Natural referencing to meet your audience
To increase the traffic on your website, several solutions exist.
One of them is to work on the natural referencing. A good referencing guarantees a better ranking in the results of search engines.
THE NATURAL REFERENCING (SEO) GATHERS THE TECHNIQUES OF OPTIMIZATION WHICH WILL ALLOW YOUR FUTURE CUSTOMERS TO FIND YOU ON THE SEARCH ENGINES
How does SEO work?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a web marketing tool. It includes a set of techniques to better position the pages of a website on search engines. To count on a good ranking, it is essential to rely on a solid digital strategy (marketing content, netlinking, etc.).
It is important to know that according to various studies conducted, it has been found that Internet users do not generally consult more than 3 pages of results. It is therefore essential to be placed in these first pages to create traffic. For e-commerce sites, a good referencing allows to attract new prospects, to increase sales, to develop customer loyalty and to be ahead of the competition.
Why is SEO important?
As we have just seen, it is important that a site is present in the first pages of results on search engines. Whether it is a showcase site or an e-commerce site, its quality will not be recognized without a good positioning on search engines. The objectives of search engine optimization are to optimize the visibility of a site, to generate a maximum of traffic, to work on the image of the site but also of the company or the brand to which it is associated and to get ahead of the competition.
Websites must respond to users' requests and queries as well as possible. The contents can concern the news, the weather, the traffic but also the last trends in decoration or the current promotions on key brands. It is the content marketing strategy that will determine the type of content to create and promote.
What is the purpose of local referencing?
The objective of local referencing is to ensure an optimized positioning on search engines within the framework of local requests. These are classic queries to which geographical indications are added. For example, searches such as "Japanese restaurant Hong Kong" or "weather HK" are local queries, whereas "fill out your tax return" is a general query. The geographical indication can be a city, a district, a region, a department or a street. In the context of local referencing, geolocation is massively used.
Local referencing is increasingly used by Internet users and is becoming a challenge for websites. Today, one out of three requests on Google is a local request. The search engine even offers adapted tools (Google My Business) to optimize local referencing. The phenomenon has been democratized with the massive use of smartphones and tablets, which also requires an adapted and ergonomic display of the contents.
HOW DO SEARCH ENGINES WORK?
To answer the different requests of the Internet users, the search engines use robots.
These are also called spiders, the Google robot is called Googlebot. These robots search for interesting information among all the content published on the Internet and store it in large databases. This information is classified according to defined criteria. Relevant content is ranked highest.
The quality of the links to our sites or external links is also an important element to be well referenced.
Is Google the leader in the search engine market?
The search engine market is constantly changing. However, for several years now, it has been largely dominated on a global scale by one search engine: Google. In May 2018, Google had 90.6% of the global market, it is followed by Bing (Microsoft) which has 3.2% of the market and Yahoo which has 2.1%. In HK, the figures are quite similar to the global trend as Google dominates with 91.5% of the market, followed by Bing (4.9%) and Yahoo (1.8%).
How do the main Google algorithms work?
The Google referencing which takes into account more than 200 factors is determined by a set of algorithms.
These algorithms optimize searches in order to give satisfaction to Internet users. Here are the main Google algorithms:
Caffeine is an algorithm that allows instant indexing of web pages. In operation since 2010, it allows to give priority to recent content.
Panda is the algorithm launched in 2011 that penalizes low quality pages and therefore content sites that have a high spam score. The panda algorithm is regularly updated by Google.
Penguin is an algorithm that penalizes websites that do not respect the SEO rules imposed by Google.
Pirate is the algorithm that removes from the results pages websites concerned by a complaint of copyright infringement.
Top Heavy is an algorithm that penalizes pages containing too many ads
Colibri is the algorithm that allows a better understanding of the query and therefore better targeting of the results.
Mobile Friendly is an algorithm that rewards pages that are compatible with mobile devices (smartphone, tablets, etc.).
How to optimize a website for search engines?
The different algorithms are to know to optimize its positioning on search engines. These algorithms should remain secret in order to maximize the result of requests. However, there are now many practical guides, some of which are produced by Google, to help companies and website owners to work on their SEO.
Here are some elements taken into account by search engines:
The content of the "title" tag. This text is displayed in Google's search pages.
The meta tag "description" or meta description that summarizes the content of the page.
The URL of each page (content and structure).
The use of a sitemap in XML format.
The use of the alt attribute (alternative text) for images.
The use of Hn titles to structure the content of the page
The creation of internal links between the different pages of the site and links from other external sites.
The loading time of a page.
HOW TO APPLY THE CONCEPT OF THE "LONG TAIL" TO NATURAL REFERENCING?
For SEO as for natural referencing, the long tail should not be neglected. The SEO technique consists in favoring a large number of keywords with low traffic potential rather than focusing on keywords with high potential. Thanks to the long tail, it is possible to distinguish oneself from other websites while offering optimized content for search engines. Thanks to this technique, a website is associated with a larger number of keywords and benefits from more traffic. Within the framework of natural referencing, we will thus privilege the keywords composed of at least three words. To determine the keywords to be favored, it is wise to use a keyword research tool such as the one proposed by Google Adwords.
INTERNATIONAL | ANALYTICS | USERS |
What are the specificities of websites with an international audience? | What is the purpose of web traffic analysis for SEO? | What is the role played by the user in an SEO process? |
Websites with an international audience have a different SEO policy. The site must be proposed in several languages. To best meet the expectations of each country, simply create a site by nationality and choose a local extension. Translating the same content is not wise. It would be considered duplicate content, penalized by Google and the referencing of the site would be negatively impacted. SEO should be optimized in all languages and should always start with a keyword search for each language. It is therefore necessary to have an adapted content with multilingual keywords, a netlinking specific to each site and with local backlinks. | It is essential to analyze the traffic of its website. This approach allows you to identify Internet users and to understand their behavior. The traffic analysis highlights the strengths and weaknesses of different pages. It is possible to determine the most visited pages, the main entry pages, the origin of the Internet users (other website or search engine), their path, the average time spent on the site, the bounce rate and conversion rate. The analysis allows us to make the necessary changes to best meet the expectations of the audience or to detect any technical problems with indexing, for example. Most often, objectives are set and everything is done to reach them. | The user is at the heart of natural referencing strategies. In order for a site to be well referenced, it is first necessary to have an excellent knowledge of its activity, its targets and the Internet users. You must attract your audience and encourage them to stay as long as possible on your site. Moreover, the Google search engine takes into account the behavior of the Internet users to position the various web pages after a request. Some factors such as the bounce rate, the click rate on the search results or the time spent on the pages of a site, come into play to improve the referencing or on the contrary penalize a site. Pogo-sticking is also analyzed. This term refers to the behavior of users who visit several sites on the same results page and who return between two visits to the original Google page. |
Why entrust your SEO project to an agency?
In case of website creation, entrusting your SEO project to an agency is to have the guarantee to propose to your audience a perfectly optimized website. These agencies are composed of experts in SEO and have a sharp and updated knowledge of the rules of referencing in force. To help you to have a performing website, they first proceed to an analysis of your activity and then to a referencing audit. Once the information is collected, they optimize the site and its contents and set up a publication strategy. Regularly reports are established. They inform on the statistics, the strong points and the weak points of the site. Corrections are regularly made so that the site is always up to date.
