Search engine optimization (SEO): How to reference your site on Google?

What is SEO (search engine optimization)?

Search engine optimization: Definition

The SEO (Search Engine Optimization) also called natural referencing, is the set of techniques that aim to index your website on search engines, then, in a second step, to be well positioned on them.

To put it simply, there are 3 important points:

• The technique (have an efficient site)
• Semantics (in other words, content)
• Authority (links, netlinking)

Interest & challenge of SEO

The main objective of SEO is to appear on the first page of search engines, that is to say on the results pages, it's as simple as that.

If one of your pages (whether it is a product, a blog article or a category page) is accessible from the first Google page, you will have much more visits to your site, you will be considered an expert in this field. Because let's be honest, who goes beyond the first page when doing this research? Very few people, almost no one!

If we only had to remember one thing to succeed in being on the first page, it would be this: Content is king.

Why?

First, because thanks to him, you will be able to be well positioned on search engines, and therefore you will have visitors, which, thanks to a good content strategy and a good website, will allow you to have new customers (in fact it is not as simple as that, but we explain it to you below).

But not only that!

It is also your business card, which will show the seriousness of your business, you will be able to describe everything you offer, your assets, your customer reviews (to reassure Internet users), etc.

In addition, this content that you will produce to fill your pages is yours, so you can use it in several ways:

• As a sales support for your salespeople
• As a communication medium on your social networks

The challenge of SEO is therefore to reference your site, but it can also have multiple interests.

Advantages and disadvantages of SEO

As you will see, SEO has many advantages, but there are some points to take into account, and not to overlook or forget them!

The advantages of Search Engine Optimization:

• It's free!
  And yes, unlike other levers such as Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords) for example, you do not need to pay for SEO (unless you want to be accompanied by an agency, but all work deserves a salary no?).
  
  
• Resilient!
  Generally, if you have an optimized site, SEO represents a source of traffic that lasts over time (provided you continue to update and publish content on your site). In other words, the content strategy you have put in place will bring you traffic for months, even years.
  
  
• Quality traffic!
  From the moment you have defined your personas, and that you have implemented your SEO and therefore content strategy in this sense, you will necessarily have quality traffic since your content will attract your targets.
  
  
• Trust!
  Who has never said “If Google put this site first, it's because it's reliable isn't it?” A well-positioned site generally sends a positive signal in terms of reputation.

The disadvantages of Search Engine Optimization:

I'm not sure if the term “disadvantages” is best for this part, let's call it “points to remember.”

• SEO takes time!
  And yes, it's not enough to post a well-written article to appear on search engines 1 week later.
  So you're going to say, “OK, how long should I wait?” A very good question, however, there is no magic answer. It depends on the difficulty of this keyword, the competition, the quality of the site, etc. But generally, it takes a few months anyway.
  
  If you need quick positioning, I advise you to start with Ads (paid referencing).
  
  
• Be regular!
  Regularity is the key word in natural referencing. Whether in relation to the publication of your articles, or to the quality of writing.
  
  
• The ranking is not guaranteed
  And yes, in SEO, you cannot guarantee to be in first position (if an agency promises you that, run away!!!).
  
  
• The Google algorithm
  The famous, the indomitable, the much feared: the Google algorithm.
  Nobody has a list of best practices, just a few tips. It is therefore necessary to test, analyze (why not carry out a SEO audit ?) and set up. This is one reason why SEO can often be difficult for beginners. Therefore, do not hesitate to be accompanied by an SEO agency at the beginning!
  
  The little extra? Updates that take place 1 to 2 times per year: Core Updates.

How search engines work

How does a search engine work?

To begin with, let's see what is a search engine. To put it simply, it is a set of software/robots that travel the web, in order to index the pages they visit, by processing and analyzing them, to finally transmit the information to Internet users!

How a search engine works: The principle

In order for a search engine to work properly, several steps must first be taken.

Step 1: The crawl phase

A host of robots explore the web, navigating from link to link, in order to retrieve all the information.

