You know that optimizing your presence on search engines, in other words SEO, is a necessary point to achieve these goals.
So first of all, a quick reminder...
What is SEO, again?
SEO optimization is essentially about improving the way your website pages appear and rank on search engines.
It's about implementing, evaluating, and then making decisions about your website that will ultimately affect your online reputation and success.
But why try to be first on Google?
It will be easier to answer this question that everyone is asking themselves through a few examples.
Get more qualified traffic, customers, and sales
As you can see below, this Sistrix chart shows the average organic CTR (or click through rate) compared to the average CTR — all formats combined, including advertising — for the same keywords.
Being first in SEO therefore means getting click rates of 30 to 35% on search queries, which is considerable in terms of traffic acquisition, and it can really be a game changer for your business!
Indeed, if you are among the first in the search engines, it is just as much of a budget that you will not spend on advertising to reach the same level.
And just as much traffic acquired qualitatively, if Google considers your content to be the most suitable for responding to the requests of your potential customers!
So, the more you know how to optimize your positions, the more you increase the number of clicks, get qualified traffic, increase the number of prospects and develop your turnover.
Increase your income
Another example in a case study ofAlkries shows how they exponentially grew organic traffic for a service business while significantly increasing their revenue.
Thanks to a detailed SEO strategy, they were able to almost double their customer's traffic and increase their revenue by 49%!
Update content to boost traffic
Below is an excerpt of organic traffic from Ahrefs for one of their pages.
As you can see, in 2018 traffic fell by 54% in just over a month. Web pages are not always well referenced. A good part of an SEO's job is to keep its content up to date and current.
That's exactly what they did to get a massive boost in traffic: they simply edited and re-published the article!
Being ranked high again has led to a huge increase in traffic, which also means more conversions.
Do you want to achieve similar results for your business? So follow our ultimate SEO checklist to the letter!
These tips are a guarantee for better organic positions. And if the list seems endless or sometimes too complex, rest assured: you don't have to do everything.
Just do your best and see the results for yourself on your organic acquisition and search performance!
A first piece of advice: with SEO, you want to position pages, not websites. Remember this and the whole thing will be even easier.
Let's go!
1. Basic configurations for your SEO
Install Google Search Console
Connecting your website to the Google Search Console (GSC) will help you monitor your search engine performance and find trends and ranking opportunities.
To set up GSC:
- Sign in to your Google account, or create one
- Click on add a property
- Choose “Domain” and enter the domain name of your website, for example coteries.com
- Click on “Continue” and check your domain by adding a DNS entry with your domain provider (Infomaniak or other).
And that's it! If you are having trouble validating your domain, you can select the URL validation option and choose your preferred validation method.
note : Even if you have not yet verified that you are the owner of your site, Google will start tracking the data associated with your website (ownership). Be sure to verify that you are the owner, as only then will you actually have access to your site's search visibility information.
Set up Google Analytics
Second necessary tool that you will badly need!
Google Analytics helps you track the acquisition of your traffic and gather a lot of other navigation and usage information on your site.
See you on google.com/analytics and you can get started for free.
Google also provides you with clear instructions to set up your analytics account, in case you're a bit caught off guard. Note that this is about setting up a Google Analytics 4 (or GA4) property. GA4 is the latest version of Google Analytics, launched in October 2020.
If you want, you can compare GA4 at Universal Analytics, and you can also opt for Google Universal Analytics if you prefer or if you are already used to it. However, note that Google Universal Analytics will disappear on July 1, 2023.
tip: You can import your Search Console data into Google Analytics. This will allow you to get more accurate data on your organic traffic acquisition. To do so, you need to enable data sharing with GSC in the Google Analytics property settings.
Note that you can definitely use another traffic analysis tool as an alternative to GA. GA works great though, especially when it comes to connecting it to other tools.
Use Yoast (if you are on WordPress)
If you have a site based on WordPress, using the Yoast SEO plugin is essential.
You have access to numerous tools that help you optimize your articles or pages to ensure the good SEO of your entire website.
Yoast checks if your keywords are well inserted in your article, if your text is long enough for the frequency with which your keyword appears, and much more.
So be sure to add it to your site!
2. Understand where to position yourself: search for your keywords
Find opportunities to position yourself on in your niche or sector. This will help you know what content you can position yourself on and get more traffic.
Here are some tools you can use to do keyword research.
Google Suggest
Google's search tool to suggest searches, simple and effective!
