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You’ve built a fast, beautiful site. But… no one’s finding it. That’s where SEO (Search Engine Optimization) comes in — making your content discoverable by search engines and humans.

Whether you’re building with Next.js, plain HTML, or any modern stack, understanding SEO is essential if you want your app or blog to reach real users.

🧠 What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving your site to rank higher in search engine results (Google, Bing, etc.).

It’s not just about keywords — it’s about technical structure, content relevance, performance, and accessibility.

🛠️ Core SEO pillars

1. Content

Clear, relevant, and high-quality.
Use semantic HTML ( <h1>, <p>, <article>, etc.).
Focus on intent, not just keywords.

2. Technical SEO

Valid HTML, crawlable pages.
Canonical URLs.
Sitemap + robots.txt.
No broken links or duplicate content.

3. Performance (core web vitals)

Fast LCP, low CLS and FID.
Optimize images, fonts, and JS.
Mobile-first, responsive layout.

4. On-page SEO

Unique <title> and <meta description> per page.
Use alt tags on images.
Structured data (JSON-LD) for rich snippets.

✅ Developer SEO checklist

Area	Good Practice
`<title>`	Unique, descriptive per page
`<meta name="description">`	Compelling summary (155–160 chars)
Headings	Use `<h1>` to `<h6>` properly
URLs	Clean and readable (e.g. `/blog/seo-guide`)
Links	Use `<a href>` with real text, not buttons
Images	Add `alt` text, optimize size
Mobile	Responsive with no horizontal scroll
Performance	Lazy load images, minimize JS
Accessibility	Keyboard navigation, ARIA labels

⚙️ SEO In modern frameworks

🧬 Next.js

Use <Head> for dynamic SEO:

import Head from 'next/head';

<Head>
  <title>What Is SEO? | My Blog</title>
  <meta name="description" content="Learn how to optimize your site for search engines." />
</Head>

And generate a sitemap:

npm install next-sitemap

⚛️ React (CRA or vite)

Use react-helmet or vite-plugin-ssr:

<Helmet>
  <title>My SEO Page</title>
  <meta name="description" content="SEO for React apps." />
</Helmet>

🧾 Structured data (JSON-LD)

For blog posts, products, etc. Use it to enable rich results on Google.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "headline": "What Is SEO?",
  "author": "Camila Arcila",
  "datePublished": "2025-07-22"
}
</script>

📉 Common SEO mistakes

Empty or duplicated <title>/<meta> tags
Using div instead of semantic elements
No sitemap or robots.txt
JS-only navigation (without SSR or pre-rendering)
Heavy pages (> 2s LCP or > 2MB payload)

🧪 Tools you should use

Google Search Console — Track visibility & issues
PageSpeed Insights — Performance + Core Web Vitals
Lighthouse — Audits accessibility, SEO, performance
Ahrefs / SEMrush — Keyword and backlink analysis
Screaming Frog SEO Spider — Crawl your site like a bot

📎 Final thoughts

SEO is not just for marketers — it’s a technical responsibility. Clean HTML, good performance, and semantic structure go a long way. You don’t need to “game” Google — just help it understand your site.