SEO (Search Engine Optimization) explained

Hey, hello there! It's been a long time ... during the vacations I didn't write much ... that's true, but I've been working on a lot of exciting things that I'll tell you about soon, I promise!
So here we are, September's here and we're back into our rhythm? All that, all that...?
As you'll have gathered from this fine title, today's topic is "SEO".

What is SEO?

SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization", pure and simple, the work you have to do to get to the top of Google. And in the search results, this is what you see.

What's what? What do you mean, what? I did a search on purpose in which I came out first? I don't know what you're talking about ... it's a coincidence! ?

Are SEO and SEA the same thing?

Ah, I see where you're coming from, we told you about SEA and it's true that two letters out of three are the same, but in fact they're not the same thing. SEA stands for "search engine ads", in fact it's a paid placement to appear first, and I'll give you a little illustration below.

You see, it's funny, when I type "Uber Eats", Google brings up its direct competitor with the word "Ad", what does that mean in concrete terms?
Quite simply, Deliveroo pays Google to place itself on the "Uber eats" keywords.
That's basically what SEA is, but I'll come back to that in a future article, I promise?

How do you do SEO?

First and foremost, I'd like to warn you right away that SEO is something you have to stick with. If you think you'll have a site up and running in a week's time, you're on the wrong track. SEO is a job that takes months, even years ... forget the idea of being first on Google with a poor site costing 30 euros a month ... it doesn't exist and it never will.

I'm going to talk to the entrepreneurs among you now: entrepreneurship is difficult at first, you struggle like hell ... You have to work every day to you have to work every day to develop your small business... it's a regular job, and the most important thing is not to give up... even when it's difficult, even when you don't believe in it anymore... (don't worry, it'll come back?)

SEO? It's the same: in the beginning, you don't even exist on Google, and that's for months, even a year... Time during which you have to be able to hold the mental load and keep working.

(At the same time, in your life ... when was the last time something great was easy to achieve?)

The technical part

In SEO, the technical side of things is very important. In fact, a CMS (software that manages content for a website, on this website it's "Ludo Dev CMS"), has to be designed with this in mind. I'll give you an example: look at the address of the page you're currently on, it should look like this:

developpeur-freelance.io/blog/referencement-seo/quest-ce-que-le-seo/

If you copy and paste the link to "What's App", for example, even before you click on it, your interlocutor can easily understand what it's all about just by reading the URL.

When, in a URL, you see things like "?article=450" it's bad for natural referencing (SEO), this information is useful for the software that runs the site, but only for it, it's useless for Google and useless for the people who read this URL.

This is just one example of what technology can do to improve SEO, of course there are lots of other little things (like "microdata" for example), but I want to keep this article digestible for you.

Context and SEO

Yes, having an SEO-optimized CMS is all well and good ... but you still need to have things to be referenced.
If your site contains very little information, then why should it appear in the search results?
Hence the need to create content and, if you're smart, you'll realize that by writing this article, I'm creating content ... (the guy in the background who was sleeping just woke up ... here :D).

So; forget right away about copying and pasting content or automatically generating content that doesn't work (then I don't know ... do you respect ? ?), I think you need to have a certain passion for what you do to write articles that are relevant enough to help with SEO.

The content part in my opinion is the hardest, I know what I'm talking about, because I do it, and I forbid myself to write something "just to write and make m**** content" (Anh, did he say a swear word?).
I want you to learn things when you stop by my place, even if only one person learned something by stopping by this site ... so did I win?

Conclusion

SEO experts might say "Hey, you didn't mention this, and this ..." for example, "backlinks"... Yes, I know!? It's deliberate, to keep the article digestible for everyone, and it'll make a great next article, won't it?

In the meantime, you'll have had time to decant what you've learned this week and you'll be ready to learn something new.
The world of the Internet is vast, there's lots to learn, we've got time?
And there's nothing to stop you debating in the comments.

On that note, have a great week, see you next week?