1. Preparation: Plan The Project Upstream
The first stage, definitely one of the most important: everything that is performed upstream, i.e. before the site goes online, is no longer to be seo done afterward, as the old saying goes.
When the website is still not available, take control of all the things that we will discuss in the following paragraphs, because you will not have to come back to it (except for a few finishing touches) later—so much time saved! A website that, when it went live, was 100% “search engine friendly” ( responsive to the relevant criteria of search engines ) did 80% of the SEO work! Not trivial … Be sure all the website Links are configured (see point 10 below), as that is the most important thing to test when the pages are live.
If your site is already online, this is not very serious: apart from the URLs, which are often tricky work (but nothing is impossible …), most of the points that constitute a site optimization can be reviewed once the site is online. Yet often you have to “destroy” what was achieved at first, which is never fun. Therefore, it takes time to remove restoration, but it is crucial…Have you not planned a redesign of the site for soon, which would allow you to review the “SEO” aspect on this occasion?
2. Preparation: Update Your Knowledge
We quickly realize, when approaching the subject of natural referencing, that this is an area that is not experiencing a great revolution, but which is continuously evolving. There was a mistake. It’s apparent why we don’t practice SEO services now as we did 10 years ago.
- The “keywords” Meta tags no longer have any impact on the positioning of a site.
- We no longer “submit” our website to search engines; on the other hand, we set up links so that the robots of these engines follow them and come and explore your pages.
In short, today, search engine robots are “somewhat special Internet users” who come to read your pages. Everything they see, the user must see and vice versa. We no longer “hide” keywords in search engine pages. It is undoubtedly the most influential evolution of search engines for 10 or 15 years.
3. Preparation: Think About Your Keywords
First directly operational phase of your SEO strategy: create a lexicon of around twenty (up to 50) queries, often requested by Internet users, and which you will subsequently disseminate in the “hot zones” of your web pages.
The best tool for doing this today is Google’s Keyword Tool. Once on the tool’s home page, type in a few keywords that match your field of activity, and the generator will give you the number of times these terms (and other related ones) are typed on the search engine.
At the end of this first phase, using Google’s keyword generator, you should, therefore, have at your disposal a “lexicon” of a few dozen queries (single keywords or series of terms) often requested by Internet users on Google, and which you will have to insert in your textual content after that… We will come back to this very soon …
4. Preparation: No blocking technology
Be careful; certain technologies can slow down or block search engines. There aren’t many of them, but they can undermine, at least in part, your visibility strategy. You might as well make the right technological choices from the start.
- JavaScript: even if Google reads JavaScript (a programming language integrated into the code of pages) better and better and often knows how to recognize links that are incorporated therein, this technology is still sometimes and partly engine-tight. It is better, currently, to say that the “bricks” written in JavaScript still represent real obstacles for the engines. If your internal navigation is carried out using this language in particular (but this is less and less the case), do not hesitate to … review your copy …
- Access by password: if you need a password to enter your site, the robots will not have one. They will, therefore, not be able to come and index your content. Consider, in this case, to offer in a visible and freeway an informative part – but not confidential, of course – of your materials.
- Site entry tests: tests on the country or language of the Internet user upon entering the site to redirect to a particular version of your pages often poses a problem in SEO. Avoid as much as possible here too …
- Flash: textual content integrated into Flash or Silverlight animations still remains very obscure for Google and others. But the Flash is obsolete today.
Other techniques, like that of frames, can pose problems if nothing is done to “correct the situation,” but these are developing systems for sites today obsolete, just like Flash.
5. Criteria In Page: One H1 Tag Per Page
The first golden rule is as follows: you have to ask yourself the question: “what is the page I have in front of me talking about?” When you have the answer, you must transcribe its content in an H1 tag which has the following characteristics:
- A unique H1 card (this is used, not an obligation).
- Which contains 5 to 7 words.
- Which describes the content of the page.
Each page, therefore, has its H1 tag. Example:
- For a home page:
<h1> Abundance: news and information on SEO and search engines </h1>
- For a page of the section on employment in the field of SEO:
<h1> Job offers and applications in the field of SEO and search engines </h1>
– For news from the field:
<h1> American justice denounces an agreement on employment between 6 companies including Google </h1>
6. In-Page Criteria: An Editorial Structure In Hn Tags
The H1 tag is a crucial point, but it is not enough. The HTML language offers 6 levels of editorial titles (H1 to H6), making it possible to structure the textual content of a page. It is up to you when you are going to imagine the “templates” (content masks) of your pages to create structures using these tags allowing search engines to understand and analyze your content.
Example of such a structuring:
<h1> Title of the article or name of a product </h1>
<h2> Description in 2 or 3 sentences </h2>
<h3> Content subtitles </h3>
<h4> Breadcrumb </h4>
7. Criteria On Page: Important Words In Bold
Another critical point in your pages: if certain words in your lexicon (see point 3), or quite merely essential terms for your activity, are found in the text (apart from the Hn tags, see previous points 5 and 6), n ‘do not hesitate to put them forward by indicating them in bold, using the STRONG card.
Example:
This is <strong> a word in bold </strong>
Which will give the following result:
This is a word in bold
8. Criteria On Page: Quality Text In Quantity
Search engines need a minimum amount of text to understand what the page is about. Warning: it is crucial to know that these engines analyze the textual content of the web page, to examine its relevance, and no longer the Meta tags or other “hidden” areas. It is, therefore, essential to provide at least 200 words in the editorial area (the “editorial heart of the page”) to give them “material for analysis.” Let’s repeat: we are not talking about “hidden content” here, but somewhat readable and visible text!
9. In-Page Criteria: A Talking Title Tag
Another critical point in optimizing your HTML code: the TITLE tag, which is the area shown in the bar or tab of the browser. This tag must be specific to each page of your site and content, in 7 to 10 keywords.
10. Criteria On Page: A Descriptive Url
The URLs of your pages should be descriptive and contain keywords describing the content of the page.
The main rules to follow for URL titles are as follows:
- End the URL with the content of the H1 tag or a variant.
- Indicate relevant keywords – without exaggerating in terms of quantity – in the URL.
- Separate words with an underscore (-) and not stress (_).
- Do not forget any apostrophes (replaced by an underscore) and other punctuation characters, etc.
- Change accented letters and diacritics by their unaccented equivalent (“é” becomes “e,” “à” becomes “a,” “ç” becomes “c,” etc.).
- Avoid too many “/” in the URL. Prefer the high dashes as a separator.
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