The must-have guide to SEO in 2021

The must-have guide to SEO in 2021

How many searches have you performed on Google in the last 6 months? If you cannot remember it, it is probably because that number was way too high. In fact, every year, more than 2 billion searches are carried out on Google. Above all, we should not miss this opportunity.

SEO techniques, in other words of natural referencing are not new. Indeed, from the 90s, specialists understood the functioning of search engines to guarantee the good positioning of the sites for which they were in charge. The history of SEO, which is short, but very dense, has seen the birth of many search engines and a plethora of trends. Here is a complete point on the microcosm that is SEO, but also some clarifications on the vocabulary inherent in this field.

Main SEO criteria

Google's Algorithm

Importance of SEO content

SEO links

Search for keywords

SEO KPIs to follow

What is SEO?

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a set of techniques aimed at improving the position of a website's pages in a given search engine, like Google. To do this, it is possible to optimize the loading time, the keywords on which you are placed or the quality of backlinks leading to your site.

The different search engines

Google (91.84% market share in Pakistan).

Bing (4.01% market share in Pakistan).

Yahoo (1.53% market share in Pakistan).

Ecosia (1.23% market share in Pakistan).

Qwant (0.78% market share in Pakistan).

DuckDuckGo (0.35% market share in Pakistan).

The main SEO criteria

SEO, as a reminder, consists of evaluating the quality of sites and their ability to respond to a given request in order to position them in the SERPs, or Search Engine Results Pages. Once evaluated, or “crawled”, these sites and their various pages are positioned, or “ranked” according to specific criteria.

Whether it is Google or any other search engine, there are a few essential criteria to assess the quality, authority or even expertise of a site:

The loading time of the page.

The domain name and all that it implies, including compliance with the HTTPs protocol.

The quantity and the quality of the backlinks.

The responsive design of the site, especially because Google rewards responsive sites.

The quality and length of the proposed content.

Whether or not there is duplicate content.

The h1 tag of the page and, to a lesser extent, the other hn tags.

The page title, or title tag.

Semantic field deployed on the page.

The keywords used by the site on the crawled page.

This is a tiny part of the set of criteria that engines like Google use to evaluate your site. In other words, to avoid making mistakes or to optimize your on-page site, take these criteria into account and make sure you provide quality, fresh, regular and authoritative content.

The Google Algorithm

In the case of Google's algorithm, there are a lot of interesting facts about it.

Google has continued to improve its algorithm over the years to respect its vision: to provide the most suitable answers to Internet users' requests. As a reminder, the algorithm is made up of systems and other robots coming to probe all the sites on the Internet and then classify them according to the requests made by Internet users in the search results pages, or SERP.

Among the recent evolutions of the algorithm, it is essential to underline that the Mobile Index First will end in September 2020, or even that the BERT update came at the end of 2019 to bring a new breath to the engine.

Indeed, this latest update has made the Google engine capable of understanding the keywords provided by the Internet user by contextualizing them throughout the query, in particular thanks to deep learning technologies. But SEO is not only a question of algorithms, because it also and above all concerns the content and the quality that characterizes it to best respond to the request.

The importance of content in SEO

Content through an optimized blog occupies a major place in an SEO strategy, both in terms of good SEO of articles and architecture.

The thematic groups

The thematic groups in SEO facilitate the architecture of a blog and its good referencing, in particular by splitting the contents in the form of categories. These categories, which you can also refer to under the aspect of “headings” and “sub-headings”, are to be identified by several levers:

Identify a persona's situation and the solutions they are looking for.

Identify common factors to make them big themes.

Expand ideas through topics.

Target suitable keywords from which to work your content

Content formats

Content on the web is a matter of blog posts, as there are many variations:

The listings (steps, advice, ideas).

Tutorials (procedures, creation of objects).

News and press reviews.

The interviews and testimonies.

The studies reports.

The debates.

There are, however, other formats, which may be quite suitable for the formats listed above. It is essentially a question of:

Videos.

Podcasts.

Infographics.

White papers.

SEO links

In addition to the content, it is important to give pride of place to the selection of links. Indeed, the "web" is aptly named for this notion. The web that is the Internet is characterized by bridges created between the different pages of a site, but also between all the sites in the world.