Step 2: Indexing

Once the robots have retrieved all the information, it is indexed by what are called “indexing engines.” Basically, there is a word database that is regularly updated.

Step 3: Restitution

Then, a search interface returns the results to Internet users, and all this, by ranking them by relevance (this is the ranking).

So, it is important to be well positioned on search engines. It is even essential. I like to say that as soon as you are in the top 3 in the SERP on a query, you are a bit considered to be the Messiah on this one, as if being well positioned gives you undeniable super knowledge in the eyes of Internet users.

Zoom on Google

A bit of history! Did you know that Google was created in 1998 by 2 students? And yes! It's Larry Page and Sergey Brin from Stanford University, who Created the Google search engine, which at the beginning was called Backrub (not as nice as Google?).

The objective? Simply to classify sites according to their relevance but also their accessibility. So that anyone can easily access the information they are looking for. Great isn't it?

But why zoom in on Google?

The reason is simple, most searches (or almost all) are done on this search engine. To be more precise, in 2020, 92.15% of Internet users' searches in France were made on them. Impressive isn't it?

Therefore, it is more than important to have a site that meets Google's requirements.

But the big question you need to ask yourself is “What are these famous requirements?” We don't know anything about it. Well, not really. To be more precise, we do not have a list of criteria to meet, let's say that we know the main points, and then we must above all test.

It's not like a recipe to follow, with the list of ingredients and the steps to follow (it would be too easy otherwise!).

In addition, 1 or 2 times a year, there are Core Updates, i.e. Google makes a major update to its algorithm, so its requirements are constantly evolving.

Even if, let's not forget, the crux of the matter remains the content.

One could ask the question of “Why is Google so demanding?” The answer is quite simple. Google must offer relevant and quality content to Internet users. Otherwise he would lose all credibility, and therefore there would be no one who would use this search engine, which means that he would no longer be able to sell Ads, including more money for him! (But that's just my opinion.)

To keep yourself informed of potential developments or updates, I advise you to follow these two accounts on Twitter:

• Google SearchLiaison
• Danny Sullivan (even if he is the one who manages the previous one)

As we also said above, there are therefore 3 essential factors to optimize your website:

• Have a high-performance site that meets Google's requirements (the technique)
• Have relevant and accessible content (semantics)
• Have a site with authority

SEO: Let's talk about the technique

First step and not the least: The technique. Before implementing a content strategy, you need to have a successful website that meets Google standards. Make a SEO technical audit complete your site by following the various points below.

Optimize the loading speed of your site

Some will tell you that the loading speed of a site does not affect natural referencing. My point of view is different, or even the opposite.

Knowing that user experience is one of the elements taken into account in SEO, it would seem absurd that speed is therefore not taken into account right?

Let me explain, if a site takes too long to load, you're not going to stay on it, are you? So it's as simple as that, on the internet, we are one click away from our competitors, so we need a site that adapts to user attitudes: let it be fast. In the long term, there are few criteria that have such an impact on your SEO and your conversion.

To help you see what changes you can make to improve the loading time of your site, here are two tools that analyze your pages and suggest ways to optimize them:

• Google Page Speed Insight : a Google tool, brutally honest, it loads your page, measures several variables and gives you a score. If you are not in the green (>90), you have work to do. A lot of work.
• GT Metrix : He will be much nicer to you, it's more about checking best practices and performance. Same thing, if you are not in the A (90%) there is work.

Have a website that meets security standards

HTTPS stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure. To explain it simply, HTTPS is a communication protocol, like HTTP, except that it is encrypted.

It is therefore the secure version of HTTP (the S at the end means “Secure” site). This is equivalent to encrypting exchanges between a site and a server.

As you will have understood, the HTTPS protocol makes it possible to secure:

• Information on the site
• Information that an Internet user can leave on a site (for example in a contact form)
• Information collected by cookies

Set up a good structure to reference your site

Some will say that this part should go into the content/semantic part, but the main thing is that it is done, and above all, that it is well done.

