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SXO or  Search eXperience Optimization is the combination of user experience (UX) and natural referencing (SEO). This “user-centric” vision aims to optimize the user’s navigation throughout the purchase journey, from research to conversion.

“SEO makes brands visible when SXO makes them perform”

Today, the challenge of brands is no longer the quest for the first position, but the quest for the best experience. SXO is a criterion of differentiation in the face of an increasingly connected and competitive market. Through this article, find out why and how optimizing the search experience can affect your e-business.

GOOGLE: AN ENGINE OF ANSWERS

Google is now positioned as a “response engine” and no longer as a “search engine”. Over the years, the giant has continued to assert this approach by accompanying changes in use and behaviour by regularly updating its algorithm. Hummingbird in 2013, Rank Brain in 2015 and the zeros position in 2016 are the main consequences of the emergence of this new optimization technique called: SXO.

In addition, voice search with the contribution of voice assistants is also a new trend that has profoundly changed the approach of search engines. Aiming to make the queries of users ever more relevant and precise, it is necessary to rethink the semantics of your site in order to be visible on the search engines. So we go from a logic “Search engine optimization” to logic ” Answer Engine Optimization”.

SXO = SEO + UX

Even if the 3 pillars of SEO are and will probably remain the technique, content, and semantics, it is necessary to integrate the UX dimension into your strategy when redesigning or designing your new website.

Previously, search engines rated the relevance of a site simply through its content, keywords, and backlinks. Today, it is necessary or even essential to go beyond. The user’s understanding and analysis of his behaviour guarantee a unique and memorable user experience. By focusing on design, prioritization of information, usability, and functionality of your website that you will gain seats in the SERP’s. SXO is both meeting the requirements of search engines, but also the expectations of users.

The SEO and UX are not competing technologies, on the contrary, they are complementary. At present, SXO must be considered as a global strategy in the creation or redesign of the website. The goal: optimize and streamline the customer journey, from navigation to conversion.

THE GUIDELINES OF A SXO STRATEGY

As you can see, an SXO strategy requires the technical aspect of SEO and the graphical aspect of UX. Therefore, in order to increase your traffic and your conversion rate, you must bet on:

The ergonomics of your site: offer a clear and fluid tree. The visitor must find the information they are looking for in less than 3 clicks.

Keywords: Understand the queries of Internet users and target keywords providing traffic. To help you define your keywords, we recommend: Answer the Public

Content: Propose rich, accurate and quality content that meets your target’s expectations. The creation of landing pages is a way to capture the user and convert quickly. The key to success: Inbound marketing

A responsive site: Adapt your website on mobile and tablet, you will respond to changes in the use of Internet users.

Data structure: Tagging your data will allow you to gain visibility and respond accurately to requests from users. (knowledge graph, rich snippets, rich cards, Featured Snippets)

Call-to-Action: Integrate CTAs on dedicated pages and develop your conversion rate.

Loading time: According to Google Analytics, 53% of Internet users abandon a website if the loading time is greater than 3 seconds. So, to test your site we advise you: Page speed insights

CONCLUSION

The SXO is the winning combination of SEO and UX, with a common goal: to meet the user’s expectations and needs.
To summarize: Search experience Optimization is a marketing technique to attract visitors through SEO and convert and retain them by optimizing the user experience on your website.

Off-page SEO refers to certain techniques to improve the position of a website in the search engine results pages.

Many people associate Off-page SEO with the creation of backlinks, but it’s not only that.

A better explanation regarding the site’s position on obtaining backlinks: Read more

What is your domain authority?

The Domain Authority (DA) is an indicator that grades the quality of your company’s website. Specifically, the domain authority measures the quality of your SEO. As a result, the higher your domain authority is, the more visitors you attract to your website and, in the first place, conquer more new customers.

This is how we describe it:

Domain authority is developed by Moz. Other companies like SEMrush also have similar metrics. No link with Google. This is a modeling essay from Google’s algorithm that assigns a rating to any website. Since this rating is essentially based on the number and backlinks, working on it can not hurt your SEO.

So I’m going to define domain authority and then give you 7 practical tips to increase it. And most importantly, I hope to make you want to further follow your domain authority (DA). It’s a solid metric for how your website’s SEO is changing over time.

