65% of small and mid-sized businesses invested in SEO in 2020.
SEO is one of the pillars of your digital strategy. Whether you are building a brochure site, an e-commerce store, or a blog, the goal is the same: to be seen.
SEO has many advantages: it is cost-effective and will give your site genuine long-term visibility.
It breaks down into two parts: On-site SEO (also called technical SEO) and Off-site SEO. In this article, we will focus on effective off-site optimizations for strong organic rankings.
Here are 5 best practices for a winning SEO strategy:
- Having a Strong Site Structure
The different pages of your site should follow a clear hierarchy while keeping page depth to a minimum (page depth refers to the number of clicks between a given page and the homepage).
It is important to have:
- A pillar page covering a topic in its entirety.
- Additional pages covering subtopics and containing a link pointing back to the pillar page.
To make it easier for search engines to index your site's pages, it is recommended to keep the site architecture relatively streamlined. Search engine crawlers tend to favor content that is accessible within 3 clicks from the homepage.
The clearer and more logical the structure, the better the site's rankings. It also makes navigation easier for users.
- Having a Mobile-Friendly Site
In today's digital landscape, it is essential that websites are optimized for all types of devices, especially mobile, which accounts for 54.8% of online traffic.
In other words, text must be readable, links must be tappable, and images must be adapted to different screen sizes. Google does not hesitate to penalize sites that are not responsive.
Several tools allow you to test a site's compatibility across devices, including Google's own tool (PageSpeed Insights), where you simply enter the site's URL. The tool will show you your site's mobile compatibility score and areas for improvement.
- Optimizing Site Load Speed
As we have established, a site's traffic is directly tied to SEO.
Site load speed is therefore an aspect you cannot afford to overlook. A page that takes too long to load can result in a loss of 11% of potential traffic.
It is estimated that the maximum wait time a user will tolerate before a page opens is around three seconds. Beyond that, there is a real risk that they will leave in favor of a faster page. It is therefore important to deliver a smooth user experience.
This is why it is important to:
- Compress images on the site to reduce their file size
- Avoid installing too many plugins
- Write the page in HTML, CSS, or JavaScript
- Minify the code so that it can be read more quickly by crawlers.
- Targeting Keywords Relevant to Your Business
It is essential to analyze the most commonly used search queries and their volume. This allows you to define one primary keyword per page on your site, along with two or three secondary keywords.
Keywords should appear across your site at multiple levels:
- Titles
- Subheadings
- Body content, starting with the primary keyword in the first paragraph and using it consistently throughout the text
- Optimizing Semantic Markup
To analyze the organization of your content, Google relies on the tags written in the HTML code.
It is essential to use hierarchical heading tags properly. Search engines focus primarily on H1 through H3 tags.
There is a Chrome extension that shows whether content is correctly tagged or whether tags are missing: "Web Developer Toolbar".
When it comes to images, Google cannot read them. Crawlers read text only. That is why it is important to fill in the Alt attribute (or alt text), which describes the content of each image.
Want guidance on Google Ads, SEO, or your broader digital marketing strategy? Feel free to reach out!
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