By structure, we mean several things:

• Page structure
  What is a good structure for a good Google ranking? To put it simply, it's exactly the same as when you were writing an essay at school. You need a main title (here the h1), then titles (the h2), and the subtitles (the h3, etc.). The whole thing is to try to respect this structure as best as possible, without skipping a game. An example will surely be more telling:

• Alt tags
  The alt tag or alt attribute is an alternative text that allows robots to understand the content of an image.
  
  Its primary objective, the reason for its creation, is to describe a visual to the blind. This tag also allows you to reference an image in Google Image. It is therefore a plus for the natural referencing of your site.
  
  How do I write a good alt tag? It should contain between 3 to 5 words, usually a description of the image, related to the content of the page.
  
  
• Title
  The title is simply the title you see when you search on a search engine:

Its main objective is to encourage the user to visit your website. The title must contain the keyword of your article, must not be longer than 65 characters (spaces included).

Keep in mind that this tag is in a way a very short summary of what your page is about. So be relevant! Your key phrase (and therefore the TITLE) should really reflect the content of the page.

Small tips: you must vary the titles, there should not be 2 identical ones on your site & you must avoid the repetition of words.

Let's take an example:
For a blog post that wants to be positioned on the keyword “marketing automation”.

Example of a bad title: Marketing automation: discover our guide and 6 examples of marketing automation scenarios.
Super title example: Marketing automation: a guide and 6 sample scenarios.

Why is the first example bad? Because this one is too long and there is a repeat!

• Meta description
  A meta description allows you to add a description of an indexed page that will be displayed in the SERP. Its main objective is to make the Internet user want to click, to take action. To do this, there are several tips:

1. Use action verbs.
2. Allow the user to perceive an advantage (when possible).
3. Write a meta description that matches the content of the landing page.
4. Go to the essentials (160 characters maximum, spaces included).

Warning: if you don't put a meta description on your page, or if it's too short, Google will take an excerpt from the page to display it!

If we take the same example as above:
Super meta description example: Marketing automation is a must in digital marketing today. Discover our 6 examples of marketing automation!

In this example, you find the keyword, a call to action, an advantage (the examples) and we know exactly what we are going to find.

How to reference your site on Google? Optimize your metadata

Simply put, metadata is everything you can't see. That is to say:

• structured data
• Canonical URLs
• the hreflang tag
• The breadcrumb

All this in order to have a clean source code, and for Google to find all the right information needed easily and quickly.

Shall we go into a bit more detail?

Structured data are informations that is found in the code of your website. They allow robots from various search engines to understand the content of your website. This data therefore facilitates the exploration of your pages by these famous robots. Without this markup scheme, search engines would have a hard time referencing your pages correctly!

To find out more, Google has written an article that is quite interesting to understand how structured data works: See the article

And if you want to test your data, it's by hither !

Before we start with the definition of a Canonical URL, we will start by defining a URL. It is simply a web address, for example: https://www.mon-site.fr.

As for a canonical URL (or canonical tag, canonical URL, canonical meta and canonical rel), its purpose is to prevent any duplication of content, within the same site.

It is the address of a page that signals to search engines that it is defined as the original. Thus, they will not index other pages that have taken over the content of the “official” page.

For example, you have a page https://www.mon-site.fr/url1, in which you talk about SEO, and that you want to position well and on another page, for example https://www.mon-site.fr/url2, you talk about the same subject.

Except that on the other page, you have put content identical to the first, there is then the problem of duplicate content (which as a reminder is a practice penalized by Google) and cannibalization between the two pages. Therefore, on url 2, you must put url 1 as a canonical tag.

• Page URL: https://www.mon-site.fr/url2
• Canonical tag for this page: https://www.mon-site.fr/url1

Besides putting a different canonical URL when necessary, did you know that on all pages of a site, you need a canonical URL? This makes it possible to prevent duplicate content.

Despite the fact that its name is complicated to read, understanding it is quite simple, even extremely simple.

It is simply the fact of telling Google the language of your site, and to position it in the right language. Indeed, a German site has nothing to do with a French-speaking search engine, right?