What is the domain authority (DA) of a website?

The Domain Authority (DA) of a website is a score between 0 and 100 that tries to predict how a website ranks on search engines.

7 steps to increase your domain authority

The closer your score is to 100, the better.

This DA note is based on a metric scale. In other words, the higher your score, the less difficult it is to progress.

On the other hand, the DA is a metric totally disconnected from the ranking metrics established by Google.

In fact, Moz is trying to simulate Google’s ranking algorithm based on known criteria.

But as Google’s algorithm is secret, with over 200 factors and constantly evolving, Moz was unable to have a precise estimate.

However, this approximation is good enough for SEO experts to use it and track the organic SEO progress of a website.

Moz works similar to Google, it retrieves data from the Web, put them in its index and calculates the domain authority.

But as it is not the same power of calculation as Google, Moz can do it only once a month.

Therefore, when you make changes to your company website, your DA does not change immediately.

Recommendations: Your DA rating is primarily used to evaluate your SEO progress and compare yourself with your competitors.

How is the domain authority calculated?

Moz indicates that the domain authority is calculated with a number of criteria which include:

  • The number of inbound links (Backlinks) pointing to your website,
  • The quality and relevance of these incoming links,
  • The quality of the content published on your website,
  • The popularity of your domain on social networks,
  • The quality of SEO (Organic SEO) of your website.

Where can I find out about the DA of my business website?

To find out your domain authority score, go to Moz’s Link Explorer tool, enter your domain name and check the results.

what is your daumain authority

Note: Open Site Explorer (OSE) index tool is no longer updated. Moz returns today on Link Explorer which has the same functions.
Basically, it’s a reinstatement for Open Site Explorer which was Moz’s tool for link discovery, competitive analysis, and link building.

What is the authority of a page?

The page authority (PA) is similar to the domain authority (DA). It is an indicator of the ability of a page to rank.

Instead of taking the entire domain into account, the page authority notes the performance of a particular page.

A website with many pages with strong authority also has a high domain authority (DA).
The page authority is based on three factors, namely:

  • Age and trust
  • Value received from links
  • Page last update and relevance

Age and trust

The pages that have been on the Internet for years with good results have already earned their right to position themselves well on the results pages. New pages, as well as new domains, must first prove their qualities before they can position themselves for competitive keywords. Give your page time and take good care of it: write good content and get quality backlinks.

Value received from links

Each link has authority, external links as well as internals bring some authority to the landing page and thus influence the authority of this page.

last page update

Search engines prefer pages that are frequently updated. Regularly review the contents of your most important pages and whenever possible, update them. Do not forget the relevance. It takes more than a high page authority for a page to rank well. Relevance for specific keywords is also crucial. The relevance is gained with the content of the page, which must include these keywords and internal links, as well as backlinks (or external links).

Why do you need to improve your domain authority (DA)?

In fact, any action taken to increase the authority of your domain will also improve your rankings on the search engines.

Now that you have mastered the notion of ‘domain authority’ and know how it is calculated, let’s look at how to improve your domain authority.

7 tips to improve your domain authority

How to increase your domain authority

As you will see, the same approach to improve your DA is the same for the 3 elements of SEO as I will describe.

1. Work on your ‘off page’ SEO

In fact, backlinks are the most important priority factor in Moz’s algorithm.

That’s by the way, what appears right to the right of your domain authority note on the Link Explorer screen.

7 steps to increase your domain authority

Moz talks about profile links which are the set of links that point to your site.

What is a strong link profile?

According to Moz, a good link profile has the following characteristics:

  • Inbound links from websites with strong authority,
  • Inbound links from websites dealing with the same subject,
  • And incoming links from many different websites,
  • No bad links.

How to improve your link profile?

In fact, improving your link profile is based on the ‘off Page” SEO techniques, one of the 3 subdomains of SEO.

So it’s all about getting quality backlinks by promoting your content.

To enhance your link profile and, among other things, improve your domain authority, you take 2 actions:

  • Eliminate bad links,
  • Get quality links.

Remove bad links

This process involves using a tool like Moz Explorer or SEMrush to find the toxic links.

Then contact the managers of the websites and ask them to remove the link or add the attribute ‘nofollow’ to undervalue the power of the link.

