Did you know that over 60% of organic website traffic comes from organic search? To succeed in building a strategy based on content, it is therefore essential to master your referencing on search engines.
This tutorial will show you 10 good practices for getting started in SEO by presenting the areas of optimization to boost your visibility on search engines and thus increase the number of visitors to your site.
Optimization for search engines, more generally called SEO (Search Engine Optimization) brings together all the techniques and good practices that aim to improve the positioning of a page, a site or a web application in the search engine results (Google, Bing, etc.).
Search engines like Google index web pages much like a website page directory.
Once you have created a website, search engine crawlers crawl your website to understand the information it contains and index it accordingly, so that it appears in search results according to the query you enter. Search engine crawlers crawl websites and can make sense of information based on things like text, structure, and non-textual content. These elements help crawlers index your website and rank it in their library based on different factors, such as relevance and authority.
This is where search engine optimization comes in!
SEO refers to the process of improving your site for search engines. It's about optimizing websites so that search engines understand the value and relevance of your pages by ranking them in search results.
There is one VERY IMPORTANT thing to understand about SEO!
The pages of your website are indexed individually on search engines and not as a whole. This means that your SEO work must be done page by page with the expertise of an expert in the field.
The previous section already gives us an idea of the importance of SEO. To better understand, think about your own search habits.
Let's say you go to Google because you want to find information on a specific topic, for example, "how to create a website". You type it just like that or maybe you just type “create your website”. Immediately you get a list of results.
Which one do you click?
Have you ever gone beyond the second or third page of results?
Probably not and if so, not that often.
This example shows why SEO is important. Having your pages optimized for search engines helps your overall search ranking.
Your aim is to be on the first page (or even better: in the first adverts) of the searches your customers make in order to increase traffic to your site.
The Web agency Geekworkers succeeded in less than 6 months to propel the site Recycling-Market.ch in the first positions on Google thanks to SEO. The site therefore appears in the first five positions on keywords such as “Swiss online flea market”, “second hand furniture” or "Swiss second-hand sales site" and many other words related to the second-hand market.
This guarantees an increase in traffic, sales and therefore the turnover of the company every day!
Here are 10 SEO tips for beginners that you can use to improve your website right now.
Keywords play a major role in SEO. A keyword indicates the main subject of your article and is what allows people to find your article on the web by making a request on the subject that interests them.
A keyword is a word or set of words that people type when they search for something.
This is why you need to make sure that your keyword matches the search intent of your target audience. It can be a short keyword as “lausanne web agency” or from a keyword to long tail like "which web agency to choose in Lausanne?" ".
The advantage being that you can target the exact audience that is interested in it. It is best to opt for a mix of both long and short keywords.
Also, it is ideal to consider the search volume and ranking difficulty of the keyword intended to be used.
Keywords are essential, but they are not the only element to optimize a website. You need to focus on other important aspects to increase your traffic.
Each page or blog post contains different relevant keywords. For this article, the keyword is “SEO optimization”. It is a keyword that can bring Internet users to this page!
Ideally, your chosen keywords should be in:
As long as they don't disturb the red thread of the article, don't hesitate to put them on! Beware of over-optimizing your pages to avoid being penalized by Google. This is called the Keyword stuffing which we will discuss later in this article.
A permalink is the URL you see when you access a web page. The logic of writing your URLs tells a lot of information about the overall structure of your website, they should not be too long and, at the same time, clearly describe the subject of the web page. For the reader and also for the robots that browse your website.
As previously mentioned, indexing robots or (Web crawler) crawl all the pages of your site to analyze their content and index them. Use clear and explicit words in your URLs. For example, if you're selling second-hand items online, structure your pages with permalinks to show people what they're accessing and to help contextualize the overall information. This makes the hierarchy clear to search engines and helps your site's SEO.
As the name suggests, a permalink is permanent, so it's important to determine which ones are suitable for your pages. It is not recommended to use specific dates or information that may change.
Indeed, having a page online for some time contributes to better SEO. You should therefore not delete the URLs that contribute to the visibility of your pages on search engines.
Being able to keep your pages up to date is essential and that means creating a timeless URL structure.
It is therefore not recommended to mention specific dates or years in your URLs and titles insofar as your content is intended to serve the long term.
