Next.js SEO · Part 1 · Search engine basics

What is SEO

What search engine optimization means, why a website needs it, and how a search engine crawls, indexes and ranks pages.

What SEO stands for

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

  • Search: looking for something.
  • Search engine: a system, like Google or Bing, that helps people find websites and information.
  • Optimization: improving something to make it work better.

Why SEO is needed

Imagine a website that teaches people how to make pizza, at https://www.pizzalearn.com, with a page called “How to Make Pizza at Home.”

Now someone opens a search engine and searches:

how to make pizza at home

  1. pizzalearn.com

    https://www.pizzalearn.com › how-to-make-pizza

    How to Make Pizza at Home

    A step-by-step guide to making pizza at home, from the dough to the oven.

  2. Recipe site

    https://www.example.com › recipes › pizza

    Easy Homemade Pizza Recipe

    Simple dough, sauce and toppings for one pizza.

The goal: the search engine considers this page when someone searches for pizza recipes.

The important part: simply creating a website does not guarantee that a search engine will show it in search results. Google needs to:

  1. Discover the page
  2. Understand what it contains
  3. Decide whether it is useful for someone's search

SEO helps with this process.

What happens without SEO

Take the same pizza website, but with:

  • Unclear titles
  • Weak content that does not explain the recipes properly
  • Navigation that is hard to follow
  • Important pages that are hard to reach

Search engines might then have trouble discovering or understanding its pages, which can reduce its visibility.

What is a search engine

A search engine is a system that helps people find information on the internet, for example Google Search, Microsoft Bing and DuckDuckGo.

  • The internet is a giant library containing billions of web pages.
  • A search engine is like a librarian: it discovers pages, organizes information about them, and helps people find relevant results.

When someone searches “How to learn JavaScript,” Google finds useful pages that answer that question. But how does Google know those pages exist? It works in three stages:

  1. Stage 1

    Crawling

    Discover the page

  2. Stage 2

    Indexing

    Understand and store it

  3. Stage 3

    Ranking

    Decide when and where to show it

1.Crawling

Imagine a website, https://www.learncoding.com, with three pages:

Googlebotlearncoding.com/
  • learncoding.com/javascript
  • learncoding.com/python

Googlebot finds the home page, then follows its links to the other pages.

  • Google uses automatic programs called crawlers. Google's main search crawler is called Googlebot.
  • Googlebot discovers pages by following links from other pages, and through information such as XML sitemaps. For example, it might discover the home page and follow a link to the JavaScript page.
  • This process is called crawling.

2.Indexing

After crawling a page, Google tries to understand its content, such as:

  • The page title
  • Headings and written content
  • Images and their descriptions
  • Links to other pages
  • Other information in the HTML

If Google decides the page is suitable, it may add information about it to its enormous database, the Google Search index.

3.Ranking and serving

Now someone searches for “JavaScript tutorials for beginners.” Google looks through its index and selects pages that may answer the search.

It considers many signals, including relevance, content quality, usability and context.

javascript tutorials for beginners
  1. 1

    learncoding.com

    https://www.learncoding.com › javascript

    JavaScript Tutorial for Beginners

    Learn JavaScript from scratch: variables, functions, loops and the DOM.

  2. 2

    Docs site

    https://www.example.com › learn › javascript

    JavaScript basics

    A first look at how JavaScript works in the browser.

  3. 3

    Video course

    https://www.example.org › courses › js

    JavaScript Crash Course

    A one-hour introduction for new programmers.

Deciding which pages appear, and in what order, is called ranking.