For site managers that do not respond, use the tool to disavow links in your Google Search Console in order to remove the negative impact of these links.

Get good links from other relevant websites

It is probably the most difficult task of SEO.

Any Digital Marketing expert will tell you that getting quality backlinks is a subject in its own right.

To give you an overview, there are mainly 2 ways to get good inbound links:

  • Publish quality content,
  • Ensure their promotion.

Publish quality content on your website

Posting quality content is the best way to get ‘natural’ backlinks.

The principle is as follows: if a user reads one of your articles and appreciates it, he will refer to it in his own content.

As a result, the first step is to publish content that your readers will like.

That is relevant, useful and easy content.

In practice, you must be very patient.

Indeed, it takes time to gain the trust of your readers so that some Internet users in your industry want to quote your content in theirs.

Promote your articles

The second way to get good backlinks is to contact other websites to let them know you exist.

In this way, you increase your chances of getting links pointing to your professional website.

2. Optimize your site’s ‘On page’ SEO

SEO on page Optimization

To improve your domain authority, you must also optimize the SEO of your pages.

‘On page’ SEO is about optimizing your page and its content.

Among the major points to optimize, here are the main ones:

  • Optimize your title and the meta description,
  • Cut out your content with subtitles,
  • Optimize the URLs structure,
  • Compress the weight and optimize your images for SEO,
  • Use keywords naturally in your content without stuffing,
  • Add internal links to your content,
  • Work on formatting your content for easy readability.

Note: Of course, your content must be updated regularly to prevent it from becoming obsolete.

3. Work on your technical SEO 

technical seo elements

Technical SEO is the third part of the process.

This concerns your website, that is, the container of your content.

In general, these rather technical actions are to be done only once.

On the other hand, if one of the aspects of the technical SEO is not correct, it has a strong impact on your domain authority and therefore on your rankings in the search result pages.

Among the 16 critical parameters of Technical SEO, the main ones are:

  • Setup your website on Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster tools,
  • Submit your XML sitemap to Google,
  • Test your robots.txt file on the Google Search Console to make sure Google and other search engines can crawl your website without problems,
  • Secure your website with an SSL certificate (https),
  • Add structured data to help search engines better understand your content …

4. Have a mobile-friendly website 

Not having a compatible website for small screens of a smartphone has a negative impact on your domain authority.

In addition, having a mobile-compatible website is no longer an option. It is mandatory.

Here are some reasons:

48% of searches in North America are done on mobile (source Google Research),
Many Internet users start their search on mobile and pursue it on a computer,
Mobile Compatibility is a Google Ranking factor
Google deploys its Mobile First Index that takes into account the content of your website on Mobile to rank your pages.

Recommendations: to avoid having 2 sites to manage (one for a computer, another for mobile), opt for a responsive design that adapts naturally and automatically to the size of the devise screen of your users.

Note: You can also make your pages compatible with Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).

My tip: To make sure your website is mobile-friendly, use Google’s free mobile tool.

The report in this tool provides all the recommendations for making your website mobile-friendly.

Have a mobile-friendly website

5. Optimize the loading time of your pages

One of the known factors of Google’s rankings is the page speed.

A website that loads slowly is penalized.

Speeding up your pages improves:

Not only your ranking in Google’s result pages and your domain authority,
But also the user experience which translates into more conversion: sales, prospects, registrations …
Solving the page speed problems of your website is not always easy.

Nevertheless, to save time on the technical aspects without using your developer, here are the actions to take to optimize the website of your company:

  • Delete unnecessary extensions,
  • Use the latest versions of your CMS (WordPress or other) and your extensions,
  • Ask your website hosting for a report on your server’s performance. If necessary, pay yourself a more powerful server.
  • Use a caching plugin, like W3 Total Cache,
  • Compress your images with an extension, like tiny jpg or png
  • Use YouTube or Vimeo to host your videos instead of running your own server …

6. Increase your social shares

Although officially, Google has repeatedly stated that social shares are not part of its Google algorithm, it seems that there is a correlation between pages well ranked on Google and the social commitments of these pages.

