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4 SEO elements to push you to the top of the search results

Would you like your website to appear among the first results in Google and other search engines? Even if you aren’t an internet marketing expert, you surely know that your website’s natural referencing—or Search Engine Optimization (SEO), as it’s commonly called—will help you present your services or sell your products, as it will position the website at the top of the search results, thus driving traffic and sales. If all of this resonates with you and you understand the value of organic referencing but you don’t know where to begin, this guide is for you! Since the beginning of the year, in our blog, we’ve talked several times about simple SEO elements to work on in order to be on top. Below are the first elements you can optimize, even if you aren’t an organic referencing guru.

4 simple elements to optimize for search engines

  • Make the most of your photos
  • The images on a website, whether photos, animations, logos or diagrams, directly affect the weight of the pages and, consequently, their load times. The time it takes the pages to load is one of the factors Google considers when ranking a website. Furthermore, for several years now, the number of searches in Google Images has been rapidly increasing, as more and more internet users are looking for graphic information before visiting a website. Therefore, to optimize your images, you must reduce their size and weight, ensure that they correspond to the content of the pages they appear on and give them appropriate names. To learn more about optimizing your photos, see our article on the topic: 8 tips for optimizing your images for search engines.

  • Forget about sliders
  • Sliders, also known as banners and website carousels, are a group of photos, texts and navigation elements (arrows, points, figures, etc.) that roll by in something resembling a slideshow. They utilize varied transition effects, such as vertical and lateral displacement, fading in and fading out, in order to pass from one sequence to the next. As a rule, sliders appear on the homepage of a website to highlight the most important content and quickly provide as much information as possible. Unfortunately, this visual tool often takes up an excessive amount of space, much to the detriment of high-quality content. It also tends to generate very few clicks (only 1 percent of internet users will click on a slider). Even though sliders are trendy, stimulating and pleasant to look at (if they’re done well), they’re not only hard to display on smartphones but also significantly increase your page load times, which is detrimental to your search engine ranking. For SEO purposes, you’re much better off opting for good-quality fixed-position photos.

  • Tailor your writing for SEO
  • SEO writing consists of producing webpage content that will simultaneously attract the attention of internet users and satisfy the natural referencing criteria of search engines. To create content that’s optimized for search engines, you must use keywords reflecting your subject, organize your text with heading tags (including a title and subtitles), write short phrases and interesting text that meets certain standards (rich vocabulary, internal and external links, etc.) and ensure that your writing is appropriate for your target audience.
    You’ll find more information on simple SEO writing here: A closer look at SEO writing.

  • Write your meta descriptions
  • Don’t neglect your description tags, as they represent a source of concentrated information for search engines and internet users, alike. One of the most important HTML tags, the meta description, appears underneath the page title and URL in search engine results. It consists of a short blurb that summarizes the content of your webpage. It must be explicit, clear and precise in order to be visible to Google and convince internet users to visit your website. Here are some tips to help you optimize your meta descriptions: Search engine optimization: transform your meta descriptions.

Depending on your digital assets, you may very well have hours of fun ahead… So get to it!

Luckily, BJMédia is here to help!

Does this seem like a colossal task to you? Are you afraid that you might not manage to get the most out of your website optimization efforts? Would you love to undertake all of these SEO activities but you just don’t have the time? No need to panic! At BJMédia, our team of natural referencing and internet marketing experts are here to help and advise you in order to propel your website to the top of the search engine results. In fact, our digital marketing strategists can create a high-quality SEO battle plan tailored to meet your needs, regardless of your line of business or the size of your company. So don’t hesitate to contact us for more information.