It Starts with Structure

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essential for improving the visibility and discoverability of a website on search engine results page (SERP). When a website is optimized for search engines, it ranks higher in the search results, making it more likely to be seen by potential visitors. This increased visibility can drive more organic traffic to the site, which is often more valuable than traffic from paid advertisements.

At interon design, search engine optimization (SEO) falls into two categories:

Initial
Ongoing

I consider initial SEO as the standards compliant structure of the site and the inclusion of original values for structural page elements such as:

Clean, standards-based and validated website code
Clear, concise, keyword-rich content written for human visitors
Descriptive and unique page titles
Descriptive and properly formatted web page file names
Include description <meta> tags
Proper heading structure (<h1>, then <h2>, then <h3>, etc.)
Image <alt> tags
Descriptive link anchor text
Include a Robots.txt file
Include a sitemap.html page
Include a sitemap.xml file

Search engines favor well-structured, standards-compliant websites because they are easier to crawl and index. Therefore, compliance with web standards can significantly boost a site's search engine rankings, thus driving more organic traffic.

HTML5 has added number of elements to give structure to a web page and thus help search engines and browsers better understand the web page and it's content. In a simplified description, the structure of the site means the <header> tag is at the top, the <main> is in the middle, and the <footer> is at the bottom of the page.

Here is an example

            
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <title>The Title appears in the browser tab</title>
    <meta name="description" content="a description of the web page content">
  </head>
  <body>
    <header>
      <h1>The primary heading should be similar to the title tag above</h1>
    </header>
    <main>
      <h2>This is a subheading</h2>
      <p>This is a paragraph of text on a web page.</p>
      <a href="#">This is a link</a>
    </main>
    <footer>
      <p>a good spot for © copyright information.</p>
    </footer>
    </body>
</html>

Here is another example

A Labrador Retriever puppy

Search engines don't see images. Where a human visitor with no visual disabilities sees a cute puppy, search engines see this:

<img src="img/dog-photo.webp" alt="A Labrador Retriever puppy" class="shadow-2xl rounded-lg" width="225" height="225">

Without that alt description, there is no information scent the search engine can pick up on to index that image.

The image alt description is also very important for website accessibility.

As you might infer from the simplified examples above, much of the initial SEO is in the details. Making sure all images have an alt tag, all pages have a <meta> description, an <h1> tag, and so on.

There is no point in pursuing SEO any further if your site does not meet the initial SEO requirements. And believe me, there are many sites out there that don't.