This tag is also very useful when you have a multilingual site. Use the hreflang tag, ensures that search results point to the correct language version of a page!

You have three different places to implement the hreflang tag:

• in the header (HTML)
• In the Sitemap
• In the http header

The breadcrumb corresponds to Breadcrumb trail of a site.

A breadcrumb trail is used to indicate the position of a page in the hierarchy of a site, both for Internet users and for Google.

It is therefore an important element that must be added to the structured data of a site.

To do so, you can follow the instructions hither, or use a web agency.

Did you know that?

Since January 2021, the breadcrumb markup on data-vocabulary aru.org is no longer valid, it must be replaced by schema.org markup.

UX, the new SEO criterion

We are hearing more and more about UX (User eXperience) for a website, and more particularly for SEO. What is now called SXO (the marriage between the two parties).

Why? Because Google is constantly looking to improve the relevance of search results in its SERP, that's why there are Core Updates (updating its algorithm), but not only that! He also wants to improve the search experience for Internet users.

So, there are some points to take into account (this list is not exhaustive):

• Manage interstitial logic processing.
  For example, pop-ins should not cut off part of the content and interfere with the user's navigation. So, STOP with the huge pop-ups that take up the whole page (or at least a big part of it)!
  
  
• Have a variety of formats on your site.
  Do not limit yourself to text, and provide images, videos, infographics, diagrams, etc. (but be careful with the weight, and therefore to compress and resize everything well beforehand!).
  
  
• Pay attention to the fluidity of navigation.
  Help the user to navigate, to find the right information easily and in the right place.
  
  
• Don't have too many clicks.
  We also say stop browsing a site where you have to click more than 4 or 5 times to land on the web page that interests you.
  
  
• Take into account mobile compatibility (or mobile ergonomics).
  Your site must be what we call Responsive Design, that it adapts to all screen sizes.

Robots.txt and Sitemap

Any website must have a robots.txt and a sitemap.

The robots.txt is a file that gives instructions to search engine crawlers, on what they can and cannot explore and therefore index when they visit a site.

The Sitemap, it is a file where you can find all the pages of a website that you want to index, and it also allows you to link them together.

We are lucky, today with most CMS, allow it to be generated. Either automatically, as with Webflow, or with plug-ins, as on Wordpress.

Not sure how to create your sitemap? Google itself tells you everything hither.

Once it's done, don't forget to report it in Google Search Console.

So much for the technique, think about the fact that it is sometimes faster and more efficient to do a redesign of its website than trying to repair a poorly designed site by tinkering. ‍

Natural referencing: We move on to content

As we said at the beginning of this article, content is king. This is the most important point, which will allow you, at least enormously, to help you to properly reference your pages.

So let's go, we're not wasting 1 more minute, and we explain to you what you need to know about everything related tosemantic analysis.

The different types of content

Did you know that when we talk about content, we don't just talk about text? And yes! The term content is much broader than that, and so much the better!

Who wants to read an article with just one huge paragraph? Boring isn't it?

Here are different types of content:

• The text
  No need to procrastinate too much on this subject now, just below I am bombarding you with information.
  
  
• The image
  Putting images is great, but be careful, you should not put them in any way. If you have followed what we said above, you know that you have to resize and compress them, so that they do not gain too much weight, and of course, put an alt tag.
  
  
• The video
  Video is becoming more and more important when it comes to SEO. On many topics, there is a video.
  
  
• The table
  When doing comparisons, have you ever thought of doing them in table form? Simple, clear and effective!
  
  
• The schema
  As you can see in this article, nothing better than a diagram to illustrate topics that are sometimes a bit complex.
  
  
• The infographic
  The infographic is great, on the other hand, pay attention to its readability, especially on mobile! At Sales Odyssey, we are a fan of infographics, which what's more, they are also useful for communication!
  
  
• The podcast
  For example, why not transcribe your articles in audio? Some people just prefer to listen rather than read.
  
  
• The webstories
  One Webstory looks like what you might find as a story on social media, except you're going to find it on Google. In it you can find text, images, videos, videos, gifs, quizzes, and links.