It’s normal. Popular pages in Google also tend to receive more Likes, shares, tweets …

To increase your domain authority, here are some actions to take:

  • Work on your profiles on LinkedIn and try to increase your connections,
  • Be active on social networks to promote your content to collect more Likes, tweets, + 1 on Google + …

Not to mention, add the social sharing buttons on all your pages to facilitate sharing for your visitors …

7. Have patience

Increasing your domain authority does not happen overnight.

It takes time for Moz bots to evaluate your website once the above changes are made. You must be patient.

In any case, working consistently on improving your rankings in Google also has a positive effect on your domain authority score. And vice versa!

Conclusion on how to improve your domain authority

To conclude, do not be too obsessed with your domain authority (DA).

For me, it’s just a number that measures the strength of your area compared to your competitors.

In addition, a low DA does not mean that your website is not ranked well on Google.

On the other hand, a strong authority means that you are on the right path without any guarantee of obtaining a better ranking on Google.

Whatever it is, please check regularly your Google Search Console and have a complete check-up on your website.

Nothing like Google to help you progress on Google! Now, what are you going to do with these techniques to get your domain authority (DA)?

SEO content is essential for a good SEO of your website. What is SEO content and why should it be produced?
SEO content is a very important factor for your website. Good SEO content will make your site visible in the search engine results, including those of Google. It will allow you to increase the organic traffic of your site and boost your visibility.

Definition of SEO content

SEO content is content optimized for search engines. All the texts and visuals of your website can be optimized SEO.

Search Engine Optimization is known or called (SEO). SEO is defined as the art of optimizing the positioning of a web page, the objective being is to appear in the first page positions of search engine results and especially on Google.

Why create SEO content?

Why create SEO content and why for Google in particular? With these few figures on the market share of Google in the search on the web, you will find the first answer. This will help you understand better why it is important to create SEO optimized content for your website:

In Canada, 90.8% market share for Google (Bing 5.61% and Yahoo 2.48%),
In North America, 88.66% market share for Google (Bing 6.77% and Yahoo 3.62%),

Source: gs.statcounter.com for the month of June 2018

These numbers alone illustrate why you need to meet Google’s content requirements. To get good visibility on Google, SEO content is king.

SEO optimized text content

To make your website visible on the search engines and especially on Google, it must contain optimized SEO content.

Optimized SEO content must be:

  • Original, interesting and quality,
  • Adapted to the web and the requirements of Google,
  • Concise and quickly understandable,
  • Interactive.

To this short list are added the Google’s quality guidelines:

  • Design content by thinking first of your visitors rather than the search engines,
  • Do not mislead your visitors,
  • Avoid using SEO techniques that are contrary to Google’s guidelines to help you rank,
  • Make your site unique, attractive and stand out from your competition.

SEO optimized visual content

Depending on your field of activity, visual content may be as important as text content. Since 2001 (corresponding to the birth of Google Image), the search for images is constantly increasing on Google. By using quality images related to your business activity, you can acquire quality traffic to your website. This is the case for example for communication agencies, e-commerce sites, portfolios of artists such as photographers and graphic artists, image banks, etc.

To optimize your images for SEO, it is essential to:

  • Use ‘ALT’ tags with targeted keywords to describe your image,
  • Take care of their size and weight to optimize loading time,
  • Enter the title of the image.

To learn more about SEO optimization of images:

And do not forget that Google Images has evolved. The advantage of this update allows a more quality image search.

How to value your SEO content?

Creating optimized SEO content will be beneficial for your visibility, provided you meet certain criteria on the web page that will host your content. A web page containing SEO content must include:

Title

It should contain the title of your web page and its content that will be displayed in Google’s results. It must, of course, contain the targeted main keyword.

Title tag

The title tag or H1 tag is the ‘editorial title’ of your content, it is visible on your page and must contain the keyword you are targeting.

A Meta Description

It informs Internet users of the content of the web page in the form of a short description. It is visible in the results of the search engines and must attract the user’s curiosity and encourage them to click on the link of your web page.

How to promote your SEO content?

When SEO content is added to other actions, you put the odds on your side to optimize the SEO and positioning of your web page. The SME, does it speak to you? Need a little reminder?

When you combine SEO, SEA, and SMO, the three complement each other and allow a good SEO of your website on Google.

