What is SEO? Importance of SEO in 2018!
Often, when asked what I do in life, I avoid talking directly about SEO or SEO. Surprisingly, it is a subject still too little known to the general public or very vaguely. The objective of this post, therefore, is not to give an exact definition of SEO, but rather to try to popularize this discipline to help you better understand the main principles and operation of SEO.
WHAT IS REFERENCING?
SEO is primarily a work of indexing and optimizing web pages to be present and visible in the results of search engines otherwise called SERP (Search Engine Results Page). However, being referenced does not mean being well positioned. The objective of "natural" SEO is to improve the positioning of your web pages in order to make them appear in the first pages of search engine results by following a certain number of criteria.
Do not confuse the different acronyms that are used for SEO:
SEO - Search Engine Optimization: This is the natural SEO that includes all the search engine optimization techniques to better index and position the pages of one in the SERPs
SEA - Search Engine Advertising: This is the referencing of paid links that is more like an auction management and a budget for different campaigns
SMO - Social Media Optimization: This SEO strategy of social networks is to broadcast content and acquire traffic through the various social platforms.
SEM - Search Engine Marketing: It's Marketing for Search Engines. Note that the SEM = SEO + SEA + SMO. In fact, I noticed that there is often confusion between the SEA and the SEM.
All this to tell you that it is important to dissociate the natural referencing (SEO) of other disciplines, and that even in SEO there are several sub-disciplines ... you see a little brothel?
SEVERAL APPROACHES TO SEO: WHITE HAT AND BLACK HAT
There are several ways to optimize your website for search engines. You will find many people who claim to be SEO experts and will make promises that they can not keep. The difficulty of the job is that the algorithms of search engines, especially Google, are ultra-protected and therefore nobody knows them. And to add even more complications, it changes all the time!
However, Google has a little pity on us, and gave us some instructions to not be totally in limbo. We quickly saw two approaches to practices:
Those who decide to go in the right way by respecting these instructions are called the "white hat".
Others who have decided to override the rules given by Google and thus take shortcuts are called the "black hat"
Two schools that are completely different since the first prefers to make a long-term SEO in accordance with the rules of the game set by Google - while the second uses alternative methods, with better results in the short term, but taking the risk of to be penalized by Google.
HOW DOES SEO WORK?
You will understand, the principle of natural referencing is to optimize the pages of your site to be "SEO friendly" with Google and other search engines. But, there are also many criteria to be respected by avoiding over-optimization risks being seriously penalized.
Tour first, which says SEO says keywords. Because beyond a good technical optimization, the challenge is to be well positioned on strategic queries that hit the users by performing their research. And to be well positioned, the watchword is the content. The majority of SEO experts agree that a quality and well-optimized text will give you the advantage over your competitors. Of course, netlinking and e-reputation are not to be neglected either, but the objective here is to create added value through blog articles, guides, images, product sheets, etc. to meet the needs of your targets.
Unlike paid referencing where the results can be seen quickly, SEO requires however to be more perseverant knowing that the visibility on the search engines will be long term. Of course, it is essential to put in place a coherent strategy and the necessary resources upstream.
Try to regularly check SEO specialized blogs to be up to date on the latest search engine developments and understand how to improve your web presence on an ongoing basis. Finally, there are many tools that can help you in your SEO and that I listed in this article.
As a gift, here is a beautiful infographic produced by Object23 and gives us a synthetic vision of what is SEO with its 4 major components that are on-site optimization, off-site optimization, indexing and the user experience:
CONCLUSION
Natural referencing especially needs to be always aware of the impact of each action you do and think "keyword". The goal of SEO is to first be found by your targets and therefore to think carefully about the strategy to put in place. For that, it is often wise to call an SEO consultant or an SEO agency according to your budget.