Technical SEO Flashcards
Why is cross-team support in SEO important?
Maintaining a healthy relationship between SEOs and developers is vital to successfully tackling SEO from both sides.
DNS
“Domain Name Server” links the IP address (a series of numbers that identify your website) to the website name you’ve chosen.
How does a website get from server to the browser? (List the 6 main steps)
- user requests domain
- browser makes requests (this involves requesting the DNS lookup and converting the name into it’s machine-read IP address and then the browser requests the code of your website)
- server sends resources/website files to assemble website in the searcher’s browser
- browser assembles the web page
- browser makes final requests (a browser will only show the web page if all the code is received so if it needs any additional code, it makes a request to the server)
- Website appears in browser! Rendered from code to what’s visible to you.
DOM
Document Object Model - what the browser creates while parsing and executing the web pages’s resources. you can see the DOM by “inspecting element”
Domain Registrars
Companies that manage the reservations of domain names (where you go to purchase your domain name) ex. godaddy, namecheap, etc.
Async
An attribute in computer programming languages that shortens the critical rendering path, saving the web page load time. Async tells the DOM that it can continue to be assembled while the browser is fetching the scripts needed to display your web page
Name the 3 most common computer programming languages/codes used to construct web pages and what they each do.
HTML (structure) , CSS (appearance), and Javascript (action)
HTML
“Hypertext Markup Language” - serves as the backbone of the website, the structure.
CSS
“cascading style sheets” - the style of your web page including font, color, and layout
What should SEOs know about CSS?
- External CSS files make your page less code heavy, which makes it load faster
- compressing your CSS files make your page load faster
- content heavy pages are better than code heavy pages
- using CSS to hide links and content can get you penalised by google and removed from the index
JS
JavaScript- how your website behaves, can make websites interactive/dynamic vs. static
What SEOs should know about JavaScript
It has caused some problems for SEO bc search engines don’t view JS code the same way humans do - client-side vs. server-side rendering. Search engine crawlers don’t see what’s in your JS initially.
What are the potential problems a JS framework can present in SEO?
- your server cannot handle the requests to crawl your content
- your JS is too outdated OR too complex for Gbots to understand
- doesn’t load properly for Gbots to view in time
How can you check to see if Gbots view your page the same way your viewers do?
Go to the Google Search Console, past your page’s URL into the GSC URL inspection tool, click “Test Live URL,” click “View Tested Page,” click “Screenshot” tab so you can view the page
Structured data
a system of pairing a name with a value that helps search engines categorize and index your content, also referred to as “Schema markup” The process of structuring your data is often referred to as “markup” because you are marking up your content with organizational code
Schema
a set of ‘types’, each associated with a set of properties, they are arranged in a hierarchy
How many types, properties, datatypes, enumerations, and enumeration members are there currently? (2021)
The vocabulary currently consists of 778 Types, 1383 Properties 15 Datatypes, 73 Enumerations and 367 Enumeration members
schema.org
a collaborative, community activity with a mission to create, maintain, and promote schemas for structured data on the Internet - a project that provides a particular set of agreed-upon definitions for microdata tags
Microdata
one form of structured data that works with HTML5, used to nest metadata within existing content on web pages
Schema markup
a way to label or organize your content so that search engines have a better understanding of what certain elements on your web pages are. This code provides structure to your data, which is why schema is often referred to as “structured data.” The process of structuring your data is often referred to as “markup” because you are marking up your content with organizational code
Google’s preferred schema markup guide
JSON-LD or “JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data”
{
“@context”: “http://schema.org”,
“@type”: “WebPage”,
“breadcrumb”: “Homepage > Category > Great Hypothetical Widget”,
“mainEntity”:
{
“@type”: “Product”,
“image”:”http://www.example.com/image-of-the-great-widget.jpg”,
“name”: “My Great Hypothetical Widget”,
“description”: “The description of the great
hypothetical widget and an overview of its
greatness.”
}
}
example of how JSON-LD appears in code in HTML
{
… mumble mumble code stuff …
}
example of JSON-LD within the HTML of the rendered page
the only data type that google uses for rich snippets that doesn’t work with JSON-LD. Microdata or RDFa is needed, as well as BreadCrumbList and some Properties for that Type
“breadcrumb” Microdata or RDFa is needed, as well as BreadCrumbList and some Properties for that Type