SEO

Definition: SEO is a set of techniques applied to make a website appear in search engine results from a query on keywords. The better the referencing, the more the site will appear in the first results of search engines.

Referencing is said to be "natural" (or in English SEO - Search Engine Optimization) when the content and the source code of the website are optimized to allow search engines to reference the site by automatically browsing the web pages to locate the keyword tags. Search engines will also take into account in their algorithms to define the "scoring" of the site elements relating to its relevance: number of inbound links, frequency of updates, presence on social media, etc.

Referencing is said to be “paid” (or in English SEA - Search Engine Advertising) when keywords are purchased on search engines to display the site in the first results after the request of the Internet user. A large portion of Google's revenue is generated by these "sponsored" keywords.

Here are our main SEO recommendations from Google to optimize the natural referencing of your website:

  • The title of your web pages

It sounds simple, but it's obvious, make sure your pages have a title with a title tag. The tag should be completed and should be a description of the actual page, not a description of the entire website. The title should include the main keywords of the page, it should be unique, and should not exceed 60 characters. The title tag appears in the results pages of search engines like Google.

  • The meta description of each page

The description should not only describe the web page, but also the “marketer”. The page description is displayed in search results, so people should be encouraged to click on your link instead of other competing links. The meta description should also include the keywords for your page.

  • Hierarchy of your content using semantic tags

According to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3c), a title “briefly describes the topic of the section it introduces”. This means that a title - an h1 or h2, h 3, h4, h5, h6,… tag - will explicitly summarize the following paragraph. When you classify the titles and sub-titles of your page by ranking them, you bring a notion of value to each of your titles. An H1 title should therefore summarize the general subject of your page, an H6 title will summarize a very detailed section of the subject covered in your page.

  • Internal links between your pages

Internal links that link pages together are as important as external links. All pages indexed on Google have a page rank. This separate note can be passed to each link on the page that does not have rel="nofollow" to prevent Google robots from "following the link". Therefore, if you link to your own page, they will get “SEO juice”. The mesh (or internal netlinking) between the Web pages must be linked to the transmission of Pagerank and the recommendation to Internet users so that they continue to consult your site.

  • The website plan or sitemap

A sitemap, or "sitemap," is an XML-formatted file that lists your website's URL and some metadata, such as when it was last updated. The sitemap technology has been officially endorsed by search engines. Using the Sitemap protocol does not guarantee that your web pages will all be indexed by search engines. However, the sitemap improves the quality of work of search engine robots. Once established, your sitemap can be submitted to search engines through the webmaster tool interface (such as Google Search Console).

  • Duplicate data and canonical link

From an SEO perspective, duplicate content is one of the worst things to do on your website. Each page should have a single domain point and a URL. If you have an old URL and a new URL on your web page, you need to set up a 301 redirect to notify search engines that the page has been moved. You can use canonical tags. This tag is like a sign, designed to avoid the consequences of duplicate content. It points to a set of default versions of pages that are too close (if not identical).

  • Rich, relevant and unique text content

Always remember that content is the most important part of a page. Your text should never be limited to listing keywords. Search engines should of course find keywords there, but the content should also be readable and make people want to come back to your website. SEO is there to show your content and promote it in search engines, not the other way around. The minimum number of words to place the web page is 300.