The three main levers for promoting your content:

  • SEO, natural optimization,
  • SEA paid optimization,
  • SMO, optimization on social networks.

Indeed, a unique and quality SEO content must be relayed on social networks. Promoting quality SEO content is the best way to naturally get backlinks to increase awareness and visibility of your web page.

Who to call for SEO content?

To produce SEO content, you have several options:

  • Write content from A to Z alone by following the instructions of Google,
  • Write a first draft that will then be optimized for a web search agency,
  • Use an SEO agency or web editor.

In short,

Writing SEO content with high added value is essential to improve your positioning on Google. If despite all your efforts and following these tips the positioning of your website is not up to your expectations, do not hesitate to use the services of a web agency to conduct an audit of your website. This audit will allow you to identify and correct the weaknesses of your site to improve its performance.

In recent years, Google has made profound changes to its algorithms which has changed in a radical way SEO. However, it must be said that this is an essential technique to boost its presence on the web. Indeed, it is useless to have a website if it is not visible on the various search engines. How to improve your SEO for 2018? This is the main question that entrepreneurs have been trying to answer for some time. Here are the best SEO tips to follow.

#1. Firstly, respect the fundamentals

In order to succeed in your SEO strategy, you must first respect the fundamental principles that will allow you to get a better ranking.

First of all, it is necessary for you to focus on users at the expense of search engines. They are your customers and not Google.

This is easily understandable. There is no point in bringing traffic to your website if your visitors are not converted into customers.

In order to achieve this, it is important to offer quality content information so they can easily share with their loved ones.

Indeed, users are impatient and some are not loyal: they will not hesitate to go to your competitor if you can’t hold them. Worse, if your content is not attractive and that your visitors quickly leave the site, your site positioning will be degraded by Google in terms of the bounce rate of your page (25 tools to analyze your traffic).

#2. Do not position for a single keyword

It has been estimated that the average user’s queries consist of 4 words.

This comment is especially true with voice search. Users can directly search for something and get accurate answers without having to type anything. This trend also impacted the keywords since people learn complete sentences when conducting a search. This can be a huge opportunity for you to take advantage of its use. Rather than stand on a very competitive keyword, why not focus on queries referencing more complex and less competitive.

Check seo centro tool to know the volume of search phrases on Google and suggestions of related keywords:

#3 Be more localized

Consequently, the search engine places a lot of importance on geographical positioning and this trend is likely to continue.
Thanks to geolocation and cross-channel technologies, we will soon arrive more at a city level, but at a much more specific area! The consequences in terms of SEO can be very interesting. You will be able to create more research niches.
Tool to check its positioning in the results pages of Google: rank tracker from Moz
Tools to check the technical SEO level of your site:
https://metricspot.com/app/
https://auditor.raventools.com/
https://varvy.com/
http://seositecheckup.com/
https://website.grader.com/

#4 Go for the Link building!

For those who do not know much, link building is very popular with SEO specialists.
Indeed, it simply refers to the fact of creating links. Link building is the action of increasing the number of external links (backlinks) pointing to a web page that you wish to see an increase in the positioning of pages of search engines positioning. Whatever it is, the link building allows you to improve the positioning of a page according to the keywords on which the links were created.

In other words, if you really want to position your website among the best search results, you should probably consider creating links.
Your backlinks should appear as natural to the search engines. The more your backlinks will be relevant, trusted and diversified the better your page will be referenced. However, there are several ways to create a link: in a natural way (mention of a site, quote of a site, etc.) or the inscription on a website.

#5 Directories

Contrary to what one might then think, do not draw a definitive line on a directory registration. You just have to use it in a clever way, and not spam hundreds of directories, which would only penalize your own site. In this respect, three types of directories must be distinguished, all of which do not require the same approach: general directories, thematic directories, and local directories.
For registration in general directories, we recommend using Knowem which is a service that will register your institution on general directories and be putting a backlink on them. To find thematic and local directories we refer you to which lists these directories.

#6 Comments

The link building in comments of other sites generally obtains the objective of artificially obtaining backlinks in a logic of ‘optimization’ of the natural referencing. This practice is to be conducted with caution. Abuse of this practice is a practice considered black hat SEO and Google may penalize you.