Are you wondering what the most popular searches are when people are looking for terms related to what your business sells?
Simply put yourself in your customer's shoes, do a search and see what comes up!
This simple method is ideal for finding keywords with low search volume and low competition levels, but which have a high conversion value due to their length and degree of precision. These are expressions called “long tail”, or “long tail” in English.
Google Trends
A free tool to see if a keyword is trending in searches.
Google Trends is also useful for choosing the right time to post content on certain topics.
Note that due to the low volume of research data in Switzerland, it is possible that Trends is not very accurate, but will still be able to help you!
Google Keyword Planner
A Google Ads tool.
If you don't already have a Google Ads account, you can sign in with your Google Account. Leave aside the configuration of a campaign for beginners, proposed at the first connection, to use the keyword planner directly.
This tool will give you information about search volume and competition for a specific keyword. By providing suggested bid estimates, you can also determine an advertising budget.
Again, data in Switzerland may not be very accurate given the low volumes of research. So you can always try another market (for example France if you are targeting French-speaking regions).
Keyword surfer
Keyword surfer is a great tool for getting quick (and free) information.
You can also use it with a Google Chrome extension that will give you additional information for each link that appears on the search results page (SERP).
In addition to Google Suggest, you'll immediately receive the estimated search volume, cost per click, and other information. Not bad, right?
KWFinder
Another option, whose basic plan costs $29.90 per month this time.
You benefit from keyword suggestions, information on the ranking of your competitors and even on how easy it is to position yourself on a keyword.
Search among online communities
This is more of a method than a tool: you can consult community platforms and social media groups to find trending news topics.
Are people asking questions about a topic that you have the perfect answer to? Create an article to answer them, answer their questions, and get them to explore your website!
You can also search for keywords in online “forums” like Reddit, Quora, or any other platform relevant to your industry.
3. Create quality content
Publish content that is useful and relevant to your potential customers.
Always aim for quality, not quantity. This will help you to better position yourself, to be found and to be mentioned elsewhere on the web (we'll talk about that later).
Plan and structure
After doing your keyword research and prioritizing the topics to position yourself on, you should now have a good idea of the content you want to create.
This may seem obvious to you, but it is essential to keep a structure in mind to create quality content. Once you're immersed in writing or creating, it's easy to lose track and get lost. So make sure you do it right from the start!
Write long content
An important point: make sure your content is longer and more detailed than other content that appears for the same keywords. You will therefore have more chances of being better positioned than your competitors!
We generally consider content optimized for SEO with more than 1,000 to 2,000 words.
Really go into detail. Google ranks detailed pages on a specific topic better than vague content.
Use synonyms and keywords related to your topic to create a semantic group, which will increase your chances of being well referenced for your target keywords.
Publish content that is easy to read
Google favors content created for humans.
Reduce your bounce rates and get better positions with easily readable texts:
- Instead, consider small paragraphs with short sentences.
- Use the active voice instead of the passive voice
Offer unique content
- Don't just regurgitate information. Use your own internal research, surveys, studies, or clear examples.
- Involve your experts in the content creation process.
- Create timeless content that you can update!
Use multimedia
- Insert media: not just images, but also videos, charts, infographics, or diagrams.
- Include images with consistent file names and descriptions. This will allow you to be better referenced in Google Images.
Update your content
Keep your content up to date and update your old content. This helps enormously to optimize your SEO!
Use impactful designs
We all love powerful images and visuals.
The first seconds of a visit will not necessarily be devoted to reading your content, but to feeling the visuals offered.
4. Optimize your pages: “On-page” SEO
On-page SEO consists of optimizing the pages of your website both for search engines and for visitors.
Common on-page SEO practices include optimizing title tags and meta tags, improving your content, inserting links, and managing URLs, among others.
Enhance your content
- Use your keyword once in the first 100 words. Enter your keyword once or twice every 100 words.
- Add “ancillary” words to make your title more impactful and specific. This will help you appear in long-tail searches and therefore get more qualified traffic. You can use “auxiliary” words such as “current year”, “best”, “review”, “guide”, “checklist”, etc.
- Rank different pages on different keywords, don't repeat exactly the same keyword or keywords that are too similar — Google is smart enough to notice (and sometimes penalize you)!
- Use synonyms and semantic fields.
Structure your page and its titles
- Insert your keyword as early as possible in the title of your page (H1 tag).
