How to Improve My Google Ranking: The SEO Checklist to Follow in 2020

Often when we talk about SEO, we focus on one part: the content or the container.

However, the proper execution of both parts is essential to achieve the goals you set for yourself and propel your pages into the top results of Google.

What is content?

Content is the text, images, videos, and other components that you will add to your website.

Most SEO strategies focus on this very important point. But hours and hours of work on optimizing content will lead to nothing if the container is not optimized.

What is the container?

The container is your website (or online store).

As we discuss in the article “SEO: Be in the Top Google Results with Panierdachat” and on many pages of our site, the structure of a site is crucial to establish a good SEO strategy, and Panierdachat stores are fully optimized for this.

Understanding SEO with a table

The table from Search Engine Land translated by the Panierdachat team for more clarity for French-speaking businesses and artisans (click to view it full size).

Download the SEO Periodic Table 2019 (.pdf)

Recently, the site Search Engine Land unveiled its famous periodic table of SEO factors for 2019. Downloaded over 100,000 times in more than 74 countries, this table, inspired by the periodic table of elements, seen in our Chemistry classes, is the ideal tool for agencies to explain SEO to companies clearly and playfully.

Let’s go through the different columns so you can understand what YOU need to do and what is entirely managed by your Panierdachat platform .

Understand the Content column and know how to optimize it

Now that you know what the content of a website represents, we will explain to you, based on the table above, how to optimize it.

Content optimization happens in 2 phases:

Research

First, to create relevant and optimized content for search engines, you need to know your visitors/potential customers to understand their vocabulary and search keywords when they want to find products or services related to your business.

For research, Ubersuggest or Google Ads Keyword Planner are very good free tools. To find out the questions that users ask about your business, the site AnswerThePublic is very intuitive and easy to use.

Creation / Writing

Once your list of keywords to use and topics to cover is defined, you can start creating content.

Number 1 piece of advice: write quality pages. The better a page is written and interesting, the more users will take the time to read it and even want to discover more on your site. Create a story for your products, make users dream, provide all the information they would like to have… differentiate yourself by remaining relevant and clear.
The average time spent on a page and the average number of pages viewed (or bounce) have always been important criteria for Google ranking.

Use keywords in your content, do it in a relevant way; a list of meaningless keywords will bring you nothing and goes against the point above.

Also, use image, video, and even audio content. In 2019, users like this kind of content and it helps keep them on your site longer. Moreover, images can be well-referenced on Google and help improve your overall ranking.

Understand the Architecture column and know how to optimize it

The architecture of the site represents the container. It is managed by your web developer (or agency) if you have a custom site. With Panierdachat, the architecture of the stores is fully optimized, you don’t have to do anything.

Cr: A clean and clear site map is sent to Google when your store opens.

Mo: Stores are optimized to be read on all types of

screens optimally.

Dd: Your product pages will always have a single URL, even if they appear in multiple categories, for example.

Sp: The content of the pages adapts to devices to load as quickly as possible.

Ps: All Panierdachat stores benefit from a free SSL certificate that secures connections and reassures visitors (padlock logo and https link).

Ur: The URL of the pages = Name of the pages, remember to use your keywords in the title of your pages.

Understand the HTML column and know how to optimize it

The HTML column is a collaborative effort between the options that the architecture allows you and the content you will add.

First, in addition to the title of your pages, you must provide a more “marketing” and more enticing “Title tag” that will be displayed on search engines. The same goes for the meta-description. Panierdachat allows you to customize these two invisible SEO pieces of information on your store.

The titles of your pages are automatically placed in H1 tags. Also, remember to add one (or more) H2 tags in the description/content of your page.

All page content is schematized to be perfectly understood by search engines. For example, for a product page, Google can reference the page as a product with a title, a description, a price, dimensions, etc.

Panierdachat uses a solution to improve the speed of loading images on mobile and is working to add this 2019 novelty (AMP format) to continue improving them.

Understand the Trust column and know how to optimize it

The trust that Google and search engines will give to your site is gained in several ways.

The more your site is talked about and used as a reference, the more Google will trust you and understand the importance of your website. To improve this, go collect links on the sites of your partners, suppliers, or even competitors.
This trust can be represented by domain authority established by Moz. To know, Panierdachat stores, if they wish, benefit for free from a subdomain mywww.panierdachat.com with a very good score of 38.

As explained at the very beginning, there is nothing more relevant than the average time visitors spend on your site to calculate the relevance of your website. Think carefully about your content strategies.

Understand the Links column and know how to optimize it

This column focuses on the first point of the previous column: inbound links (backlinks).

Increasing the number of links pointing to a page on your site will increase your site’s reputation in the eyes of search engines. But beware, not all links are equal.

A link added to a site with high domain authority and relevant, high-quality content will have much more value than a site with low authority, little visited, and whose subject/activity has nothing to do with your website.

The more the link is clicked on the site, the more Google will consider this link as relevant and therefore of high quality.

Understand the User column and know how to optimize it

Nothing is better than knowing your visitors to improve their experience and ultimately your SEO.

With tools like Google Analytics, you can easily see where your visitors come from.
Your site attracts many Americans, but you have few sales from the United States? Perhaps adding the USD currency and English language will help keep these visitors and turn them into customers.

Panierdachat stores have the ability to add English and several currencies in a fully optimized way for Google. Reduce your bounce rate by offering your visitors a site adapted to them.

With a clear, intuitive, and beautiful online store, your visitors will appreciate navigating your different pages and categories. Consider creating a clear menu bar and homepage to facilitate navigation so that your visitors can easily find what they came for.

The more clicks a visitor needs to reach their goal, the more likely they are to abandon it.

Also, with Google Analytics, analyze the number of new visitors and especially returning ones. A returning visitor is a satisfied visitor.

A product page is visited a lot, but the product is not often purchased? Try to understand what is hindering sales, lack of information, poor-quality photos… Take inspiration from the pages of your best sellers.

With Google Search Console, analyze the keywords searched by your visitors to improve your offer according to the results.
You sell red, green, and black scarves, but you see that many searches are for “buy gray scarf,” why not launch this color in your next collection.

Some concluding words

As you can see, the distribution of tasks to optimize your site for search engines, Content / Container, is about 60%-40%.

With an e-commerce site created with the Panierdachat platform, you benefit from 40% of the work done from the start to be in the top Google results. It’s up to you to do the remaining 60% of the work by following this table for top-notch SEO!