What is SEO? As an SEO consultant in Nice, this is a question I am frequently asked: “Concretely, what is SEO used for?” Behind this acronym hides a powerful lever to improve the visibility of a website, attract qualified traffic, and increase sales. In this article, I propose to take stock: definition of SEO, precise explanation of the term, and presentation of the 4 fundamental pillars of organic search optimization (natural referencing).
Definition of SEO
- The meaning of SEO is Search Engine Optimization, we also speak of natural referencing or Google referencing.
- As opposed to SEA (Search Engine Advertising), which consists of paying Google to be visible, SEO is a set of techniques allowing to “please Google” and therefore make web pages more visible in search results.
- When we talk about “search engines”, in France, this essentially means “Google” which captures 91.5% of this market in France.
- 75% of users do not go beyond the first page of a engine’s search results. It is therefore crucial to have good organic referencing.
- 70 to 80% of users ignore paid ads (SEA), focusing only on organic results (SEO).
Concretely, what is SEO? Natural referencing is the art of optimizing a website by respecting Google’s requirements. These rely primarily on a central principle: offering the best possible user experience. The faster, clearer, and more relevant your site is, the better it will be positioned in search results. It is background work, particularly strategic at the beginning of a project. But once well-optimized, your site attracts qualified traffic continuously, without daily efforts. In other words, it becomes an active salesperson… 24/7.
The 4 Major Pillars of SEO
In my article, “How does Google work?” you can see that Google goes through 3 steps to index a website:
- Crawling,
- Indexing,
- Ranking.
So, what is SEO? It involves acting on these three major stages of the user journey, following Google’s recommendations and taking into account the requirements of its algorithm. This implies applying hundreds of criteria that directly influence the performance of your website. To build an effective SEO strategy, I group these criteria into 4 major pillars, essential for sustainable and high-performing organic referencing.
1. THE TECHNICAL ASPECT
The first pillar of SEO is the technical aspect of the website. Without a solid foundation, it is impossible to build a performing strategy. Simply put, we lift the hood and ensure that the search engine perfectly understands how the site works. Every web professional has their own vision of a good website: the graphic designer thinks of design, the web designer of ergonomics, the marketer of conversion. For an SEO consultant, it’s a bit of all that, but with a clear objective: make the content readable for Google and optimize it to obtain better positions in search results. Google provides precise directives to allow its algorithms to properly explore and understand web pages. This is where the technical SEO audit comes in, a complete analysis that simulates the behavior of Google’s bots (see our article on how Google works). It allows identifying the technical criteria to correct to improve natural referencing. Here are some key elements to check:
Page Accessibility
A website must allow Google to access all its URLs. Yet, the majority of sites I audit have errors: deleted pages, broken links, 404 errors… A search engine will not be able to index what it cannot explore.
Indexability
Can a page appear in search results? This is a key step of search engine optimization. Working on relevant content has no effect if the page is blocked from indexing by a meta tag, a poorly configured robots.txt file, or a noindex code.
Internal Linking
Internal linking is a strategic lever. It involves intelligently linking pages together to guide the user and the crawling robot. The perfect example: Wikipedia. Each article redirects to other related topics, improving the relevance and visibility of contents. It is also an excellent way to transfer SEO authority between pages.
Hn Tag Structure
The Hn tags structure the content of a web page. The main title (H1 tag) must be unique, followed by logical subtitles (H2, H3…). This hierarchy helps algorithms understand parts of the content and reinforces semantic consistency.
Page Depth
The deeper a page is buried in the site structure, the less likely it is to be seen. Google recommends that an important page be accessible in less than three clicks. This factor affects both user experience and site exploration. Loading speed and pagination also play a role here.
Outbound Links
An outbound link to a reliable source reinforces the credibility of your content. Google evaluates the quality of referenced sites, and a good link can improve the relevance of the page. The goal is to provide added value to the user, not simply to accumulate keywords.
URL Structure
URLs should be short, clear, and readable. Although their SEO weight has decreased over the years, their structure remains a reference point for Google. A well-constructed URL facilitates understanding of the topic treated, both for users and for bots. This technical pillar is the base of good organic referencing. It ensures that every content published is correctly understood, explored, and indexed by search engines.
To go further, I invite you to consult my article dedicated to technical SEO.
2. USER EXPERIENCE (UX)
User experience plays a central role in any organic referencing strategy. Google today pays particular attention to how internet users interact with a web page, and this aspect becomes even more decisive since the shift to the mobile-first index. This means that the search engine primarily evaluates the mobile version of your website to determine its positioning in search results. A site that does not adapt to mobile devices (smartphones, tablets) therefore risks losing visibility. If your website is not yet responsive design, it is time to act. A fluid and readable display on mobile is now an unavoidable SEO criterion. User experience consists above all of a series of concrete actions aimed at improving the quality of content and navigation. Here are elements to watch:
- A fast loading time on mobile, desktop, and tablet (remember to optimize every image).
