More and more, companies are becoming aware of the crucial importance of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which can be defined as the process of improving the visibility of a website on search engines via « natural » search results in contrary to Search Engine Marketing (SEM). The purpose of this article is to give a quick overview of the SEO process. Indeed, the fact is that SEO can be divided into three main logical steps: web audit, on-site and off-site SEO.

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As said, Rand Fishkin is certainly my favourite author. His added-value analysis are always worth to look at, especially when tackling rankings factors. In this insights-full presentation, he analyzed briefly the evolution Google’s Rankings Factors in a time-span of 10 years. Basically, the history of Google’s Rankings Factors is also the history of Google’s fight against spam, insidious SEO techniques.

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I consider Rand Fishkin has a sort of “SEO rockstar”. CEO & Co-Founder of the SEO consultancy SEOmoz, well-known for its comprehensive insights, analysis and services, he somehow masters the art of SEO. A year ago, he gave a presentation about the 10 actual problems SEO consultants are facing. This detailed presentation tackles such matters as crawling, indexing and rankings issues from a technical point of view. Always worth to look at!
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While SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is definitely a complex task, BloggingPro published recently an infographic explaining its different techniques: infrastructure, keywords and backlinks. As a webmaster, I strongly invite you to download it, print it in high definition and eventually post it on your wall to have always your eyes on it when looking at a website.

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Optimizing a website in Brussels a is quite complex task. Indeed, while ranking for keywords may be less difficult than in the UK for example, a SEO expert has to take into account the fragmented nature of the Belgium web mainly due to the coexistence of at least four different languages: French, Flemish, English and German. Believe me, that’s a lot for such a small country!

The situation in Belgium

Indeed, one has to remember that there are three official languages: French, Flemish and German (although the latter one is only spoken by a tiny minority). What makes things more complicated is that Brussels, the capital of Belgium, is also the capital of the European Union. Hence, the three main institutions of the EU – the Council of the European Union, the European Commission and European Parliament – are located in Brussels. The “EU quarter” is also surrounded by thousands of interest groups trying to influence to the decision-making process. Needless to say that the predominant language in this European’s affairs small world is English.

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Greenlight, a UK-based SEO and PPC consulting firm, recently published an interesting article about the history and evolution of SEO.

Briefly, we can say that there are 5 major steps in terms of SEO.

1. SEO began with search engine submission in the early days due to the fact that search engines had limited crawling capabilities.
2. Then, it turned into on-page SEO, meaning the art of ensuring a website is technically accessible to search engines and relevant to the targeted keywords.
3. Since Google – which quickly became the major search engine from 2000 – introduced its notion of PageRank, the acquisition of quality back links the dominant factor in the early years of the decade.
4. In order to face link spam, Google algorithm began to take into account contextual information of a backlink and especially its  anchor text.
5. In the same logic, the notion of TrustRank appears meaning that the more a backlink comes from a trusted sources  the more it is valuable. Domain authority mainly came from the age of the domain name.
6. Link context became more and more important mainly because link exchanges. Google started to consider that the placement of links on a page and, more importantly, the context of the page and the site the link is on is of utmost importance .
7. Additionnaly, user signals – such as click through rates, bounce rates and search patterns – became to be taken into account by search engines to assess the level of trust search engines have in a site.
8. Finally, major search engines – among which Google is the more advanced – decided to include multimedia and real-time content to match better user’s needs.

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A couple of weeks ago, Matt Cutts and his team did an SEO web audit session at Google I/O 2010 consisting into a technical review of different websites from a SEO point of view. It is worth to look at:
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For those being not herborists, taraxacum is a genus of plants in the family Asteraceae. A number of species of Taraxacum are regarded as seed dispersed weeds. After pollination is finished, the dandelion flower dries out  and then the seed-bearing parachutes expand and lift out of the dried flower head.

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Today, Friday 28 May 28, I participated at a TechTalk organized by Google Belgium featuring Matt Cutts. I must confess that – as a SEO consultant – I felt like a child before meeting Father Christmas. Gregory Janssens –  another Brussels-based SEO expert, as well as other professionals, both from the private sector – SEO agencies, media, etc.. – and from the public sector – the European institutions in particular – were also present.

I will not comment on the content of this conference, where I didn’t learn so much about SEO.  I would rather concentrate on aspects a bit more anecdotal, such as Google offices in Brussels or meeting with Matt Cutts.

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On which criteria choosing an SEO Consultant? Outsourcing this strategic aspect of your eMarketing can bring very good results under the condition that you manage to build an effective relationship between your IT department and the choosen SEO consultant.

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