Mastering Google’s algorithms and optimising your website’s content allows you to generate qualified traffic in the long term. Unlike communication methods such as advertising on social networks or SEA, SEO guarantees results that will last and bring you traffic for months or even years.
Obviously, your content must be qualitative, unique, and provide added value to users. But how do you write content that is SEO-friendly? What are the mistakes to avoid?
The choice of keywords
When choosing your keywords, the biggest mistake to avoid is writing content only for the search engine without having a “customer-first” vision. Your keywords must be targeted according to your audience and adapted to the subject.
In addition, you must take into account the behaviour of your users. For example, more and more internet users are now using voice search. So think about using long tail keywords in order to appear in the results for this type of search.
Next, avoid keyword stuffing. This practice is quickly detected by the search engine, which will penalise you instead of moving you up in the search results. Choose only keywords that are relevant and specific to your business.
Structure and tagging
Well-structured content will always be favoured by Google algorithms. Moreover, it guarantees a pleasant and satisfactory reading experience for the Internet user. Therefore, use hN tags (titles and subtitles) in order to improve the readability of your pages.
Markup ranges from titles to images, including meta-description. Our best advice is to always keep one overriding goal in mind: optimising the overall UX ! This can be achieved by writing a meta-description that is consistent with what the user will find when they visit your page. Otherwise, they will be frustrated not to get the information they are looking for and will leave your site. This will increase your bounce rate, and therefore lower your SEO score.
Finally, integrate calls to action. These will improve the user experience and the clarity of the content in general. They also help guide the user and encourage them to interact or perform specific actions on your platform.
Image optimisation
The size of your images can considerably slow down your pages loading time. It is possible to identify problematic images using the Page Speed Insights tool. You can then compress images that are too heavy (while maintaining their quality) and thus improve the speed of your site.
It is also important to give alternative titles (captions) to your images. This allows search engines to identify them more easily. We also recommend that you complete the alt tag , i.e. the description of the images. This attribute appears when the image does not load for some reason. It is also this tag that a visually impaired person’s software will read in order to describe the image. So this is another way to optimise the UX.
In addition, if your images rank well, they will also appear in Google Image, which increases the chances of generating traffic to your site.
Finally, since the development of the Google Lens image recognition tool, image optimisation has become even more important. The user takes a picture of an object in order to search for results on Google. The user then sees the most relevant images according to the algorithm.
Video for optimal search engine optimisation
The final thing you need to pay attention to when optimising the content of your website is video. Indeed, video referencing allows you to improve the visibility of your site as well as its placement in the search engine results.
When a user performs a search, several types of results can appear: textual sites, e-commerce products, news, images, or even videos. The latter, thanks to their “thumbnail” format, tend to attract the eye and attention of users.
And you probably already know that videos have a strong potential to generate engagement and conversions. So why not use them?
You are now ready to optimise your natural referencing and climb up the SERP results!
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