SEO, what is it?

At first glance, SEO is not something easy to understand. Indeed, during telephone or written interviews, I noticed that a large number of people had never heard of this art before. It is for this reason that I propose you to take a quick tour of what is SEO while explaining its usefulness, its operation and its risks within a project.

Definition

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the art of optimizing a web project and its environment for search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo ...). More commonly known as SEO, its purpose is to increase the quality, understanding, but especially the visibility of a website within the search engine results.

In general, SEO is only the sum of optimizations on the site (on-site) and off-site (off-site). Then only the drivers decide whether we are eligible to be visible or not in their results. Of course, there are a number of things to do around these optimizations, such as audits, monitoring, planning, and so on.

SEO is, therefore, a particular science in the sense that its use only induces the engines (or rather their algorithms) to the position, index and / or evaluate appropriately.

Note that natural referencing is not only the fact of being referenced (in the classified or indexed sense) within the results, this being purely a tic of language.

Risk

In the early 2000s, SEO was much simpler than today. Indeed, it was enough to have a good domain name, a content full of keywords, links (among others) and we get the visit en masse whatever we were doing. It was a relatively permissive time as there were few checks or penalties on the part of the search engines.

However, today, the web has evolved. With the arrival of filters and penalties for bad practices (Google Panda, Google Penguin or other), optimizing a website and its environment has become much more difficult and time-consuming. Indeed, many companies have been penalized by search engines following the use of techniques that are not in agreement with the rules of the engines.

Thus, SEO has become much more framed today to avoid SPAM, poor quality content, theft, etc. Prioritizing strategies over the long term is therefore timely to be able to perform professional work without pitfalls.

In other words, SEO today requires much more effort, time and willingness, but it is risky if you want to take risks with techniques to the limit (or more) of engine rules. In any case, it is clear that a number of questions related to SEO remain unresolved and that only experience can help

Operation

As we saw earlier, natural referencing is based on a principle of optimization. However, there are many rules to respect and we must, therefore, avoid going into excessive over-optimizations or risky practices causing sanctions, misunderstandings or more.

To avoid bad choices and accidents, the best way is to prepare while doing regular monitoring. This requires a complete inventory of the website and then a flexible strategy according to the objectives, budgets, resources of the company.

As marked in the page dedicated to my company, most SEO and I work on points / SEO criteria organized around three major axes:

The technique

The contents

Popularity

The Technical part corresponds to the optimizations related to the general operation of a site. There are several areas such as system administration, web development, web design, ergonomics, etc. These optimizations allow leaving on a good base of work to be able to present the added value of a site. Clearly, we prepare the ground.

The second axis, for its part, groups the Content. It can be text, images, a video, a product page, etc. The goal here is to create added value. By analogy, we could compare each content with a product from a storefront store. This part is essential to improve its visibility in the long term (no products/choices = no store).

Finally, the third part called Popularity is almost based outside the site. It shows/ shows added value as well as expertise. All this in order to acquire and retain the maximum of a surfer on his project. This axis is very important because it allows not to drown in the mass.

In short, the SEO and relatively simple ... We look at the resources available, we study the site and identifies its problems, we create a strategy, we carefully and strategically correct the criteria having an impact, then we question before to continue the cycle.