HOW TO IMPROVE THE SEO OF A WEBSITE

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to the methods used by search engines to rank the results returned to Internet users according to what they are looking for. From a marketing point of view, SEO is a set of techniques to improve your ranking in search engines, so that users can find you. The objective is to optimize your website in order to improve its ranking in search engines, and bring traffic to your website. For example, for a city shoe seller, you might want to work on appearing in the first results of google for "Montreal shoe store" which is searched 260 times a month.

The number of daily users of search engines is constantly increasing; in 2020, more than 7 billion requests are made every day in the world on search engines! That's why search engine optimization will become the first channel of acquisition of new customers for most websites. If all search engines have their importance and their specificity, Google is now the main engine to target, with 92% of market share in Canada!

It is important to know that more than 90% of the traffic on search engines, especially on Google, is concentrated on the first page of results. This data indicates the importance of having an optimized and relevant content to improve the traffic of your website.

Unlike other methods of acquiring traffic, SEO is a long term process and is "free". Once your website is well positioned in the search results, it will be able to continuously attract visitors. It is therefore a potentially very profitable technique. in the long run. 

Keywords are words or groups of words that will characterize your content and allow search engines to identify what you want to talk about. Keywords are very important for the referencing of your website. Indeed, when we do a search on Google, most people write only the keywords of their search. Thus, it is important to select the right terms that characterize the site to be referenced: you will look for keywords that will not only allow you to position yourself on search engines, but also those that will allow you to localize, and finally to attract qualified targets, who may be interested in what you have to offer.

For example, for a plumbing company, you should choose keywords related to the field. If the company specializes in commercial plumbing, you should choose keywords related to this sector. It is also necessary to include locations in the keywords: for our plumbing company, we could choose: "Commercial plumbing Brossard", "commercial plumbing South Shore", "commercial plumber", "commercial plumbing". commercial plumber"...

Keyword research is essential to establish a good web strategy. To facilitate the task, it is possible to use certain tools. These tools allow you to find keywords that are both relevant and efficient for your business. We can mention for example Sem Rush, Google keyword planner, Uber Suggest… They allow you to search for keywords and identify their search volume. Some keywords will be more searched than others, these tools also allow you to identify the competition and the workload to position yourself in the first search results. 

Now that the concept of SEO is clearer, it is now possible to develop a successful web strategy. To start, it is important to think about keywords related to your activity and your targets. It is necessary to think about keywords that summarize your activity and will be able to interest people who can potentially search for you. The whole objective of SEO is to integrate your keywords in a structured and relevant way in the content of your website.

• The Content

Content is the basis of SEO. To be well referenced, it is necessary to build content and web pages that meet the intentions of Internet users. A unique content, which includes the keywords on which you want to position yourself is essential. Through this content, you will also have to respond as best as possible to the requests of Internet users; a structured content, without spelling mistakes is necessary to meet this objective. 

In your content writing, remember to structure your content with titles and subtitles, called Hn tag. The content and structure must be as clear as possible so that, during the analysis of search engines, they can understand what you want to talk about and what queries you want to answer. So think about organizing your content, and inserting your keywords and semantics in your titles and subtitles. 

However, optimization is not limited to the text content of your website pages. Other elements must also be thought through and optimized:

• The URL of your web page: a clear URL, which describes the entire path by which the user arrives at the page, and in which we will find the main keyword on which you are positioned.
• The title tag: this is the main title of your page
• The meta-description: a quick description of the page, which will appear in the search results on google 
• Alt attributes: description of images to be understood by search engines

The goal of the whole operation is to make the search engine understand what the website is about. Indeed, when the latter analyzes the site, it recognizes the keywords of the analyzed site. This is how the search engine will highlight your website, based on its content. 

• The Links

For the referencing of your website, you must not neglect the links. We distinguish internal links, which go from one page to another on your website, and external links, which redirect to other websites.

In the creation of your content, you must think of integrating links to other pages of your website (internal links), so that search engines can make the link between the different topics discussed on your site. Think about adding some links that redirect to a contact page, to a service similar to the one you offer, or to an article on your blog that develops the subject you are talking about.

External links aim to increase the popularity of your website, to improve the referencing of your site and to integrate even more traffic. External links are links on other websites that point to yours; the number of links and the quality of external links is an important criterion in search engine rankings. Give preference to links from quality sites, which have a similar theme to yours, and which have been integrated into the content pages of these external sites. External links from different quality sites will increase your popularity.

Your contents are optimized by robots, it is important to facilitate their access, reading and understanding of your website. There are several techniques to optimize your content: 

For a website to be correctly scanned by search engines, you will need a clean and well edited source code, hence the importance of not neglecting the technical aspect of creating a website. You will also have to integrate a robot.txt file, which allows you to give indications to search engines on the areas they can explore. A sitemap xml is also essential to insert for the website : a mapping to help google to discover the different URLs of your website.

Last important point from a technical point of view, you have to pay attention to the loading time of the pages of your site; the slower a site is to load, the more you are penalized by the search engines. In addition, studies show that 53% of users will leave the page if the loading time takes more than 3 seconds. If the loading of the site is particularly long, several reasons are possible: it may be that the photos, videos are extremely heavy and therefore long to load. It would then be good to reduce the size of the media to improve the loading time of the site.  To check if a site is well optimized, you just have to use the GT Metrix tool; this platform analyzes the performance and gives a score to the site according to a hundred criteria. Thus, it will be possible to understand and analyze the points to work on to improve the speed of the web platform. 

An equally important point concerns the ergonomics of the site. If the interface is clear, intuitive and optimized for cell phones, Google will take it into account and put it forward.

Once you master the criteria and techniques of SEO, it is possible to go deeper into the optimization of your web pages. It is a discipline that requires constant monitoring, since SEO evolves constantly, according to the changes made by search engines. More and more factors are taken into account in the positioning of search engines, and rankings are constantly changing.

How to optimize your natural referencing with an agency?

In a natural referencing strategy, an agency can help you build a precise audit of your site and implement a permanent technical and content optimization. SEO is a long-term work, which means that it is always possible to improve your return on investment, even if the first results can take time before being significant. The budget will generally vary depending on the size of the project, the corrections and optimizations to be made, and the goals you have set for yourself.

Dubuc Marketing is a digital marketing agency that offers SEO services for small and micro businesses in Quebec. Dubuc Marketing is for people who want to start or restart their digital journey. Do you want to develop your business through SEO? Let's talk about your digital project and we will accompany you with all our SEO skills.