SEO
March 20, 2024
Table of contents hide
1 What is natural referencing?
2 How does a search engine work?
3 How to improve your natural referencing?
4 Is your site well optimized?
Search engines bring 300 times more traffic to a website than social malaysia whatsapp networks (source: Outbrain Study). And to be present on search engines, natural referencing is essential!
Everyone talks about it, it's important to be visible on Google but in reality, what is natural referencing or SEO ? Definition!
What is natural referencing?
Natural referencing or SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) brings together all the techniques used to improve the positioning of a website on search engines , particularly Google, the market leader (92% of market share in France according to Web Rank Info).
A well-optimized website is on the first page of Google , for a given query, and ideally in the first three positions , which together collect nearly 60% of clicks (respectively 33%, 15.6% and 10% according to Advanced Web Ranking).
Not to be confused with paid referencing
Natural referencing should not be confused with paid referencing or SEA for Search Engine Advertising. As its name suggests, paid referencing consists of optimizing advertising campaigns on search engines .
Advertisers then appear above all other search results.
This technique is more or less expensive, depending on the competition of the keyword. The Google Adwords advertising network uses an auction system to define the price of a keyword. Payment is made either at cost per click (CPC), or at cost per thousand (CPM), or at cost per acquisition (CPA).
SEA is an effective technique in the short term but very expensive. I advise you to use it in addition to good natural referencing, at the beginning of your activity to send good signals to Google or during advertising campaigns for example.
The benefits of natural referencing
The natural referencing strategy must be seen in the long term.
It requires a lot of time spent on different areas but it is a sustainable technique for your brand.
You improve your visibility on the internet and you will be able to generate targeted traffic for better conversion once the visitor is on your site, without having to pay astronomical sums to position yourself on a keyword.
You get a sustainable return on investment (ROI) and qualified traffic at a lower cost. Even if, of course, you will have to spend time on it (and time is money, as the other one would say!).
SEO is driven by search engines and you need to regularly check for algorithm updates to stay up to date and not get overtaken by competitors.
The case of local SEO
Local SEO first appeared in 2006. It involves creating a business listing directly on Google via Google My Business . It is an advantageous method for small local businesses with a limited budget .
More and more Internet users are doing local searches and having a Google My Business listing allows a brand to appear more easily in local queries and on Google Maps.
How does a search engine work?
A search engine is like a huge library where all the pages on the internet are listed (well, the indexed pages, not those on the deep web and the dark web , but that's another story).
Google's operation can be summarized in four steps: Crawl > Index > Rank > Results
Thanks to its robots , also called crawlers , Google browses all internet pages by following hyperlinks and indexes them . It stores them for later use.
When an Internet user types a query into Google, the latter will browse all the content it has indexed to find the best answer . It thus classifies the sites according to its own criteria to respond to Internet users' queries in the most relevant way possible.
Its database is constantly updated. Its robots go over new sites and go back over old ones to add updates.
To check that all the pages of your website are indexed, simply type site:your-domain-name.fr into Google. All the pages indexed by the search engine will then be displayed.
How to improve your natural referencing?
Google uses more than 200 criteria to classify a web page . They are grouped into three parts, also called SEO pillars , which each represent 1/3 of natural referencing (roughly!):
The technique,
The content,
Popularity.
The technique
To appear in the first results of Google, a site must first be well built . Optimizing its performance involves several elements such as reducing loading time so that robots and Internet users can access information as quickly as possible.
Work on the tree structure also helps promote better indexing of pages and the speed of changes taken into account by Google. A simple site architecture and a well-worked internal mesh save time for robots that will come back more often.
You may hear about a fourth pillar of SEO : user experience (or UX). For me, you have to think about it from the creation of the website. That's why I prefer to integrate this criterion into the technical point. The tree structure is a criterion of good user experience, just like having a responsive site (adapted to smartphones).
The content
Remember, “ content is king ” according to Bill Gates. A website without optimized content will never reach the top of the podium for a given query.
The quality of the content is essential for Google, whose primary goal is to give the best possible answer to the user . SEO optimization of the content first involves a keyword strategy (short but also long tail), then through texts that are relevant to your target, qualitative and unique (duplicate content can lead to penalties from Google).
To make the robots' work easier, the content must also be hierarchical using headings or title tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.), the alternative text of the images must be provided, as well as the title (title which will appear in the SERP or search results).
Even if it doesn't count for SEO, also remember to fill in the meta description which encourages the Internet user to click on your link rather than another when your site is displayed in search engines.
Popularity
Finally, the popularity of a site allows Google to trust it and position it high in the SERPs . To become an authority site , it is essential to work on its notoriety through a netlinking strategy .
Popular sites in your theme must make links to your site (also called backlinks or inbound links) for it to gain popularity.nnIf at one time, it was enough to multiply the number of links to improve its positioning, this is no longer the case today. The links must be close to the theme of the site and themselves popular . Thus, it is better to make fewer links but that they are more qualitative, at the risk of taking a penalty from Google.