However, remember that "strengthening this web" by multiplying the links is a false good idea. What's more, you need to be able to tell the difference between the many types of links that you may create or see pointing to your site:

Internal links: links on your site pointing to pages of the same domain name.

External or outgoing links: links on your site pointing to pages of other domain names.

The backlinks, or inbound links: links on other sites pointing to your domain name.

Internal links

The internal links explained above, according to their quality and their number, allow you to develop what is today called the "internal link". By working on this network, you extend the experience of the Internet user on your site by suggesting subjects and other pages related to the one he is currently visiting.

To establish relevant internal links, you can apply the following tips, among others:

Set up thematic silos, or groupings of similar content.

Take special care with the anchors used, to which the links are affixed.

Make sure every anchor is relevant, from one topic to another, and from the anchor to the destination topic.

As a reminder, an anchor corresponds to the text on which you can insert a hyperlink leading the user to another page. Then, a relevant example of a thematic silo consists of linking, for example, gardening “How To” content to articles dealing with tools used and mentioned in these first contents, in order to maximize the relevance of the link.

By applying these tips, you will gradually reduce your bounce rate and improve your conversion rate on your website, while increasing your ranking in the SERPs.

Backlinks

Getting backlinks allows you to increase your SEO, but more importantly, ultimately, to generate more leads.

To work on your netlinking, in other words the quantity and quality of links pointing to your site, several areas of work are possible:

Have a quality blog with links to other blogs.

Take surveys and offer free tools.

Provide downloadable templates and other infographics.

Offer visual content and practice co-marketing.

Monitor mentions of your brand on the internet etc.

Search for keywords

Thinking of creating content or optimizing existing pages but don't know where to start? Note that there are many methods, but that the overall approach remains the same, whatever the tools and techniques used.

As a first step, be sure to give importance to the themes that you are going to deal with, thus involving taking into account the thematic silos seen earlier. Summarize these groupings of subjects using simple keywords, reducing them to their simplest function: meaningful terms, devoid of articles and other incidental words.

Secondly, determine sub-topics stemming from those identified previously and also associate keywords with them. Using tools like SEMRush or Ranxplorer, be sure to find related keywords with high potential and relevant long tail. As a reminder, a long tail is a grouping of requests in a single keyword, accumulating traffic from more generic keywords.

To facilitate the implementation of the SEO strategy that you have established and the research of keywords, you can also call upon an ag

11 SEO best practices

1.Take into account the requirements of the various updates from Google.

2.Offer a logical and intuitive browsing experience.

3.Make your website mobile-friendly and quick to load.

4.Provide quality and recurring content.

5.Make it easier for robots to read your site with a sitemap.xml file.

6.Work on your structured data.

7.Identify and correct errors on your site with the Google Search Console.

8.Work on title tags and meta descriptions for all of your pages.

9.Set up links anchors in reasonable and qualitative quantity.

10.Target existing queries in order to place you on suitable keywords.

11.Use hn tags to structure your content and position yourself on the right keywords.

10 SEO tools you should know

1.Google Analytics, for traffic analysis.

2.Google Search Console, for verifying that your site is correctly indexed.

3.Google Keyword Planner, for the research of keywords to be exploited.

4.SEMRush, to find ideas for keywords / content and analyze your performance.

5.Alyze.info, to analyze a domain name and get optimization leads.

6.Ranxplorer, to understand winning strategies and target the right keywords.

7.AnswerThePublic, to find the questions asked according to a given keyword.

8.UberSuggest, for ideas for successful keywords and content.

9.Yooda Insight, to analyze the performance of a domain name.

10.Majestic SEO, to understand your link-building and improve it.

SEO KPIs to follow

KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, are elements allowing you to measure the performance of your website on a daily basis. Among them, it is recommended to pay special attention to the following points:

Positioning on the target keywords.

The sessions, or visits by an internaut.

The pages by session.

The duration of the session.

Loading time.

The bounce rate.

Output pages.

Duplicate content.

Inbound links, or backlinks.

The conversion rate.

8 SEO blogs you should follow

1.Abundance.

2.Arobasenet.

3.AxeNet.

4.Moderator's Blog.

5.Encoder.

6.Laurent Bourrely.

7.Web Rank Info.

8.SearchEngineLand.