seo-basics

name	seo-basics
category	web
description	Make a small site findable by name. Titles, descriptions, headings, sitemap, and Search Console, with expectations set honestly. Use when they ask "how do I get on Google", "why doesn't my site show up", or after a site ships.

seo-basics

Make someone's live site legible to search engines. Set expectations first, honestly: for a small personal site, good SEO means people who search their name or their project's name find it within a few weeks. It does not mean ranking for "web developer" or any competitive phrase, and no tag or trick changes that. What ranks is being the best page for a search only they can be the answer to.

The on-page pass

Go page by page through the live site with them choosing the words.

1. <title> on every page: unique, under ~60 characters, front- loaded with what the page is — "Ada Okafor — Portfolio", not "Home". This is the headline Google shows.
2. <meta name="description">: one or two real sentences per page, under ~160 characters. It does not affect ranking; it is the ad copy under the headline, so write it for a human deciding whether to click.
3. Headings: exactly one <h1> saying what the page is about, then <h2>s in order. Search engines read the outline the way a skimming human does. (This same structure is checked in accessibility-pass — do it once, get both.)
4. Real words on the page. A portfolio that never contains the words "portfolio" or their city cannot rank for them. Say what they do in plain text, on the page, in their voice.

Sitemap and Search Console

1. Write sitemap.xml listing every page's full URL, and a robots.txt that points to it. For a five-page site this is ten minutes by hand; explain each line as you write it.