your web designer get the site into the search engines? All web designers and web design firms say they can do that for you, after all. Or can’t you simply pay someone to do a little SEO work for you? SEO firms and consultants are as common as beer vendors at a baseball game. If you have a website and you’re not getting emails from SEO companies, you’re in a tiny minority!
Well, unfortunately, it’s not that simple. (Okay, fortunately for me, because if it were simple, Wiley wouldn’t pay me to write this book.) The fact is that search engine optimization is a little complicated. Not brain surgery complicated, but not as easy as “Sure, we’ll do the SEO when we build your site.” (No, you can’t trust your web developer to do this for you; they all offer the service, but very few understand SEO! In fact, web designers and developers hate it and only offer the service because all the competition claims to provide it.)
The vast majority of websites don’t have a chance in the search engines. Why? Because of simple mistakes. Because they trust firms that shouldn’t be trusted. Because the people creating the sites don’t have a clue what they should do to make the site easy for search engines to work with. Because they don’t understand the role of links pointing to their site, and because they’ve never thought about keywords. Because, because, because. This book helps you deal with those because and gets you not just one, but dozens, of steps ahead of the average website Joe.
This book demystifies the world of search engines. You find out what you need to do to give your site the best possible chance to rank well in the search engines.
In this book, I show you how to
I don’t want to assume anything, but I have to believe that if you’re reading this book, you already know a few things about the Internet and search engines. I presume that you
Of course, for a book like this, I have to assume a little. This is a book about how to get your website to rank well in the search engines. I have to assume that you know how to create and work with a site or at least know someone who can create and work with a site. In particular, you (or the other person) must know how to
There are many ways to create websites these days. You may be creating the site by hand, writing the HTML directly—but probably not. These days, you’re more likely to be using some kind of content management tool, a system that manages page creation for you, insulating you from the underlying HTML to a great degree; a tool such as WordPress or another “blogging” system, or Drupal, or an ecommerce system, such as X-Cart, Volusion, or BigCommerce.
That’s fine. Most such systems these days take SEO into consideration and provide tools to help you optimize your site (though not all do!). Still, you need to know at least a little about HTML; when I refer to a <TITLE> tag or meta tags, or whatever, you’ll understand what I’m talking about. I don’t go into a lot of complicated code in this book; this isn’t a primer on HTML. But to do search engine work, you (or someone on your team) need to know what a <TITLE> tag is, for instance, and how to insert it into a page, either directly or using the content-management system’s tools; how to recognize JavaScript (though not how to create or modify it); perhaps, depending on the tools you are using, how to open a web page in a text editor and modify it; and so on. So a little basic HTML knowledge is handy to optimize a site for the search engines. If you need more information about HTML, take a look at Beginning HTML5 and CSS3 For Dummies, 5th Edition, by Ed Tittel and Chris Minnick (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).
This book, like all For Dummies books, uses icons to highlight certain paragraphs and to alert you to particularly useful information. Here’s a rundown of what those icons mean:
A Tip icon means I’m giving you an extra snippet of information that may help you on your way or provide some additional insight into the concepts being discussed.
The Remember icon points out information that is worth committing to memory.
The Technical Stuff icon indicates geeky stuff that you can skip if you really want to, although you may want to read it if you’re the kind of person who likes to have the background info.
The Warning icon helps you stay out of trouble. It’s intended to grab your attention to help you avoid a pitfall that may harm your website or business.
In addition to what you’re reading right now, this product also comes with a free access-anywhere Cheat Sheet with fingertip facts about search engine optimization. To get this Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and search for “SEO For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.
At www.SearchEngineBulletin.com, you find all the links in this book (so that you don’t have to type them!). You’ll also find additional useful information that didn’t make it into the book.
Part 1
IN THIS PART …
Understanding how search engines work
Deciphering search results
Connecting your pages to search engines
Evaluating your competition
Making your site friendly for visitors and search engines