Definition of natural referencing
Natural referencing or SEO refers to all the techniques which consist of favorably positioning a site or a set of pages of a site on the first natural results of search engines (Google) corresponding to the queries/keywords targeted by Internet users.
In practice, it is essentially a matter of positioning yourself favorably on Google’s results pages and if possible on the first page. The Must of natural referencing is therefore to appear in the first position on the first page of Google linked to the targeted request.
Depending on the field of activity, the financial stakes linked to this presence can be very important. The big advantage of SEO compared to advertising is that it is relatively sustainable. Indeed, once positioned on the first page, the site receives traffic until it is chased on the second page by competitors.
SEO is driven by search engines
You should already know that SEO consultants did not invent anything. Overall, natural referencing does not require any particular skill, mystical or technical. Google, which largely dominates the search engine market, makes all of its own recommendations available. You just have to follow them and your site will be perfectly understood by the Google robot (also called Google Bot) and therefore you will be well referenced on its search engine.
Basic Natural SEO
The basic SEO will allow your whole website to be well indexed by Google. In short, if you optimize the “Contact” page of your business site well, it should normally appear in the first results when an Internet user types “www.dmtwebhosting.com” on Google.
The basic optimizations are quite simple to set up, you just need to optimize correctly:
- The Title tag of the page
- The meta-description tag
- Alternative image tags
- Hn title tags (h1, h2, h3, etc.)
To place relevant content there. On the contact page your contact details therefore
That’s all, it’s not more complicated than that after all. This is only the minimum, but already these simple optimizations should allow you to get traffic through your own brand name. Of course, your company or brand must be known.
More advanced natural referencing
Any Webmaster is able to apply the basic SEO optimizations that we have seen previously. There is obviously a level 2, more advanced which requires a more strategic vision of natural referencing. Among the more advanced techniques, I could cite:
Internal Net linking: It is about making links between your different pages, these links must have a meaning. Tell yourself that all the pages of your site must be accessible in 3 clicks maximum.
Content production: This is about editing content with high added value on your site, and above all offering it publicly: blog articles, documentations, Glossary, definitions… Content is one of Google’s 2 main criteria, you must offer it on your site. If your content is of good quality, it will be well referenced, Internet users will arrive on your site, you will then have to convert them (Newsletter, Call to Action, contact form, Chat, etc.).
You can see that we are already starting to see that SEO is not that simple: it takes time, work, and a global vision of its traffic acquisition strategy.
Professional Natural Referencing
Because these actions are generally performed by an SEO expert, whether internal to the company or an external provider. Here are the tasks of advanced SEO:
Net linking: Obtaining Backlinks. The number and quality of Backlinks are one of the most important criteria for Google, it defines the popularity and credibility of your website. Indeed, when a site makes a link towards another, it grants it a “vote”, of the interest.
Social media: This is about taking advantage of social networks to improve your SEO. SEO strategy on social networks is pretty much similar to Net linking, buzzing around content can get you an INCREDIBLE number of backlinks.
Blogging: Here it is the same as the production of content, but it is a question of thinking before publishing and especially of industrializing this task. The SEO expert will analyze which keywords to work, they will drive the production of blog articles on your site, optimize these articles for natural referencing. Above all, the pace will be fairly sustained: approximately one article per month.
Here is the overall work of advanced SEO. Of course, to analyze and make choices, the SEO professional generally uses quite complex tools (for the uninitiated) such as Google Analytics, Search Console, Semrush, aHrefs, Moz, etc. There are thousands of tools.
Why do we need an SEO consultant?
As you can see, SEO is not seemingly complicated. This is true enough for the basics and to generate some traffic. However, when you want to position your website on competitive requests (in e-commerce for example), natural referencing turns out to be much more complicated.
This is why the profession of SEO consultant exists: for some, calling on an SEO expert can be very interesting or even very profitable. He will know exactly how to position your website on targeted queries.
The SEO consultant is often equipped with professional tools that would be too expensive for a single Webmaster. We’re talking about tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, etc., at around $ 100 / month. Is an SEO consultant expensive? It all depends on the job you want to give it and your goals.
About the author
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