How to reference your site? Establishing your content strategy

In order to implement an effective content strategy, you need to think about the right content. Namely, this one will bring you traffic, but which corresponds to the buying journey of your target!

So here are the steps we recommend you follow:

• Find your personas
• Define the types of content you want to do
• Choose the topics for your content strategy
• Create your content plan
• Generate ideas
• Find the right keywords
• Create pillar cocoons fromEntity based SEO
• Map the internal networking
• Make your editorial calendar

Do you want to know more? Lucky boy, we already wrote an article on content strategy.

Writing your content

The funniest moment (#humour)!

This part can be scary, but don't worry, we've written an article specifically about it to help you.

Remember that writing content optimized for SEO is within the reach of anyone, as long as you apply the rules. But if you're writing like a vacation buddy, don't be surprised if your post/page doesn't rank. ‍

Internal networking: Establishing a semantic cocoon

Many have tried it, few have succeeded and many have not understood anything.

One semantic cocoon, it is the way to organize the pages of a website, by creating links between them (the internal link). This concept was invented by a French guy 😎 (Laurent Bourrelly), class isn't it?

To understand what a semantic cocoon is, you have to keep in mind that a website is designed based on silos. A silo is a branch of a tree, which starts from a theme, and which goes down to more and more specific subjects, this is what we call siloing.

You must rely on the user's request, his search intention, when he arrives on your site, and not on the basis of the offer you offer. You should always ask yourself “What are the requests that meet the needs of my buyer personas?” , that's what will help you create your architecture.

Bad semantic practices

We explained to you the best semantic practices, what to put in place and why, but it is also important to make a small point about all the bad practices that will harm Google SEO.

The duplicate content (or duplicate content) is when a text appears several times on the Internet. Whether on the same site, or on different sites.

Duplicate content is a practice not recommended by Google and may result in a penalty.
Content duplication issues can come from 3 main sources:

• URL variations
• HTTP and HTTPS pages or pages with WWW and without WWW
• Recovered or copied content

Word stuffing

This practice was widely used many years ago, but it is no longer recommended at all. In the eyes of search engines, this is a sign of manipulation of their algorithms (Keyword Stuffing), so be careful!

It is also harmful for Internet users, who do not necessarily want to read redundant content. Remember, the user experience is important and taken into account by Google, this also applies to content. They need to be interesting, relevant, and easy to read.

Our tip? Once you have defined your target keyword, instead of putting it all over your texts and titles, use its semantic field instead!

Cannibalization

No, nothing to do with Hannibal Lecter, the Cannibalization in SEO It's when two pages (or more) deal with the same subject and both want to position themselves on the same keyword: they eat each other up. This means that they will have trouble ranking well and reach the first Google page.

How to counter it? With a good content strategy and a semantic cocoon. With these two points, you will have an overview, which will allow you not to write 2 similar articles.

What if you already have this problem? You have the option of grouping the 2 articles into 1 for example, then redirecting 301.

Concealment technique

Or in other words, the cloaking. This is when you present your Internet users with URLs (and therefore content) that are different from those intended for search engines.

Warning: this practice is forbidden by Google.

The last point and not the least: the authority of a domain

Before I start this part, I want to start with a disclaimer:

No netlinking is not everything! At Sales Odyssey, we don't believe that with just the right connections, you will revolutionize your positioning.

Of course this helps, but above all, you need a site with a good architecture, a content strategy, and a good internal network.

Why? Simply because SEO is only useful if it brings you potential customers, and an incoming link has no value for your readers.

Remember: The heart of SEO is content, producing exceptional content on your site, to offer an exceptional experience to your users. Netlinking is the icing on the cake.

Now let's get to the explanations! ‍

Netlinking, the basics

What is netlinking?

Netlinking (or Backlinks), it's simply getting a link from a website to another website.

What does “domain authority” mean?

Domain authority is equivalent to the trust that Google places in a website. It is defined as a score that search engines assign to a website.

