Tags, links, quality content, keywords… search engines take into account several aspects to reference a website. However, even though their algorithms are constantly evolving, there are basic techniques and rules that are essential to optimizing your site’s SEO.
What is SEO optimization?
SEO is the acronym of the English expression Search Engine Optimization which translates into French by Optimization for search engines .
This term is commonly used in the field of natural referencing to refer to all the techniques implemented to improve the position of a website in search results.
SEO optimization therefore aims to improve the natural referencing of a website in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Page). To do this, webmasters, marketers and content creators act on the three dimensions of natural referencing, namely:
- technical optimization,
- content optimization,
- and netlinking.
How does SEO optimization work?
Search engine robots such as Google and Bing crawl websites to rank them.
Thus, when an Internet user formulates a request , these robots assign ratings to web pages according to the authority of the sites and the relevance of the content of the pages for the Internet user’s search intent.
It is this score that determines the natural positioning of each web page in the search results. This is natural referencing, as opposed to paid referencing (SEA) where you have to pay to get a good place.
How to optimize your site for SEO?
SEO optimization brings together a number of good practices, which are as follows:
1. Have a responsive site
Responsive design is part of Google’s criteria for ranking websites.
This is for webmasters to have a site that adapts to the size of the screen of the device that the user uses to connect. This technology promotes the user ‘s browsing comfort whether on a computer, tablet, smartphone, smart TV, connected watch, etc.
Having a mobile-friendly site helps improve the user experience (UX). It also promotes increased traffic from mobile devices and reduced bounce rate. Responsive design is inevitably one of the prerequisites of SEO optimization.
2. Reduce page load time
For Google, a loading time greater than or equal to 3 seconds drives away nearly 50% of visitors.
This increases the bounce rate and penalizes the natural referencing of the site. You can measure the speed of your site with the PageSpeed ​​tool in order to optimize it.
If necessary, you will have to reduce the weight of your images, videos, computer graphics… and limit the code/text ratio . For example, you can use Imagify to process your visuals and host your videos on YouTube or Vimeo.
3. Optimize tags and metadata
SEO optimization here consists first of all of optimizing your Title and Meta Description tags.
Their content should be succinct and consistent with the content of the page. It is recommended to include the main keyword of the page and to respect the length.
You must also optimize the H1, H2, H3… Hn tags of your pages and the ALT tags of your images. Insert your keyword or synonyms.
Be careful not to fall into over-optimization. If you use WordPress, let Yoast SEO guide you .
4. Optimize your content
The purpose of SEO web writing is to answer the questions of Internet users while respecting the requirements of search engines.
To get a better position in Google search results, you need to create quality, SEO-optimized content on a regular basis. For Google, quality content is content:
- unique, interesting and relevant for Internet users (avoid duplicate content),
- with a rich and varied semantic field,
- without grammar and spelling errors,
- clear and readable.
Keyword research is of paramount importance for natural referencing.
You must identify the relevant keywords for your targets in order to use them as a basis for writing your content. Again, beware of over-optimization, because search engines hate content that is unnecessarily stuffed with keywords.
5. Create good netlinking
Having a good backlink profile is one of the essential keys to SEO optimization of a website.
It’s about getting incoming links from qualitative sites with authority in the eyes of Google (with a significant thematic trustflow).
So, the more quality backlinks you receive, the more authority you have in the eyes of Google. You must also make a good internal link. Create links in your content to enhance your pages addressing the same theme in order to form a semantic cocoon .
6. Be present on social networks
Social signals (likes, shares, comments and other interactions) have an impact on the natural referencing of a site.
In addition to strengthening your notoriety, social networks offer a good opportunity to have inbound links to your site. They help you receive more traffic. But for that, you need to regularly produce quality content on your social accounts.
7. Use tools to improve your SEO strategy
Tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console offer many features to track your SEO strategy.
You can use them to understand your audience, its behavior, traffic acquisition, bounce rate, conversion rate and even to analyze your SEA (Display, Adwords) paid search campaigns.
Why optimize your SEO referencing?
A site optimized for SEO is more likely to appear on the first pages of Google results than a site that is not…
This guarantees better visibility, more qualified traffic and therefore an increase in the conversion rate. If you want to succeed on the internet, you must not neglect SEO optimization.
How long does SEO optimization take?
SEO optimization is a long-term job.
With competition being tough in the SERPs, you need to continually keep an eye on your SEO strategy in order to improve it if necessary. This is how you will get better positioning in the SERPs. Without it, you risk being overtaken by your competitors.
SEO optimization: where to start?
SEO optimization uses several skills from the digital world to improve the natural referencing of a site.
You can start by following the tips in this article. And if all this seems difficult for you to manage, do not hesitate to contact us to entrust the optimization of your site to our experts.
