10 Tips For A Clean SEO Strategy With Wordpress
We sometimes speak of clean or ethical SEO, as opposed to “dirty” SEO. But what are we talking about exactly? And how to do SEO without rotting the web?
THE IMPACT OF SEO ON THE WEB
Very often in our minds, we will think of “white hat” SEO (those who follow Google's rules) and “black hat” SEO (those who do the opposite).
In reality, when we talk about web pollution or dirty natural SEO, it goes much further than that: when we refer a site or create a site with an SEO perspective, we will impact different aspects of the web :
- Legality;
- Ecology;
- Security;
- Accessibility;
- Respect for Internet users.
It may sound abstract, but a large number of SEO actions can improve the visibility of a site, but to the detriment of entire sections of the web. Unfortunately, we all have a responsibility in taking certain actions.
THE BASIC PRINCIPLE OF SEO
To understand why we pollute the web by improving the visibility of a site, we must first of all understand how a search engine works. To put it simply, three main elements will have an impact on our visibility:
- The technical aspects of the site;
- The contents;
- Popularity.
Everyone knows that having good content is important. Just as much is having a popular site (other sites linking to you). Finally, the technical quality of your site will facilitate Google's work for two actions:
- When it will crawl the latter (that is to say, browse your different pages);
- During its indexing (the fact that it understands your content to then offer it to the Internet user).
Keep in mind one thing: the concept of a keyword is ambiguous. When we talk about natural SEO, we want to position ourselves on a word, it is our target expression. Behind the latter, the user may have different intentions (buy, compare, get information, go to a place, etc.). And finally, you have a semantic universe, that is to say all the terms that we will use when we talk about our expression.
Let's take an example:
- The expression "floating floor"
Possible intentions can be:
- How to lay parquet?
- Which parquet to buy?
- Where to buy parquet?
The semantic universe:
- Lay parquet
- Floor type
- Engineered parquet
- Solid wood parquet
- Joists
- Heated floor
- Etc.
This functioning of a search engine will be important, because it can (too) easily be fooled. But it is not because we can do it that we must do it, and above all there are other methods that are just as effective and which will have a more moderate negative impact on the "common good".
WHAT SPECIFICITY WITH WORDPRESS?
To tell the truth, none. WordPress and any other CMS or custom solution can allow you to work on your natural SEO, whether it is clean or "dirty". What will differ is above all the tools (especially the extensions), the interface and the settings.
WordPress is very easy to use. It is an asset for the owner of a site or for the writers. This is also what explains the enthusiasm of SEOs because we can easily and quickly launch sites with this CMS (especially if we automate the entire process).
That brings us to a key concept that we'll talk about a bit further: beware of it. There is always a gulf between what you see and what Google will interpret. We can then end up polluting our site and the web without even reporting (while complicating the work of search engines).
WHAT IS “DIRTY” SEO?
As briefly explained, when someone talks to you about “dirty” SEO, they will refer to “black hat” SEO as opposed to “white hat”. But this article and this conference go further: it is not only a question of differentiating those who more or less respect the rules of the search engine. The goal is to talk about all the negative aspects directly or indirectly related to natural SEO. We will thus approach:
- Ecology;
- Accessibility;
- Certain legal aspects;
- Respect for Internet users and users;
- Etc.
And we will show you here in 10 steps these different aspects, as well as the advice to apply to have a less negative impact of our actions.
HOW TO DO NATURAL SEO MORE PROPERLY?
TAKE A STEP BACK WITH REGULAR CRAWLS
1st tip: do regular crawls of your own site. It is a question of doing like Google, that is to say exploring each URL of our website. There are many tools that do this. As far as we are concerned, we recommend the excellent Screaming Frog Spider SEO (paid tool).
This will allow you to see the actual content of your WordPress site, including URLs incorrectly generated by:
- Your editors;
- The theme;
- Your extensions.
There is no point in polluting your site with publications that are of no interest to the Internet user or the search engine.
QUALITY CONTENT
This is classic advice but it still works: writing quality content is important to position yourself well (it is not the only one of course). Very often, we will talk to you about:
- Number of words ;
- Keyword density;
- Writing quality;
- Etc.
These specificity of a content can be important, but this obscures two fundamental aspects:
- What does the Internet user want (and therefore what does Google want)?
- What is Google showing on the query we are targeting?
For the first point, it's very simple. For every expression you target, ask yourself this question:
In other words, what is his intention? The simple fact of answering them in an exhaustive and relevant way will make it possible to have a qualitative content. Likewise, see what Google can display when you type a query. Each expression can in fact offer the Internet user different types of results:
- Classic results;
- Images;
- Videos;
- News content;
- Some products;
- A local card;
- Specific markup (events or FAQs for example);
- A position 0 (an answer given directly in the results page of Google);
- And so on.
Also watch:
- What are the contents that are positioned?
