Whatever the objective of a website, to make a company more visible or to develop its sales, it is necessary to avoid certain pitfalls in SEO for the site to fulfill its mission. Focus on fundamental errors that are detrimental to its presence on the search engines and its contribution to the growth of the business.
Do not conduct a semantic audit
Starting a website without conducting a semantic audit is like driving a car at night without headlights. The semantic audit makes it possible to exhaustively determine the keywords and expressions corresponding to the requests of Internet users on which it is important for the site to rise in the Google rankings.
“It is a fundamental step which conditions the content of the site and its architecture. A good semantic audit brings out generic keywords, representing a large volume of Internet users' searches, and long tail keywords, very qualitative and less competitive. It is your compass for the implementation of your SEO strategy ” confides Florian Géri, Managing Director of the SEO agency Netinshape .
Complex site architecture
Structuring the information on your site properly allows Google to better understand the topics covered and the services or products you offer. The architecture stems from the work carried out in the semantic audit, which makes it possible to structure the subjects to be developed.
For example, if a large-scale distribution store associates food products with hygiene and beauty products on the same page, this lack of consistency is difficult for Google to interpret, affecting the referencing of the targeted product category. Establishing semantic cocoons to deal with a subject in its different facets makes it possible to not forget any and to organize its contents in an intuitive way.
It should be kept in mind that designing the architecture of a site requires taking into account the need for rapid access to information. We must therefore avoid having too deep an architecture complicating navigation. It is often recommended that you do not have pages that are more than three clicks away from the home page.
Abandoned title tags
The title tag is a very important ranking criterion in Google's algorithm, and not optimizing these tags on your site can ruin all your efforts SEO Strategy. The title is the blue clickable link that appears in Google search results. It is important to include the important keyword of the page, around which we have optimized the content and for which we want it to rank first on Google. It must be clear and convincing enough to entice people to click on the link.
Do not work on the internal mesh
Internal networking is the organization of all the links made between the different pages of your site. It facilitates the exploration of your site by engine robots but also, and above all, offers additional information to the Internet user, satisfying his curiosity. Good internal networking allows information to be organized in semantic cocoons and demonstrates the site's expertise to search engines on very specific themes.
Botch the content
The adage is well known: content is king, especially for SEO. Quality content is essential to be visible. You have to think first and foremost about the user and understand their research intention in order to respond to them with relevant, useful, and whenever possible, original information. Don't write for robots: write for humans who are your readers and above all your customers. It is their needs that you must first meet.
Acquire poor quality inbound links
Inbound links (called backlinks) from other online media can increase the popularity of your site. The perception of a site's expertise is a fundamental criterion in Google's algorithm. Hence the importance of taking care of its content and popularity. It is a virtuous circle: the more a site is perceived as authoritative on a theme, the more backlinks it attracts.
To acquire these links, we must prioritize quality over quantity: quality links have a neat anchor (the clickable text on which the link is positioned). Be careful, however, of the risk of over-optimizing it. The anchor must be written naturally, without hurting the reading. To solicit links, you must also favor authority sites dealing with the same theme as your site. Finally, the content of the landing page should be consistent with the link anchor. Consistency remains and will remain a fundamental criterion for Google for a long time.
Abandon the mobile version
We cannot repeat it enough: mobile compatibility is essential because Internet users are increasingly browsing the web via their smartphone. According to Statcounter (Nov 2021), 46.6% of requests are made on mobile in France and 54% worldwide. Google's default crawling and indexing process has been the Mobile First Index since 2018. Taking care of the mobile version ensures a satisfactory experience for Internet users, by facilitating their discovery of information through pleasant browsing.
An unsecured site
The “https” protocol secures data exchanges between the Internet user and your site. While its weight remains low in Google's algorithm, it reassures Internet users when browsing and increases their confidence in your site and your business, especially in the case of an e-commerce site. This is obviously not the only security measure to take to strengthen its resistance to cyberattacks, but it is an essential action.
Using the services of a Content Delivery Network (such as Cloudflare) also makes it possible to avoid DDOS attacks, during which too many requests on the server can make it unavailable.
These are fundamental principles to which you must devote time and thought to lay the foundations for a good SEO strategy. However, there are many other points to work on throughout the life of the site to hope to have lasting results. As often, the devil is in the details, especially in SEO.
