Positioning your website well on Google in a natural way (SEO) can be as profitable as it is complicated. Indeed, Google changes its SEO criteria for websites more than 500 times a year, and it is tough to know the exact weighting of each of these criteria. It is, therefore, reasonable to ask yourself where to start SEO optimization of your website.

This article will help you answer the following questions:

• How can I optimize my website for Google?
• How to improve the SEO ranking of my site?
• What are the best tools for SEO?

We will detail the essential steps for proper natural referencing and will share with you a set of relevant tools to improve your natural referencing.

1. Install and properly configure the right SEO tools

The first step in SEO optimization is to make sure you have access to all the essential SEO-related data on your site.

The Google Search Console. This tool is essential to check the SEO performance of your website and optimize it. For example, you will know from which keywords your customers find your pages, or which technical aspects need to be fixed.

Google Analytics. Number 1 tool for website performance analysis, Google Analytics allows you to check all the data on your website (pages viewed, visit time, conversion rate, user behavior, etc.)

Yoast SEO. If your website is on WordPress, this intuitive and dynamic tool will allow you to make sure that your content respects the rules of SEO writing.

2. Do a keyword study

The study of keywords is the foundation of your SEO strategy. It offers you a precise vision of the needs of your target customers on the internet. The survey of keywords allows you to identify the queries made by Internet users about your products and services, their search volume, as well as their seasonality. A keyword study is really like a study of your online market. Crucial for your SEO optimization, it will allow you to orient the architecture of your website as well as your content strategy to target and attract Internet users interested in your products and services on Google.

If we had to sum up a 4 step keyword study, here it is:

• Define the market
• Filter keywords
• Classify relevant keywords
• Create a tailor-made SEO optimization plan

3. Optimizing “on-site” content

SEO optimization of your content is essential to your SEO strategy. Optimizing the content of your website helps show Google that your site deserves to be more visible than that of your competitors. Here are the key things to consider when optimizing your content for SEO:

• Your URLs: they must be short and include your target keyword
• The structure of your text:
• The title  (H1): it must consist of your target keyword at the beginning
• Subtitles (H2, H3, etc.): they must consist of your primary and secondary keywords
• The first paragraph: it must contain your primary keyword
• The density of the primary keyword in the text: it should be between 1% and 2%
• External links: they allow you to prove the reliability of the information you provide
• Internal links: they enable Google to understand the hierarchy of the pages of your website
• Commonly associated words and synonyms: adding more will enable Google to understand the subject of your text better and offer it to more qualified readers
• The structure of your website: it should facilitate navigation and provide access to relevant information

4. Technical SEO optimization

Technical SEO is crucial for the success of your SEO SEO. For example, simple technical elements can determine whether or not your site will be indexed by Google’s algorithms, and therefore referenced.

Among the essential aspects of technical SEO optimization, you should check:

Broken links. These elements represent a real negative criterion for Google because they lead your Internet users to 404 error pages. In one of our articles, we give you a list of tools to check your broken links.

The presence of an SSL certificate (HTTPS site). Google favors the positioning of secure websites (HTTPS), holding an SSL certificate at the expense of unsecured sites (HTTP). If you have not yet migrated to HTTPS, this guide may be helpful.

Duplicate data. Whether it’s your metadata, titles, or content, avoid duplicating any content on your website. This can alert Google. To verify that your website is not offering duplicate content, check your Search Console under the “HTML enhancements” category.

Mobile adaptability. Since the launch of the “Mobile-First Index” start2018, Google first uses the mobile version of your website to determine its positioning in search results. You can use Google’s free tool to find out if your website is portable enough. If it isn’t, making it responsive should be one of your SEO optimization priorities.

The loading speed of your site. How quickly your pages load is becoming increasingly important to Google as it helps improve your visitor’s user experience. You can use the Google PageSpeed ​​Insights tool to calculate your site’s loading speed and receive recommendations on SEO optimizations to perform.

Google’s access to your pages. For Google to index your web pages and offer them in its search results, you must allow it access to your website.  To check if Google can index your pages, go to your Search Console in the “Explore like Google” category of the “Exploration” menu:

5. Off-site SEO optimization

Offsite SEO optimization includes all of the visibility levers available to you outside of your website. Among these levers, inbound links or “backlinks” are the most crucial element of off-site SEO optimization. An inbound link is a link pointing to a page on your site from another site.

When they come from reliable sources, backlinks are considered by Google as an indicator of the relevance and quality of your content. They, therefore, represent one of the essential criteria for the SEO referencing of your website.

Analyze the links of your competitors

The best way to know which content is getting the most links in your industry is to analyze the backlinks of your competition. You will know what type of content is most popular, and be able to identify the sources of those backlinks. Knowing these sources will allow you to contact them once you have produced the content that interests them.

Think about guest blogging

By investing yourself personally on the most reputable sharing platforms and blogs in your industry, you will have the opportunity to promote your content to receptive Internet users. To do this, you must nevertheless contribute and interact with these Internet users.

Consult our guide to SEO Services in Lahore to create and optimize your website.