- What is the solution they offer (product purchase, tutorial, video, map, etc.)
- What is the “angle of attack” of their content?
Depending on this, you can adapt your writing for more "relevance".
HUNT UNNECESSARY CONTENT
Which brings us to the third point: hunt down all the useless content in your WordPress. This ranges from the “Hello everyone” article to the “Happy New Year 2020” article, including all articles that are too old to be of any interest.
The idea is to remove the superfluous: we provide quality content to the Internet user while helping Google to go only to those that are important. There are different sorting methods for this:
- Navigate like the Internet user and ask yourself if each content is still relevant or not;
- Use structure visualization software like Gephi to see orphan or isolated content in the site structure;
- Look through the Google Search Console and through your Web Analytics tool for content that no longer brings you traffic.
Each time, you will have two solutions: either delete (and redirect) the content, or improve it and possibly give it a better "place" in the structure of the site.
A WEB MARKETING STRATEGY WITH REAL CONTENT
4th principle: a large part of the sites which position themselves well in natural SEO are because they have also set up a real web marketing strategy, with real “relevant” content for the user. When you think about it, it makes sense: the vast majority of big well-known brands are because they have above all a real marketing strategy. For the web and your WordPress, it's the same.
What is frustrating is that the reverse works anyway: in 2019 we can still write a mush of text while positioning ourselves in the top 10. And here is a little nugget in this area:
Of course, we don't recommend doing this, especially for real sites. What is sad about this observation is that it is sometimes very easy to generate poor quality content, for example:
- By translating content with Deep;
- By doing spinning (ie generating several texts from a common base);
- By extracting YouTube subtitles to publish them;
- Etc.
If you do this it can work in SEO, but you spoil the web. To give you an image, it's a bit like planting billboards all over your neighborhood, just any way and stealing / copying those of your competitors. As some say, “it all depends on where your ethics are” (a phrase that I tend to hate because it allows us to do anything and everything).
KNOW ITS PRODUCTS
5th board: controlling its products, its services and content. This is common sense, and it is too rarely the case. A site that knows its business and the corresponding solutions perfectly will tend to produce qualitative content naturally and effortlessly.
It is all the more frustrating when you come across a site created by an SEO to make an affiliation. In this case, we quickly know that the content is fictitious and partially dishonest, because the editor has never really tested the products he presents. Let's take a personal example where I was looking to choose a garden chest to store certain tools, and on which this site was positioned in the top 3:
Here again: we can always make fictitious content, not very qualitative or not detailed, and this can be positioned on the first page of Google. But you do it at the expense of the web as a whole, as well as the users you cheat.
LOADING TIME
6th step: speed. We tell you on the official Google sites, a fast site will be better referenced. In fact, it's more subtle: yes it's important, but it does not have a systematic impact on positioning. On the other hand, it will improve conversions and user experience, while drastically boosting the crawl and indexing of the search engine. And what's good for Google is good for the planet.
If the Internet were a country, it would be in the top 5 of the world's largest consumers of electricity.
Loading a web page has an ecological impact. And the heavier and slower these pages, the worse the impact.
ACCESSIBILITY
Another important point: accessibility. On the web, we are told more and more that our sites and our applications must be able to be used by everyone. And it's a good thing.
When we talk about accessibility, we really have to talk about disability situations. These can affect us all, permanently or temporarily. There are 4 main types:
Visual impairment, for example:
- The blind;
- People with very low eyesight;
- Color blind people (I'm one of them).
Hearing impairment, in particular:
- The deaf;
- The hard of hearing.
- Motor disability, such as:
- Malformed people;
- People with a permanent motor handicap (road accident, fall, etc.);
- People who have injured themselves temporarily (for example, a person with the right arm in a cast).
cognitive disability, which can include:
- People with dyslexia;
- People with mental disorders;
- People with autistic syndrome.
But what does this have to do with SEO? If you think about it, the search engines tick all the boxes:
By dint of working on the natural SEO of our clients, we realize that a very large part of the technical recommendations and those related to content will have a positive impact in terms of accessibility. Some tips have a strong impact, such as alt text in an image.
For the editorial staff:
- We fill in the alt texts of the images (the meaningful ones, the “decoration” ones can be ignored), - actually describing the image. So avoid sticking your target expression every time;
- If you are including a video, consider writing a side note to describe it;
- Make your text easy to read and understand: everything must be explicit.
From a technical point of view
- Add a navigation path (for example with Yoast SEO);
- Limit JavaScript. Google can interpret it but there is a risk of error and above all this slows down its indexing (in accessibility however, this is no longer a systematic recommendation since assistive technologies know how to interpret correctly coded JavaScript);
- Have coherent Hn markup (H1, H2, etc.);
- Simplify the design by eliminating the superfluous (this is very useful for cognitive handicap situations, for example people with mental disorders);
- Have a responsive WordPress site.
