The 3 fundamentals of SEO to start well

Le SEO, ou référencement naturel, regroupe toutes les techniques pour classer un contenu en tête de résultat sur les moteurs de recherche. Cette expertise nécessite beaucoup de temps pour se former. Mais il est possible de maîtriser quelques fondamentaux pour améliorer ses résultats. Nous en voyons aujourd'hui trois.

53 % of websites are organic: whatever your activity, you have an interest in optimizing your natural referencing.

On the other hand, Google SEO developments are constant and more and faster: we count no less than 8 in 2021.While the latest is barely deployed, Google’s spokesman announced that future updates will be more frequent.

With all these changes, you can quickly fear and no longer know where to start your SEO strategy.Fortunately, there are still fundamentals that do not change (or little).I gathered them in three points:

1. The contents
2. L’expérience utilisateur
3. La popularité

The contents

Google algorithm is now far too sophisticated for those who would like to duper it too roughly: quality content is now a non-negligible asset to obtain good natural referencing results.

Quality content is above all a text that meets the need for the reader.This need can take several forms: this is called research intention.There are four categories of research intentions:

1. L’intention informationnelle (comme dans 80 % des cas, l’internaute veut apprendre quelque chose)
2. L’intention commerciale (il veut obtenir des informations avant de prendre une décision d’achat)
3. L’intention navigationnelle (il recherche un site ou une page web spécifique)
4. L’intention transactionnelle (il veut acheter un produit)

For example, with the keyword "laptop", the research intention is transactional.The first results (outside advertising) are sales pages:

By changing the request for "comparison computer", the intention becomes commercial.The first results are product comparisons:

With "What criteria for a laptop?", The intention of research is informational.The first results are blog articles.Google's suggestion for "other questions asked" is displayed above in the results than in previous requests:

You certainly know: natural referencing revolves around keywords.Many webmasters think that it is enough to integrate the keyword that the Internet user is looking for enough times in an article to be well referenced.We can therefore want to write an article for each keyword.

This urban legend is partly false.In fact, it is better to choose a subject (and not a keyword) and seek the questions that Internet users are asking about this theme.This is the best way to meet their expectations correctly.To succeed, you can for example watch the “other questions asked” and “associated research” sections of Google.

Then you can work with semantic cocoons: when you integrate several links that point to other pages on your website, do it with pages with a similar semantics.For example, articles on taxation, inflation and cryptocurrencies must be meshed together to form a semantic cocoon on personal finance.

Finally, you must optimize the article by absolutely putting one or more in the

The user experience (the technical part)

Apply good practices of the web and Google will not penalize you.

Make sure you don't have pages 404 (a page deleted or replaced), broken links and chain redirects (when an old URL refers to another page up to date).The Google Search Console allows you to check these errors.Do not hesitate to help you other SEO software (some are free) to master this technical part of natural referencing.

Since May 1, 2020 and the Core Web Vitals update, Google takes into account three speed criteria on your website.These criteria impact your natural referencing.You must optimize your loading time with simple tips (compress images, use a simple text font, delete unnecessary plugins, etc.).

More generally, your whole interface must be optimized.You must in particular be vigilant when you display your website on smartphone.A mobile friendly interface is essential, knowing that Google algorithm scrutinizes your website in priority in mobile format from the mobile First indexing update of April 2021.

Google algorithm works like a user: it walks on your site.Navigation must therefore be clear thanks to a good internal network.You must integrate several internal links in each of your pages.

Popularity and domain authority

The natural referencing of each web page does not work in silos.The classification of a page largely depends on the authority of your domain name.For example, knowing that the domain authority of Wikipedia is substantial, their pages will be very likely to position themselves well in search engines.

This same criterion of authority is based on the number and quality of the links pointing to your page.This is called "backlinks".If a site with a strong domain authority refers to yours, the SEO impact is much more powerful than a backlink of a small website.Also, a quality backlink in Google's eyes must come from a site positioned on the same theme as yours.

The best way to get exceptional links is to have exceptional content.For example, if you do an interview with Warren Buffet, you will be an authority and several sites dealing with personal finance will cite you.But unusual content requires a lot of resources.

To obtain backlinks more simply, you can write guest items: in exchange for writing content on a partner site, you have the right to integrate a link pointing to your site.

You can also carry out links (each point to the other site).But if you abuse this practice (for example by adding 50 new reciprocal links in a week), you risk being sanctioned by Google Pingouin, the Google algorithm responsible for hunting for abuse of abusive links.

Finally, it is possible to buy backlinks.But you must plan a certain budget: at least € 20 per link, and on average $ 353 according to the SEO Ahrefs expertise tool.But this practice is prohibited by Google, which can apply sanctions (by deteriorating your referencing, or even by unreachable).

Beyond the domain authority, the popularity of a website is also due to its branding.For example, backlinks from social networks are not supposed to count in your SEO ranking (they are in “nofollow”).But they allow you to show that you are a confidence resource.Above all, it is important to have other traffic sources than Google: if your SEO ranking is degraded following an update of the search engine, you will lose most of your daily visitors.

Podcasts and YouTube videos are very interesting examples: they allow you to get traffic from other platforms and touch an audience with a search intention that you cannot reach on Google.