Guides / Web basics

SEO for beginners: help people find your website

How search engines find and rank websites, and the simple things that help yours show up.

What SEO means

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is everything you do to help search engines like Google and Bing understand your website, so they can show it to people searching for what you offer. If you run a bakery in Pune, good SEO helps your website appear when someone searches for "fresh bread Koregaon Park".

There are no secret tricks. Search engines want to send people to pages that answer their question well. The best SEO is a clear, useful website that is easy for both people and computers to read.

How search engines work

Search engines do three jobs:

1. Crawling. Programs called crawlers visit web pages and follow the links on them to find more pages. A page that nothing links to is hard for them to find.
2. Indexing. The search engine reads each page it finds and stores what it is about in a giant list called the index. Only pages in the index can show up in results.
3. Ranking. When someone searches, the search engine picks the pages in its index that best match, and puts them in order. It looks at things like how well the page answers the search, how trustworthy it seems, and how well it works on a phone.

A brand new website can take days or even a few weeks to appear in results. That is normal. Sharing your link helps, because crawlers find pages by following links.

Your page title

The <title> element in the page's head is the name of the page. It shows in the browser tab, and search engines usually use it as the clickable blue line in results. It is one of the most important things on the page for SEO.

<title>Spoke & Chain - Bike Repairs in Leeds</title>

• Put the name of your business, club or project first.
• Then say what it is, and where, if that matters.
• Keep it to about 60 characters, so it is not cut off.
• Give every page its own title. "Home" on its own tells nobody anything.

Kodebloc writes a title like this for every website it builds: the name, a hyphen, then what it is, in 60 characters or less.

Your meta description

The meta description is a sentence or two about the page, also in the head. Visitors do not see it on the page itself. Search engines often show it as the grey text under your title in results, and chat apps may show it when someone shares your link.

<meta name="description" content="Spoke & Chain is a bike repair workshop in Leeds. Same-day punctures, full services and wheel builds, with prices up front.">

Google says the description does not change your ranking directly. But a clear, honest one makes people more likely to click. Google may also write its own snippet from your page text if it thinks that fits a search better. Kodebloc writes a meta description for every website, using only facts from your request, in 150 characters or less.

Change them in Site settings

You can see and change both without touching any code. In the editor, open the menu with your website's name and choose Site settings. On the Search tab you will find:

• Google preview: roughly how your website could look in search results.
• Title in search results and Description: type your own words here.
• Language: helps search engines show your website to the right people.
• Hide from search engines: tick this if you do not want Google and others to list it. People with the link can still open it.

The Business tab lets you add your name, email, phone and address, and Kodebloc adds them to your page in a format search engines can read. See the Site settings guide for every option.

Headings that tell the story

Search engines read your headings to understand what each part of the page is about. Use one <h1> that says what the page is, then <h2> headings for each section. Plain words beat clever ones. "Our breads and prices" tells a search engine far more than "Rise and shine". Our HTML guide shows how headings work.

Useful content comes first

The biggest thing you control is what your page says. Think about what your visitors want to know, and answer it in plain words:

• What you do or offer, and who it is for.
• Where you are, and when you are open, if you have a place people visit.
• Prices, menus, dates or anything else people often ask about.
• How to get in touch.

Use the words your visitors would type into a search box. If people say "cake shop" where you live, say cake shop, not just "patisserie". But write for people first. Repeating the same words over and over does not help, and search engines can treat it as spam.

Links

Links matter in two ways. Links between your own pages help crawlers find all of them, and help visitors too. In a Kodebloc website with more than one page, each page gets its own link and the menu links them all together.

Links from other websites to yours are like votes of trust. You cannot buy good ones, but you can earn them. Add your website to your social media profiles, your business listing, or your school or club page.

Page speed

Nobody likes waiting for a slow page, and search engines know that. Google measures how fast the main content shows, how quickly the page reacts to a tap, and whether things jump around while it loads.

• Use photos that are no bigger than they need to be.
• Give images a width and height so the page does not jump while they load.
• Do not load photos far down the page until the visitor gets near them.

Kodebloc does the last one for you: photos further down the page get loading="lazy", while the first ones, usually the logo and the big top photo, load right away.

Mobile friendliness

Google mainly uses the phone version of a page to decide how to rank it. A website that is hard to use on a phone can be ranked lower. Kodebloc builds websites mobile-first, and you can check yours with the phone button above the preview. Our responsive design guide shows how to test it.

Sharing

When you paste a link into WhatsApp, LinkedIn or X, the app shows a little card with a title, a sentence and a picture. That card comes from special tags in the page's head called Open Graph tags. Sharing is not SEO exactly, but it is how many people will first find your website.

In Site settings, the Sharing tab shows a preview of your link card and lets you pick the photo on it. A picture of 1200 by 630 pixels looks best. Then use the Share button to send your link around. The Share your website guide explains how.

A quick checklist

1. Your title names you and says what you do.
2. Your description is one or two clear, true sentences.
3. Your headings are plain and in order.
4. Your page answers the questions visitors really ask.
5. All the details are real, not sample text.
6. It works well on a phone.
7. You have shared your link in a few places.