PS: thank you to Marie Guillaumet and Loïc Antignac for their details on ALT, JS and disability situations, which allowed me to expand this article in relation to the conference.
SECURITY
Another important point of a clean SEO strategy is to secure your site. Let us be clear, however: today, under no circumstances does a secure site really improve positioning. This is important on two points:
- Respect for the user (and on potential conversions);
- Avoid hacking that would have a disastrous effect on your SEO and your brand image.
We therefore recommend that you secure your site to ensure stable SEO over the long term. This will prevent you from turning your site results into an adult 'candy' store:
On WordPress, here are some tips to limit the risks:
- Make backups!
- Optimize the Htaccess and wp-config.php files ;
- Have a mastered hosting (PHP up to date, well managed server, etc.);
- An up-to-date CMS (as well as your extensions and your theme);
- Security extensions (SecuPress is excellent);
- Manage users well.
RESPECT FOR THE LAW
9th point too often ignored: the legality of our actions in natural SEO. Be careful here, I am not talking about the rules decreed by Google on the different aspects of SEO, but rather what French and European law allows you. Take a step back from your actions, as it can unfortunately backfire on you. Here are two concrete examples:
- RueDuCommerce was convicted of counterfeiting because their site was positioned on a brand of products that they did not sell.
- The beer flavor site was found guilty of unfair competition by having reserved multiple domain names containing the term "beer" and by having therefore created a network of sites on its theme:
By increasing the reservation of domain names comprising […] the term beer […], Saveur Bière has committed acts of unfair competition by depriving the site belonging to selection-biere.com […] from being normally visited
Remember one thing, just because you can do it doesn't mean you have to. If we take the examples cited in the previous points on automatically generated content, in a large number of cases they are outlawed: translating content, stealing text, retrieving the transcript of a video, all these actions are particularly related to copyright. And we are not even talking about networks of sites without legal notices, without contact form, without compliance with the RGPD or even hiding their purchases of sponsored content.
You should therefore pay attention to the following points:
- Monitor your brand;
- Have a secure site, and of course an HTTPS site ;
- Comply with the GDPR;
- Have unique and easily recognizable content;
In WordPress:
- Have only the extract in the RSS feed
- Disable the REST API as much as possible
"NATURAL" LINKS
Last point to address: popularity. Again, let's be perfectly honest, a strong link is often worth more than good content. They still have a decisive part in Google's algorithm. This is why we sometimes find very low quality content (both for the Internet user and for Google) in the top 10 natural results. The idea here is to avoid low-quality links as much as possible, like here:
Whenever possible, try to create “natural” links: look at your customers, partners or suppliers. Reach bloggers, organize events, make videos, do tutorials, etc. There are many ways to create or foster bonding.
However, it is very rare to have a site that would only have natural links or quality links. Conversely, it is common to find sites that position themselves with combos of link purchases, PBN, spamco, links injected on pirated sites or even cloacking.
However, sometimes all it takes is a good idea to have natural and quality links. Take the excellent example of the Dorcel brand and their “Sans les mains” communication campaign. The problem is twofold in their case: to succeed in getting people to talk about them in a highly regulated industry, and to obtain links from sites whose theme has nothing to do with pornography. The operation is simple: offer free access to their videos, but with one condition, the fact of having to hold down 6 keys on the keyboard (the 6 keys being far enough from each other to need both hands).
And the result is clear when you see the sites that relay the operation (and which for the majority of them make pretty useful links in SEO, while their theme has nothing to do with adult sites) .
We could also cite other operations of the same type with other brands:
- “A hunter shoots a bear” from the Typex brand;
- Mikados without chocolate.
It's up to you to rack your brains to innovate.
PS: on the other hand, we are perfectly aware that depending on your sector of activity, it will be more or less easy to obtain this type of link, or to set up such powerful communication operations.
CAN WE DO 100% CLEAN SEO?
No.
Unfortunately no.
There is no such thing as a 100% clean SEO, any more than there is a 100% “white hat” SEO. Sooner or later, we have to make concessions or technical choices that will weigh on the user, on the search engine, on competitors or even on ecology.
But we can all improve: what we would like in the AIMagnus is for everyone to become aware of the impact of their actions, and to gradually try to change our practices for more ethics and respect. of the user and of our planet.
IN SUMMARY
CLEAN SEO STRATEGY WITH WORDPRESS: 10 TIPS TO APPLY
If we summarize all this, here are some main principles for a less harmful SEO:
1. Do regular crawls
2. Have quality content
3. Hunt unnecessary content
4. A web marketing strategy with real content
5. Know products well
6. Loading time
7. Accessibility
8. security
9. Respect for the law
10. Natural links
Afterwards, keep in mind that these tips can (and should) be adapted and prioritized according to your site, your competitors and your industry. this is what we do in our audit services. Do not hesitate to contact us for a free quote.
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