SEO for BLOCS

I didn’t really see a dedicated area for SEO.
I thought I would start one.

For the first year or so of the Adobe Muse release it did not even have:

Title tag
Description tag
Alt tags for images
Video player
Audio player
A good submit form
A good properly configured sitemap.

Muse did have a lot of duplicate content also. Still has a mess of code. Designed by engineers not people who had enough experience actually having to deliver results to thier own clients. Doing a few websites just doesn’t cut it. Talk to the people at large companies. It’s a better sample to drive statistics from.

As many of you know Muse’s 100,000 plus user base just got news of Muse EOL …it’s dead. One of the big critisms of Muse was it’s buggy and bloated code. Blocs fortunately has some pretty nice well thought out and organized clean code. Hurrah!

Hoping to avoid the same SEO issues with Blocs that other apps have. There is a lot to know about SEO. Some stuff is just very basic. No one person can know it all. It’s tough to be an excavator, architect, builder, carpenter and interior decorator all by yourself.

Blocs has pretty clean code.It also loads relatively fast on mobile devices “moderately” but average speed.

It’s okay if all most users know your address…but what about those that don’t? New potential customers…
Just following best practices can make a difference.
What isn’t learned easily …is how to write properly with good grammar, sentence structure, intent and more.
If only web builders put half as much effort into this aspect of web design things could be much better for clients. :grinning: all of this contributes to good SEO…

I’ve always viewed SEO as the poor-man’s version of SEM (Search Engine Marketing). Essentially, SEO is the free version of what many website owners should be doing as a paid-for marketing service. It’s a bit like asking newspapers and magazines to give you prime advertising space for free - it ain’t ever going to happen.

The problem with SEO in the modern world is that there are just too many websites out there - millions of them. Therefore, to get anywhere near the top of search engine listings on pure SEO is going to be extremely difficult.

The best you can do is develop some fairly unique content that includes unique phrases that searchers may use to find your site. Then you have to make sure your page names and descriptions include some of those unique phrases. Alt tags can help, but these are really designed for users using screen readers who have some form of visual impairment that prevents them from actually reading your site content.

Back in the real world, more effort must be made in the area of SEM, whereby you set out with a campaign that brings inbound links to your site. Many people pay too much attention to outbound links ( facebook, twitter feeds, third-party form processors, youtube and numerous other free online services) These outbound links do wonders for the sites you link too, but do nothing for your site.

If someone has a commercial site that relies on being found on search engines, they have to put much more effort (and money) into attracting visitors. It’s no good relying on SEO to do this job - there is simply too much competition for your keyword phrases. Sadly, only those that are prepared to pay will get the benefit of higher rankings. Of course, there are those in the SEO business who will claim to get you to the top of generic search engine listings, but these people usually use black-hat techniques that can cause you more harm than good. You may be number one for a few days, but once the mighty Google discovers you - that’s the end of your ranking.

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Some of what you say is true. Good content…well written, not overly written. But there is so much misunderstanding and as you say black hat snake oil types that the real “best practices” and good strategies are lost.

I’ve been doing SEO for companies large and small for twenty years. Because most have the “I know what I’m doing” or “it doesn’t matter I can never compete” is just not true.

Do a search on “Spiritlands” and then “Spiritlands CD” that used to be on the 20th page of google. Now it’s on the first. Not far under Amazon. If you look on Amazon that CD is one of Amazons best sellers…it’s doable. Personalized search will possibly bring up a different result. So if you have never looked at anything remotely related Spiritlands might not be in the same SERP as someone else. By the way that site is old not even “mobilized”. When it is it will rise up.

Last it doesn’t take a lot of money. That’s why I started this section. To educate. If I had a nickel for every time someone said we can’t afford a new website or a real designer. :wink:

I am here to help. I’m like a Eldar. This however is one of my specialties …I don’t know it all but I do know the fundamentals…and that has proven time and time again to make a difference.

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My websites has little to no promotions or adverts and for 7 years my accountant always says ‘why don’t you spend anything on advertising etc’, truth is my business is not in a huge industry and I rank for just 1 key word, so ranking is although not easy, its not extreme competition.

I agree SEO is good, using the technologies and being friendly with google (keeping up with their tech and rules), mobile friendly, fast page speed, lots of content, not duplicating etc help your ranking. It all depends on your business.

After 20 years of doing lots of SEO work for many many websites both small and large it is possible to at least improve your position…I would not have been continuously referred if I didn’t do good work. The problem is too many people think they know about SEO. It’s no excuse for not at least following good best practices. It depends where you live geographically as well and a lot of other things.
My friend who lives in NYC millions of people…with 99 million results for new york city jazz bands, a very competitive search term, does quite well following a few basic principles of good SEO practices. One a great url sure helped but it’s not the only reason. There are lots of other possibilities…it is possible you just need to zero in on your market and do, fortunately what most others don’t because of advice that it does not matter. As long as web designers keep “poo pooing” SEO there will be lots of work for honest SEO people.

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I certainly wasn’t “poo pooing” SEO, particularly if it’s undertaken by people who understand how it should be done correctly (as opposed to those who claim to be experts and end up getting their clients penalised). The real point I was attempting to make is that SEO on its own isn’t a guarantee of a high ranking - particularly, as you’ve pointed out, where there is significant completion for keywords and keyword phrases. In my humble opinion, if SEO isn’t working for a particular site, then SEM may be a better path to follow. This invariably involves paying fees to get an effective campaign launched.

By the way, nice site!

Yes you are correct. Know exactly what you mean though. Lots of scammers…
I’d be glad to help if you ever want. You sound like you have a handle on though. Thank you

Just for those who don’t think Site maps matter…
from sitemaps.org

What are Sitemaps?

Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.

Web crawlers usually discover pages from links within the site and from other sites. Sitemaps supplement this data to allow crawlers that support Sitemaps to pick up all URLs in the Sitemap and learn about those URLs using the associated metadata. Using the Sitemap protocol.php does not guarantee that web pages are included in search engines, but provides hints for web crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site.

Teslas site map https://www.tesla.com/sitemap.xml?page=1

Mercedes Title and Description…note NO KEYWORDS META TAG!

Mercedes-Benz Luxury Cars: Sedans, SUVs, Coupes and Wagons | Mercedes-Benz USA

and note that Title precedes description the way it should be. “If ya gonna do it…do it right” :))

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I would be very much interested in learning more about SEO. I never took care of that part for my website and I want to learn. What would be a good place to start?

There was this discussion a while ago.
Might be useful to understand some basics.
SEO is no witchcraft, just a bit of structured work and constant willing beeing updated.

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Thanks @pixelwork!

Perhaps a good idea to bundle all SEO questions, tips & tricks into one thread…

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Thanks @uttom777 for sharing.

Hi HMM…

SEO is something beyond my pay grade so I made a post hoping for some simple advice… things that can be done from WITHIN blocs.

I had one responder who suggested signing up to Google Search Console, which I’ve done.

Would you mind taking a gander at my original question please? I’m trying to get info on whether peppering my website with my name - which is the only search criteria I want or need to be found by - will help.

So, including mat name in bloc and bric IDs… on alt text… on image names etc.

If those are things which would help, I could achieve that quite easily. But I’d also need to know in what form to add my name, as per my original question here

Thanks in advance!!!

Ian

Hi Ian, yes you can do all the things you wrote in your last post. The most important place where you should put your name is the „title“ field. And you have to be patient, because the longer your domain exists the better the ranking.