Originally Published on www.HostGator.com on January 26, 2018 By Casey Kelly-Barton
Planning a Website? Test Your SEO Basics Know-How [E-Book]
Setting up a new website can feel like a test, especially if you don’t have experience in coding or design.
Fortunately, platforms like WordPress and tools like HostGator’s Website Builder make it easy to get your site up and running.
After that comes the next test: how do you get your site found by readers, viewers, or customers?
That’s where SEO comes in, and if that’s something you haven’t studied, don’t worry. This quick quiz will identify the basic SEO terms you already know and help you get up to speed on the rest.
Did you come here for the e-book? Great! Click here to download now.
1. What is SEO?
(a) search engine optimization
(b) a way to help more people find your website
(c) the process of using keywords, code, images, and load times to raise your site’s visibility
(d) all of the above
If you answered D, you’re right. Search engine optimization helps people find your site by boosting your site’s position in search results delivered by Google and other search engines. A good basic SEO program involves the right keywords, tags, schema, server speed, and more.
2. What are keywords and how do you find them?
(a) words that unlock the meaning of your site; you find them by asking friends and family for ideas
(b) words that people use when they search for sites like yours; you can find them with Google Keyword Planner and other tools
You chose B, right? Although most of us can come up with keywords off the top of our head to describe our blog or business, keywords are most effective when they’re carefully researched and tested.
3. On-site SEO means:
(a) an expert who comes to your home or office to handle all your SEO for you
(b) adding your keywords to your site copy over and over in hopes that search engines will rank you higher
(c) optimizing the tags, meta descriptions and URL structure on your site so search-engine web crawlers (online bots that follow programmers’ instructions to index web sites) can understand it more easily
The right answer here is C. If you chose B, reconsider, because that’s the definition of keyword stuffing, a frowned-upon tactic that can cause Google to rank your site lower or even ban it from its search engine results pages.
4. Technical SEO is important for…
(a) impressing your friends who understand code
(b) selling things to customers in the tech industry
(c) helping site crawlers categorize your site’s content and topics in search results
C is the correct answer. Building a flat architecture and an XML sitemap can help your site appear higher up in search results because the robots that evaluate your site find it easier to use.
5. True or false: The images on your site matter for SEO.
(True) Every image on your site can improve your SEO as long as it has the right format, file size, tags, and descriptions.
(False) Pictures are just there to dress up the site or show off your products.
This one’s true. That’s because search-engine robots read the tags and descriptions to look for your keywords, even though most visitors will never see them. And formatting and file size can affect page speed.
6. What’s page speed and why does it affect SEO?
(a) Page speed refers to how quickly a visitor can read your page, and it affects SEO because people like to read things fast.
(b) Page speed is how often you update your blog with new posts and photos, and it affects SEO by adding more content.
(c) Page speed is how fast your site loads on a visitor’s computer or mobile device, and it affects SEO because Google ranks faster-loading sites higher.
It’s C. Most people won’t wait more than two or three seconds for your site to load before they get frustrated and navigate away to a site that loads faster. Google wants to deliver results that users find helpful, so the search engine prioritizes sites that load in a blink.
7. What are rich results and how can you create them?
(a) Rich results come from visualizing success and putting your earnings goals out into the universe.
(b) Rich results come from asking your friends and family to share your site URL in hundreds of blog comments and forum posts.
(c) Rich results are easy to use search results that boost your click-through rate and are formatted by using standardized schema markup or a schema markup plugin.
If you chose C, you got it! Schema markup is what creates those handy recipe boxes when you search for “peach cobbler,” showtimes near you when you search for “Black Panther,” and product photos and prices when you search for “fidget spinners.” (If you chose B, please reconsider. As with keyword stuffing, spamming comments and forums with your URL can cause Google to downgrade your site’s ranking or boot your site from its results.)
8. Mobile-first SEO includes:
(a) choosing a mobile-optimized template and theme for your site
(b) putting a big link at the top of your homepage telling visitors to go to your mobile site first
(c) evaluating and refining your site based on Google’s mobile-friendly test tool
(d) both A and B
(e) both A and C
The right answer here is E. Because Google is moving gradually to a mobile-first index, your site needs to display properly on mobile devices as well as computers, and it needs to load quickly and help mobile users find what they need easily.
9. Link-building is…
(a) the practice of creating links to others sites on your site
(b) a waste of time
(c) a valuable long-term SEO strategy, as long as you understand how to do it right
You know the answer is C, because we’re talking about SEO. There are a lot of ways to build links that boost your search ranking, like creating content people will use and share, sending press releases to local or industry media when you’re doing something newsworthy, and staking your claim on your local business listings. It’s work, but it’s definitely worth your time.
10. The real SEO test is your website’s search ranking
Do you want to learn more so you can ace the SEO on your new site? Our e-book, The ABCs of SEO for Brand New Businesses, walks you through these topics so you can boost your site’s visibility even if you don’t have a tech or marketing background.
Casey Kelly-Barton is an Austin-based freelancer who enjoys writing about business development and marketing, e-commerce payments and fraud prevention, and travel.