- A clear structure with an intuitive menu and well-organized internal links.
- Perfect compatibility with all devices, to ensure fluid access to the page content.
When asked: “What is SEO?”, my answer is often the same: it’s a lot of user experience. Good web referencing relies on optimized content, a pleasant interface, and a site designed to effectively respond to each search intent. This is what Google wants: to offer users web pages that are relevant, accessible, and well-built.
To go further, discover my complete guide on user experience, a real lever to improve the organic positioning of your website.
No one likes landing on an incomprehensible site
3. CONTENT
Impossible to talk about natural referencing without mentioning content. This pillar remains, in my eyes, one of the most powerful factors to improve the visibility of a website. And yet, it is still largely under-exploited on the majority of web pages. A poorly designed but content-rich site optimized can rank better than a visually accomplished but text-poor site. As we have seen in technical aspects and in the definition of SEO, Google pays particular attention to quality content. The algorithms of its search engine analyze each page to determine its relevance relative to a precise query. As such, every web page should contain at least 500 words, with real added value for the user. The goal is not only to write long but to be more relevant and comprehensive than sites already well positioned on your main keyword. But producing content is not enough: it must still be optimized correctly. Here are the elements to work on as a priority:
- The title tag: it appears in search results. This HTML title is a strong signal for the engine. It must include the main keyword, encourage clicking, and remain unique.
- The meta description: this small text visible in the SERP summarizes the page content. Although it has no direct weight on ranking, it strongly impacts the click-through rate.
- Keyword selection: a thorough semantic analysis allows identifying the right terms to integrate into the content.
- Internal linking: each internal link reinforces the SEO architecture of the site and guides the indexing robots.
- Page structure: titles, subtitles, short paragraphs, bullet lists… facilitate reading and improve time spent on the site.
To enrich the content of your website, several levers are available to you:
- regularly publish optimized blog articles;
- create pages dedicated to each service, product, or customer issue;
- integrate visual content (images, videos, infographics) accompanied by optimized descriptive text.
In summary, this pillar relies on two major criteria: the quality and the relevance of words used. By working on these two aspects, you strengthen the content strategy of your site and increase your chances of appearing on the first page on Google.
Discover how to write blog articles well for Google
4. RECOMMENDATIONS (or backlinks)
I often repeat to my clients: in natural referencing, recommendations play a major role. Take a concrete example: when looking for a job, being recommended by a professional in the sector can make all the difference. On the web, it works exactly the same way. If you want your website to gain authority and improve its position in search results, it must receive links from other web pages. These external recommendations are called backlinks. These are links placed on other websites, pointing to yours. For search engines like Google, every incoming link acts as a trust signal.
The more your sources are relevant, reliable, and popular, the more efficient your SEO strategy becomes. A telling example: imagine that Le Monde publishes exclusive information that creates buzz. Quickly, other media outlets pick up the info, and to cite their source, they insert a link to the original article. For Google, this incoming link is equivalent to a direct recommendation, which reinforces the notoriety and positioning of the concerned page. Is it possible to do SEO without backlinks? Yes, but it remains more complex, especially to reach the first page on competitive queries.
This pillar of off-site SEO becomes essential when one wishes to strengthen the popularity of a site in a very competitive environment. If you offer quality content, well-structured and designed for user experience, other specialized sites or players in your sector can naturally talk about your articles, share them on their social networks, or insert a link in their own optimized content. Obviously, there are different SEO techniques to obtain backlinks relevantly and ethically.
To go further, I invite you to consult my article dedicated to this topic: How to get backlinks?
Conclusion, what is SEO?
SEO, or natural referencing (organic search), refers to the set of web marketing techniques that allow optimizing a website to make it appear on the first page of search results on Google and other search engines. The objective: improve visibility, generate qualified traffic, capture users’ search intent, and ultimately, increase sales.
In this SEO article, I share with you the referencing strategy I apply to WordPress sites to improve their positioning and their performance. This approach relies on a clear and effective method, tested on numerous client projects.
How to improve your organic referencing on Google?
Google regularly updates its algorithms to offer the most relevant results for each query. To follow its recommendations, I apply an SEO strategy structured around the 4 major pillars:
- The technical aspect: loading time, HTML tags, site architecture, mobile compatibility, exploration by robots.
- User experience: fluid navigation, responsive design, clear structure, optimal response time.
- Content: optimized writing, strategic keywords, content quality, meta descriptions, title tag, page content.
- External recommendations (Off-site SEO): backlinks, popularity, domain authority, mentions on social networks.
These pillars are the indispensable foundations to position a website lastingly on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and gain visibility.
What Google expects from your site
Google has only one goal: satisfy the user so they continue using its search engine. It therefore favors websites that offer a fluid experience, relevant content, and true added value. If your web page responds clearly and structurally to the search intent, it has every chance of appearing higher in the results.