- Structure your html H tags and enter your keyword if you can:
- - H1 for the title
- - H2 for the subtitle
- - H3 for the other categories
- - P tags for paragraphs
Define your meta tags
- Define the Page Title of your page and its Meta Description by including calls to action (Calls to Action) and a targeted keyword
- Place your keyword as early as possible in the title tag of your page
- Add “ancillary” words to make your title tags relevant and more targeted. This will again allow you to be referenced on more long-tail searches and therefore to acquire more traffic (“current year”, “best”, “review”, “guide”, “guide”, “checklist”...)
- Improve your organic CTR (click through rate):
- - Add numbers to your title and description tag
- - If there are any, be inspired by sponsored results (advertisements) Search) for a keyword because ads are generally designed to maximize clicks (if done right!)
- Define “og:tags” with at least the image, title, and description of the page. These tags are for social media, for example when you share content in a feed. If you're using WordPress, the og:image tag should already be included with the page image.
Create better URLs
- Use short URLs
- Insert your keywords in the URL of your pages
Insert internal links and outgoing links
- Include links to at least 5 leading sites in your industry.
- Insert links to 2 to 5 pages on your site with text anchors (the text the link is on).
Use Schema Markup
- Tag your HTML code with markup from schema.org for rich results (Search snippets), those small sections in the search results that you can interact with. This markup helps search engines better understand your content and allows visitors to quickly find relevant content that matches their searches.
- Use tools to verify and validate that your site is well-structured and tagged for rich results, including that of schema.org or From Google.
5. Technical SEO: check that everything is in order
Improve the crawlability and accessibility of your website for better rankings in the SERP!
- Make sure your page is available on Google using Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Search.
- Check the coverage of your pages in GSC
- Check your domain coverage on Google by searching website: yourwebsite.com directly in Google
- Check if one of your pages is available on Google by looking for its URL in quotation marks
- Make sure your site is HTTPS, a key signal for Google
- Detect and fix SEO errors on your site, with page coverage in GSC or other tools like Moz, SEMrush or Ahrefs
- Make sure your website is mobile-friendly, which is essential in 2024. Unless you're in a specific niche, most of your traffic should come from mobile devices
- Fix broken links with Dr. Link Check
- Also, identify the main areas that link to your site as well as all of its outgoing links.
- The free plan is limited to 1500 links. By deleting the “project”, you are not really limited if you want to see statistics from other sites
- Measure the speed of your site and find out how to improve it (in addition to analyzing a lot of other points) with PageSpeed Insights
- PageSpeed Insights is a Google tool that provides you with information on the performance of your website, including 6 key metrics and recommendations. We're not going to go into the details here but you can find out more on this page.
6. Off-page SEO: develop your online reputation
“Off-page” SEO mainly aims to develop the reputation of your domain, in particular through the acquisition of quality backlinks (incoming links).
Note that this is a key element for your SEO, in addition to the content and the algorithm Rankbrain from Google (their program that allows you to reference content for a given search).
Domain reputation is most often measured with metrics, such as notions Domain authority by Moz Or of Domain score by SEMrush. Based on 100, these metrics reflect domain reputations and make it possible to identify backlink opportunities by being coupled with other indicators, such as spam score notions.
Seeking to have a high domain score is the same as getting a multitude of quality inbound links!
ANY link redirecting to your content and coming from quality websites in your sector of activity — provided that it is a fairly influential site, a good directory, a blog, a social network, etc. — is good to take!
The development of backlinks, or backlinking, is like... doing biz dev: it's time-consuming and not as easy as it seems!
In the end, understand that the more inbound links you have from quality sites, the better positioned you will be on your key queries.
Here are some ways to explore for your backlinking:
- Write “guest posts” for websites whose domain authority is similar or better than that of your site. Write for sites you are interested in and include links to your website.
- Analyze the backlinks of your competitors
- - Ahrefs is a very good tool for visualizing the backlinks of your competitors. The first 100 links can be viewed with a free account.
- Contact the owners of sites that include external links with content similar to yours
- - With a tool like SEMrush, export all the backlinks of your competitors and filter out those that are not relevant to your strategy
- - Take an exhaustive list of prospects, send them a personalized email and ask them for a link to one of your quality content (that's why having quality content is essential!)
- Mention influential bloggers, let them know you mentioned them, and ask them for a link or post to your content.
Any questions? Doubts? Need help with your SEO?
Contact our specialists in SEO and digital marketing, increase your visibility on search engines and get more customers and sales!
Sources: Ahrefs.com, backlinko.com, google.com, neilpattel.com, semrush.com
