SEO settings related to the website

This article is part of a series reviewing the SEO settings that you should not ignore if you want to see your articles appear on the first page of search engines

Whose:

• Domain name and SEO, what levers?
• Website onpage optimization criteria
• SEO settings related to the elements of the site itself

Photo source: http://www.hmtweb.com/

Whether you’re a professional looking to brush up on your knowledge or a beginner looking to dive into the world of SEO, Montreal offers a wide range of options to suit every need

Quality content and consistency

Ensure regular, quality content production related to your theme. Google and its Panda are hunting for uninteresting sites, pre-chewed, copy-pasted content such as affiliate sites, low-end CP, and other link farms. Your SEO agency in Montreal should always be proactive about this.

Focus on informative and generous content.

The “Contact Us” Page

The contact page is less banal than we often think, it should include clear information about you, your address, phone, fax, email.

A little chat with internal links is also welcome, as well as links to your social profiles – especially Google Plus – Some even say that if this information matches the information recorded in Who is… you would gain credibility…

I often take advantage of the contact page to try local queries that are inevitably sought, the famous “cheap” or “best”…

” Contact the best SEO in Montreal ” or “Get in touch with a cheap Adword expert in Quebec”

Trust Rank

The trust index that Google gives to your domain/site is calculated by an algorithm developed by the search engine. It defines a degree of trust established from a combination of parameters related to the authority of the links received.

And that weighs heavily!

The architecture of the site

Building your site according to a coherent architecture will help Google to browse it, analyze it and if you don’t “understand” it, at least it will give it meaning.
If architecture and tree structure are linked, there are other powerful levers (Internal linking, pagination, breadcrumbs and other various tags…) that are too often neglected by webmasters.

This very good article on internal linking will complete your info on this subject.

Site updates and number of pages

Freshness of content, updating of information are elements that encourage Google bots to come and come back to scan your site.

The number of pages is also a positive signal sent to search engines.

The presence of a sitemap.xml

The sitemap.xml is a tool that promotes the exploration of your website and its indexing by Google bots. If it is well designed and prioritized, it will even help them understand part of its architecture.

Online site

Avoid long periods of offline for “maintenance” or forgetting to renew a domain name.

Server location

It is preferable to host your website on a server located near your audience and/or business area. Without completely excluding competition from the French-speaking world, it will be easier to appear in a good position on the google.ca engine if your server is located in Quebec. ( Also remember that the google.ca engine returns two types of results: “in English” and “in French”)

SSL Certificate

Google has expressed the fact that it indexes SSL certificates. It seems that it favors a bit of an e-commerce site with SSL certificates.

Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificates are used to secure and authenticate communications over the Internet (and intranet). Read this tutorial to learn more

“Legal Notice” & “Privacy” Pages

These two pages not only comply with the laws of a large number of countries that make them mandatory, they are also a signal of confidence sent to Google. Respect the standards of the legal notice pages and use the information contained in the who is of the site

Finally, for once, this is to my knowledge the only page that Google accepts in copy-paste… (Watch Matt Cutts on this)

Duplication of meta tags

SEO tags, including meta descriptions, should be unique. Poor structure and lack of control over page indexing can lead to the repetition of Metas, either because they are left configured by default or because they come from pages with different URLs without canonical tags. To be avoided in any case!

Google console (formerly webmaster tool) helps you spot some of them.

Ariadne’s thread

The breadcrumb trail is an element of the internal linking and architecture that will support the themes you want to push in your website, it has good sides, but can also be completely useless.

Know how to take advantage of its presence or dare to do without it, in the interest of your site.

Optimization for mobile and tablet

We no longer make a site that is not optimized for mobile phones and tablets, but we must distinguish the qualities of a so-called ” responsive ” site from those of a site specific to these rapidly expanding media. I refer you to this article which has not aged too much and which deals with the need to provide a mobile version to your website or at least to be “mobile compatible“.

Videos on Youtube

Google and Youtube are one. With a Google account, it has become very easy to upload videos. Youtube is the second most used search engine on the planet, learn how to optimize your videos and link them correctly to your site, it will be another bonus for your SEO.
Search engine Land has shown that since Google Panda, traffic to Youtube videos has increased tenfold.

Ergonomics and user experience

A site that is difficult to surf and on which you can’t easily find the information you’re looking for quickly annoys the Internet user who knows how to move on (bounce).

The bounce rate is a factor that reveals the visitor’s behavior, it is not the only one,

• The number of page views,
• the time spent,
• the landing page and
• the site’s start page.

Offering a fluid, intuitive, truly ergonomic navigation is as much appreciated by Internet users as by Google bots .

Google Analytics & Google Console

The tracking codes of these two tools are essential and bring credibility to your web presence. On the other hand, going so far as to say that they improve your positions, there is a step that I will not take.

The reputation of the site/User opinion

Reviews left by users on the right local platforms are important for local SEO.

Reviews left on Weblocal.ca, ourbis.ca, monavis.ca, or Yelp (http://fr.yelp.ca/montr%C3%A9al) to name a few, are “collected” by Google My-buisiness (formerly Google place) and bring additional “stars” that appear in local results. On the other hand, if it’s a bad reputation that is peddled by these reviews, Google understands it too and is supposed to penalize the site read in this article.

An article written by Kristof, SEO and SEO, Montreal.