If the site text you write refers to other elements of your site, create a link! It is recommended to create a hypertext link between the content of the pages of your website. This contributes to a better user experience by helping the reader discover more related content and navigate to other pages on your site, as well as helping crawlers index and contextualize your web pages.
Of course, you need to write content that engages readers. Be sure to cover your entire topic and not leave out any information that might be important. It's essential that you give your audience insight into the desired topic and answers tailored to their needs.
More words don't necessarily mean better quality, but since it indicates that the topic has been covered in depth, it can help.
In addition to covering your entire topic, writing in a clear, yet elegant and conversational way works wonders. Don't put your keyword all over your article hoping to have high keyword density. Trying to fool the system by putting as many keywords as possible everywhere will not work and many will be penalized for it.
Search engines are very smart and can recognize keyword stuffing.
There are very powerful tools such as Semrush to analyze and determine if your page contains relevant keywords and if it complies with SEO quality standards.
From the point of view of understanding your pages, images play a very important role. They help visualize your content better and make it more understandable for readers. But they are also important for SEO because they help your website get crawled (indexed by search engines). An image cannot be explored, but what can be explored and indexed in particular le ALT text and image description which are essential in SEO strategy of your site.
Have you ever noticed the images that appear at the top of your search results? They are also a great way to direct people to your website and therefore indicate that your website and images are relevant to the search topic. The compression of your images also plays a determining factor in the SEO of your website. The speed of the site which can alter the user experience has become a determining factor for search engines. The size and format of the images can play an important role in this regard. So be sure to optimize your images properly. You can easily do this using free image compression tools such as Squoosh, cesium or TinyPng
Your page loading speed is extremely important for website ranking. The Essential Web Signals are used in particular by Google to judge the user experience.
A fast loading website ensures an optimal user experience. If your page takes too long to load, it will have serious consequences due to the lack of time people are willing to wait, leading to a higher bounce rate (% of visitors having browsed only one page of the site). Although bounce rate is not a factor that directly influences your ranking, it is directly related to your page speed.
To overcome this problem, there are free tools to diagnose your existing websites. These include in particular PageSpeed (from Google) and of GTMetrix.
We talked about creating a good website structure in Section 3, which can already be considered part of technical SEO.
But technical SEO goes beyond permalinks and choosing the right keywords. It's all about creating a responsive design for your website.
This topic is very specific and technical, so it goes beyond what a beginner's SEO guide would describe.
Work with a technical expert in SEO, as well as with your team, is the best compromise to optimize the structure and user experience of your websites.
As people increasingly use their mobile phones to access the Internet, it is necessary to optimize the display of your website for mobile devices. Otherwise, you will end up with a high bounce rate, because let's be honest, nobody wants to stay on a website that is not suitable for our smartphones.
A non-responsive (not mobile-friendly) page design may have distracting flaws such as buttons not working or having to scroll from right to left to view page content.
A positive user experience encourages people to browse your website and take action (purchases, contact request, etc.). the “Responsive Web Design” or “Responsive Website” has become so important that Google has announced that it will soon start mobile indexing of websites even before desktop pages.
It is imperative to update your site regularly to reach the top positions on Google. Especially since information and trends change quickly and you don't want to be penalized in search results for outdated information. Review older pages and sites, evaluate content and check if it is properly optimized. If your content no longer makes sense or isn't optimized as it should be, it will likely hurt your rankings on search results.
SEO is a lifelong job, but with time and experience, you will go from novice to SEO expert. Regularly posting relevant articles to your blog is one of the best ways to improve your search engine rankings. For it, we can write you quality articles such as the one you have just read to improve your SEO.
Once you have written quality and relevant content for your readers, promote your content through different channels to reach an even larger audience.
You can do this organically by sharing them on your social networks or via a newsletter. Or with paid referencing (advertising), in English Search Engine Advertising (SEA). Both are important to your marketing strategy and should be done at the right time.
An organic approach (SEO) allows you to create a lasting flow of communication with your customers. Paid Advertising (SEA) helps show your content to the right audience and drive traffic to your website faster, which benefits your SEO performance.
With Geekworkers, you can optimize your website, improve your SEO and start an SEA Marketing strategy via Facebook, Instagram and Google. Our web agency, expert in SEO, graphics and website, will support you in all the digital aspects of your business.
SEO is essential for driving traffic to your website and allowing new users to discover your business, products and services. Boost your SEO with this SEO guide accessible to all!
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