62% of Businesses Report Not Being Well-Visible Online, Especially in Search Engine Results on Google, Bing, or Yahoo However, a solid SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy offers a better return on investment compared to other traffic sources, such as paid search (SEA) and email campaigns, etc.

Why Develop an SEO Strategy?

Achieving good visibility on the first page of search engines attracts qualified traffic to your website. When searching for information, most users (about 60%) use a search engine like Google, Yahoo, or Bing.

Being well-placed in the first position leads to a higher number of clicks to your website. 80% of clicks occur on the first three links in search results.

Websites ranking at the top of search results typically employ an SEO strategy. Even if your website is well-designed and mobile-responsive, it may still appear at the bottom of the first page or on subsequent pages.

In summary, whether you’re redesigning or creating a new website, allocating a budget for SEO is essential to improve your site’s ranking in search results. Although an SEO strategy takes time—from a few weeks to several months—the long-term results can generate more traffic, and thus, potentially more customers.

How to Appear in the Top 3 Positions?

This is a broad question that requires a long-term SEO strategy, primarily focused on content. The more regularly a site publishes content, the more likely it is to be seen as an authority site by Google.

Content can be created as pages or articles, and it should generally remain within the site’s area of focus. For instance, a gardening website should not publish beauty tutorials. All pages must maintain coherence and follow a hierarchical structure.

Some websites may suggest link exchanges or guest articles with your site. Always prioritize content that aligns with your site’s theme. A travel website, for example, should stick to travel-related content on most of its pages.

A Page Equals One Keyword

Choosing the right keyword is critical for your SEO strategy. Typically, each page focuses on one primary keyword. To evaluate a keyword’s relevance on Google, you can use the Google Trends tool. It provides insights into search trends based on time and location and suggests related queries you can incorporate into your content.

The Concept of Long-Tail Keywords

Short-tail keywords are your primary focus for SEO, while long-tail keywords are related terms that supplement your main keywords. Long-tail keywords account for a significant portion of website traffic. For example:

• 5% of primary keywords generate 30% of traffic.
• 95% of long-tail keywords account for 70% of traffic.

Once you’ve selected your primary keyword, it should be incorporated into strategic locations, such as:

• Title tags
• Meta descriptions
• H1 headers
• URLs
• Page content

Tools like Keywords Everywhere can help calculate keyword density and placement.

Develop your website’s reputation

The notoriety of a website can be considered as the number and quality of links (on other sites), pointing to yours. Your content may be well optimized for SEO, but if it’s not well known, its visibility will be lower.

In terms of quality, we’re talking about the source page where your link appears. A quality backlink should be present on a page that refers to your article. If your site or page is about spare parts, the external link should be on a page about spare parts, with a link to your website (or page).

This operation, multiplied many times over, can be of great benefit to your content’s reputation and SEO strategy. It’s best to avoid directories that have no impact and to buy links. If Google discovers link-buying and articles linking to your website, it may penalize you heavily.

Open up your website

The Internet is not a closed space. Google wants users to navigate from one site to another, without frustration. To improve your SEO points with Google, it can be important to place links in your articles to authority sites, such as Wikipedia. Here, I can place a link to talk about SEO (search engine optimization).

SEO Strategy and Mobile Friendly

Web Responsive Design has become one of the main criteria in SEO. The concept of Responsive Design is simple. The graphic charter and content must automatically adapt to the dimensions of the user’s device.

Your website must be adaptable to every screen (computer, tablet and mobile). Without this optimization, search engines will penalize your website. When creating or redesigning a website, it’s important that your service provider includes this optimization as part of their SEO strategy.

You can create a mobile site dedicated solely to mobile reading. However, we recommend that you create a single website that adapts to different screens. This will enhance the user experience.

 

The SSL certificate

Since 2014, Google has been taking secure https sites into account, for SEO referencing criteria. It has now grown to become an important criterion. The secure connection makes it possible to offer high-quality, secure content for customers. It secures the exchange of data between the browser and the website server.

Examples of 2 sites, on the left with an SSL certificate, and on the right without.

How to Properly Structure Your Page?

Content structuring is a crucial aspect of your website’s SEO strategy. Key components include breadcrumb navigation, Hn tags, internal linking, and images.

The Importance of Breadcrumb Navigation

Breadcrumb navigation helps organize website pages, creating a clear hierarchy. Properly positioning parent pages ensures high-quality breadcrumb navigation. It not only provides internal links between pages but also enhances the user experience and is highly valued by search engines. Breadcrumbs are typically placed below the header for immediate visibility.

Internal Links

Internal links are vital for page authority and SEO strategy. They can appear within the editorial content or as link blocks at the end of the page. However, avoid placing them in the header section. Ensure that the linked text or phrase relates to the linked content. For example, on a page about websites, you could use anchor text like website creation.

We advise against generic links such as read more or learn more, as they offer no value. Anchor text should be descriptive and informative.

There is no fixed limit to the number of internal links on a page. Typically, 5 to 10 links are sufficient for a strong SEO strategy.

SEO Structuring with Hn Tags

Hn are the page titles and subtitles. They include the website’s h1 to h6 tags. They help structure the editorial content of your website page. For best readability, it’s essential to use a single H1 tag, preferably at the top of the page. It tells search engines what the page title is.

The H2 tag is more controversial. Some people, like the media, use it as a heading or summary of the page. For this use, the text size should be between 200 and 300 words. Others use it as a subheading to structure the content. We prefer to use it as a page summary.

The other tags from H3 to H6 are for structuring purposes. After an H3 tag, you can put two H4 tags, then an H3 tag, then 2 H4 tags, for example. Structuring is important for a good SEO strategy. These tags can include the main keyword, but it’s preferable that it doesn’t appear in all the sub-headings.
There’s a tool you can use to check the Hn hierarchy: WebRankInfo.

Bold Text

Bolded words or phrases on a page will be more important to search engines and users alike. The strong tag is used to highlight key words in the editorial content, enhancing the page’s relevance and SEO strategy. Bolded terms can be the main keyword, terms in the keyword’s lexical field, or content relevant to the user. They may stay on the page longer and improve page ranking.

Strong tags should only be used in editorial content. Avoid bolding titles, subtitles or links. If you require a particular formatting, you’ll need to use CSS. passer par le langage CSS.

The importance of images

An image or infographic provides a visual that matches the page’s editorial content.

To optimize a page’s SEO strategy, images are important. We recommend first adapting the image URL to the content page, describing the image in 2-3 words. Image alt and title tags should also be completed.

Last but not least, image weight! The smaller the weight of an image, the faster it will download. This optimizes page viewing speed. It’s a little extra to take into account in your SEO strategy.

We hope this page will provide you with additional information to help you develop your SEO strategy. Although the list of SEO criteria is very long, we’ve shared with you a few that we feel are very important. Please feel free to comment below for further information or to discuss SEO strategy criteria.