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SEO

Optimizing your site so it ranks in Google for queries your target audience searches, the cheapest long-term traffic channel for indie products.

Definition

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the practice of building your site so that Google shows it high in the results for specific queries. The better you match what users are searching for, the more free, recurring traffic you get.

SEO boils down to three pillars:

  • Technical SEO - site speed, indexability, sitemap, structured data, mobile-friendliness
  • On-page SEO - titles, meta descriptions, headings, internal linking, content that actually answers the query
  • Off-page SEO - backlinks from other sites, brand mentions, authority signals

The title and meta description are the first things people see in Google results. You can check how yours look with the meta tags preview.

SEO is not a one-time task. It’s a process - you publish content, Google indexes it, you watch what ranks, and you iterate. First results usually show up after 3-6 months, not 3-6 days.

Why it might matter to you?

As a developer building a product, SEO is your unfair advantage. You can ship a fast, well-structured site without hiring anyone, write content about problems you actually understand, and compound traffic over months instead of burning budget on ads. One article ranking on page one can bring users for years, no ad spend, no paid distribution, no dependency on algorithms that change overnight. Ads stop the moment you stop paying. SEO keeps working while you sleep.

See also

  1. Content marketing

    A strategy for acquiring customers by creating valuable content instead of traditional advertising: blog, newsletter, video, social media.

  2. ISR (Incremental Static Regeneration)

    A technique combining the efficiency of static pages with the ability to update them automatically without a complete rebuild of the application.

  3. SSG (Static Site Generation)

    Generating HTML pages at application build time, ready-made files are served from a CDN instantly without any server-side processing.

  4. Learn in Public

    A strategy of sharing your learning process openly: writing, tweeting, and creating content about what you're learning as you learn it.

Further reading

  1. Build in Public6 minHow I created a blog in Next.js (stack, CMS, hosting, SEO)How did I build a blog about marketing for developers? Next.js with ISR, Strapi on Railway, Cloudflare R2, PostHog, Sentry, and MailerLite - the entire tech stack, decisions, and Lighthouse results.