SEO: the 5 keys to good SEO

Defining your marketing strategy, undertaking a multi-media content publication campaign, deploying a link acquisition system, optimising your site technically and monitoring site traffic statistics are the main factors for success in SEO. Stéphane Bataillard, a trainer specialising in WordPress and SEO-optimised content writing, takes a closer look at these 5 fundamentals.

Search engines, led by Google, have billions of web pages to crawl. Few of these pages are actually interesting. It is SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) work that helps the search engines to sort them out. There are two types of criteria: on-page criteria (actions to be taken on the page) and on-site criteria (actions to be taken on the server).

1. Technical optimisation

A website must first be technically prepared. The aim is to optimise the quality of the user experience. In recent years, Google has constantly modified and strengthened its criteria in this area. Today, the Google Searsh Console no longer refers to site speed, but to essential web signals report (Core Web Vitals).

These indicators measure the performance of a site's pages according to three criteria:

• CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): metric that calculates the total sum of scores for each unexpected layout shift that occurs during the lifetime of the page;
• FID (First Input Delay): delay between the moment when a user interacts with your page for the first time and the moment when the browser responds to this interaction;
• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): time taken for the browser to display the largest element visible in the display window from the moment the Internet user tries to access the URL.

These indicators measure whether the user experience on the page is satisfactory, which is indirectly an SEO criterion.

You can measure the performance of your site's pages according to these criteria using free online tools such as web.dev.

	Satisfactory page experience	Improvement needed	Mediocre
LCP	< 2,5 s	<= 4	> 4 s
FID	< 100 ms	<= 300 ms	> 300 ms
CLS	<=0,1	<= 0,25	> 0,25

2. Marketing strategy

Before taking any action purely aimed at improving your SEO, it's important to think carefully about your marketing strategy. It may seem obvious, but a website's SEO can only be worked on as part of an overall marketing strategy. marketing strategy clearly defined beforehand. This strategy involves long-term visionas well as resources and resources. In this context, it is necessary to carry out some real upstream work and ask yourself a few questions (and answer them):

• what products are on offer and to whom?
• What is my unique value proposition (what I bring that others don't)?
• do I have the means to fulfil my ambitions?

3. Content strategy

It is the content of a site that can make it interesting in the eyes of a search engine, especially Google. This point is indisputable. This content, which must be produced on and off the site (social networks), must be produced as part of the marketing strategy mentioned above. In this respect, the search engine results pages (SERPs) provide numerous indications of the interest shown by Internet users in all the existing subjects. This makes it possible to keyword search on which you will need to position yourself. This stage requires particular care. A number of tools, such as the Google keyword planner can also be used to carry out this work.

This work will determine the medium-term publication strategy. The objective: to plan the publication of content on the site (textual content, images, videos, podcasts, infographics, etc.) by drawing up an editorial calendar (ideally over a year), likely to cover all the semantics of the targeted theme.

For Google, a site containing 150 pages of 500 words each is more likely to be of interest than a site with ten or so pages.

4. Netlinking strategy

A site's reputation is built up through the external links it obtains. A link from a third-party site to your own is like a vote. How does it work? Google rates each domain and each page within each domain. This score is calculated on the basis of the ratio of incoming links to outgoing links that a site/page can have. For a search engine, an interesting site is one that is well known. So one of the main objectives in SEO is to acquire links. There is one condition, and not the least of which is to produce interesting content, i.e. content that is unique and original.

This netlinking strategy is deployed over the medium term, i.e. at least three months. You also need to look for quality links: no more than two or three links per week. This is the most important lever and the most sensitive point when it comes to gaining visibility.

Since 2013, Google no longer communicates the score it gives to sites (the famous "PageRank"). However, there are performance indicators created by SEO specialists that can be used to estimate PageRank, such as Majestic SEO's citation flow and domain authority. As far as Google is concerned, a site whose citation flow equals 40 can begin to be a site of interest.

5. Statistics monitoring

The last crucial point is the monitoring of visitor statistics. The effectiveness of the various actions taken to gain visibility needs to be measured. To do this, we use web analytics tools.

By analysing the visitor statistics obtained, we can identify ways of optimising and improving the actions already taken. It is important to monitor these statistics on a daily basis. They are a valuable source of information. Google Analytics, which is free, is currently the most popular web analytics tool. It is also very powerful. However, the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) recommends the use of Matomoto Analytics.

Key facts:

• Leferencing requires resources, time and means;
• results are achieved over the medium term;
• there is no such thing as a miracle formula. What works for one site will not necessarily work for another;
• When it comes to SEO, it's vital to test and build up your own experience;
• It is also essential to be constantly on the lookout.