This term was invented at the MOZ company. The score ranges from 0 to 100, and the objective is to have the highest possible grade. To guide you, a good grade is between 40 and 60.

In addition, Google now assesses authority according to the EEAT principle (Expertise, Experience, Authority, Reliability), favoring sites that demonstrate real expertise and transparency in their field. To find out more about this topic, go to our article onEAT.

Here are a few other things that can contribute to domain authority:

• The age of your domain name (the older it is, the better)
• The quality of the content of your website (hence the relevance of having a good content strategy)
• The number and quality of your backlinks

It should not be forgotten that the authority of a domain is only one informant, and that this is not everything for your natural referencing, far from it.

What is a referring domain?

In natural referencing, we refer to each domain name that sends external links to a given site.

For example, a site may very well have 500 backlinks from 300 different websites, but only 200 different referring domain names.

What you need to remember is that in natural referencing, the number of referring domains is more important than the total number of backlinks.

What is netlinking for and why is it useful for natural referencing?

Netlinking is used to validate your expertise with Google. If links that come from other sites in the same theme as yours point to your site, Google will consider that you are indeed an expert in this field.

Netlinking is useful for natural referencing for several reasons:

• Improving the quality and quantity of traffic on your site
• Develop the popularity of your site, and therefore its authority
• The good positioning of your pages on search engines

The types of links

There are various types of backlinks for your netlinking strategy.

To be more specific, there are two types of links:

• Nofollow links: Nofollow means links that are not followed by search engine robots.
• Dofollow links: Dofollow means that these are links that are followed by search engine robots.

A dofollow link will therefore have more power than a nofollow link.

What is a quality link?

To make a good connection, there are 5 criteria to take into account:

1- The quality of the partner site
It is important that a backlink comes from a site that is in the same industry as you, that it has good authority and that it is a site with visits.

2- The relevance of the content of the partner site
The content of the site that backlinks to your site must be consistent with the content of your site.

For example, a site that talks about cooking will not backlink to a car site.

3- The position of the link in the content

A link must appear natural, so it must be located at the heart of the text of the page, and not in the header or footer.

4- The anchor text of the link

As a reminder, anchor text is the visible text that is used to position a link.

The anchor of a backlink must therefore be consistent with the content of the link.

Warning: You need a variety of anchor text and not the same text every time (you can use synonyms, brand name, etc.).

5- The dofollow and nofollow attribute

As you will have understood above, a dofollow link has more weight than a nofollow link. But that doesn't mean that links with nofollow attributes don't matter.
Since 2019, Google has also taken into account nofollow links to your site.

How do I check the quality of a link? Diagnostic tools

To check the quality of a link, there are many tools and indicators:

• Domain Rating (Ahref)
• Domain Authority (Moz)
• SEMrush
• Google Search Console
• Bing Webmaster Tool
• Link Explorer
• Ahrefs
• Majestic SEO
• Google Analytics
• Linkody

Attention: the penalties

Have you ever heard of Google Penguin? Google Penguin is an anti-spam filter from the Google algorithm, which consists in tracking netlinking operations deemed “fraud/aggressive”.

By fraudulent or aggressive technique, we mean:

• the abusive repetition of the same link anchor
• keyword stuffing
• backlinks from poor quality sites (forums, blog spam, press release sites,...)
• Exchanging footer links
• massive addition to hundreds of directories at once

What are you risking?

The penalty will not apply to the entire site, but to the page in question, on which you did this practice.

You will not lose the indexing of this or these pages, but you will lose visibility.

What you need to remember about netlinking

Prioritize quality over quantity. It is better to have fewer links but good links to your site, than a lot of bad links, and average links.

Conclusion: SEO in 3 points

The 4Cs, which stand for content, code, design and celebrity, is a concept described by Olivier Andrieu. It is a simple way to remember the rules for good natural referencing.

• The content
  Exceptional content for both the Internet user and the search engines.
• The technique
  A well-built, well-structured site but also efficient for the shortest possible loading time.
• Popularity (authority)
  Work intelligently on the netlinking of your site.