Expand Your Business in France
Indigoextra Ltd. have been offering French SEO since 2006. Over the years, we have refined our link building strategy to ensure that all links comply with the latest Google guidelines. Our strategy focuses on building relatively few links from relevant, high-authority sites. All content is written by native French speakers educated to degree level or higher, who have previous experience in SEO, translation or copywriting. Our service provides the following benefits:
- Have backlinks generated from relevant high-quality, high-authority websites.
- Appear high in the search results for relevant keyword searches with Google.fr and other French search engines.
- Receive more visitors to your site as a result of this, which in turn increases sales.
High Authority French Links
Google takes a lot of different factors into account when deciding how much value to place on a given link. Links must come from a range of different sources.
The general guideline is to ask yourself:
“If search engines didn't exist, would this link still make sense?”
If you can answer ‘yes’ to this question, then odds are the link will also help with your SEO (i.e., your position in Google’s search results). Link farms and automated link schemes simply don’t work anymore.
When creating links, we focus on quality - creating unique, original content in the form of guest posts, company details for directories, infographics and shareable images. We also use Moz’s Domain Authority as an up-to-date measure of the overall quality of a website. Our standard minimum Domain Authority guarantee is 25 or higher with at least 17 TrustFlow, however if you're looking for only the best sites and have higher metrics still, just let us know and we will put together a personalised proposal for you.
High Traffic Guest Blogging
As well as a DA25+ guarantee for guest posts, we also guarantee that guest posts will be dofollow and on blogs with at least 1,000 visits a month. Not only does this increase the referrals you will get, it is another quality indicator Google uses to determine how valuable each link is.
When doing SEO outreach in France we reject the vast majority of sites, nevertheless we have identified over 2,000 sites that accept guest posts that meet our quality criteria. This enables us to provide relevant, high authority guest posts for all ethical industries.
Link Building Process
We start by completing a detailed keyword analysis to identify the best keywords to target. Each month, we:
- Write unique articles and other content taking these keywords into account. Then we design image shares and infographics and send these to you for approval.
- After any edits, arrange for the content to be published.
- Send you a monthly report of the URL of all published links, the Domain Authority of each site, and your position for target keywords.
Niche Articles - Guest Blogging
One effective SEO strategy is guest blogging - writing interesting articles with unique content and placing them on relevant French websites and blogs. As part of every French link building campaign, one of our fluent French speakers will write educational articles related to the product or service that you offer. We then organise add each article to be added to a relevant French website (where possible, we include images that we have created or sourced for you). Each article will also include a link, either within the article itself or in the ‘About the Author’ section, taking people to your site. Google index these links, which will give your site a boost in the rankings. Plus, you’ll receive direct traffic from the article itself.
Directory Submissions
Since Google Penguin, it’s important to be selective when doing directory submissions, as Google penalise sites with a lot of poor-quality links going to them (this includes spammy directories). Submitting to hundreds of directories means at best that the poor ones will neutralise the benefit of the good ones.
We only submit to the top French directories (based on traffic, Alexa rank and whether the directory is niche to your industry), and we write lengthy, unique descriptions about the unique selling points of your company with each submission. Where allowed, we will also include links to your Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter profiles from the directory, or deep links to internal pages on your site.
Proven SEO Success
We have placed over 100 websites on the first page with Google. Our French link building agency runs campaigns for a range of small, medium and large businesses monthly. Examples of some of the keywords we have helped our clients reach a first-page position for include:
|
Tablette Cartouche Makita |
Station Météo Covoiturage Pays Bas |
Jeux Skate Shoes Gants en Cuir |
Imprimantes d’étiquette Contrôle Parental Gestion des identités |
We carefully track Google’s algorithm updates to ensure that links include a healthy range of keywords and good anchor texts. However, we also understand that link building is not just about counting keywords and checking a site’s domain authority. We ensure that all French content is written by fluent French speakers and is both engaging and well-researched. We have an ever-expanding database of websites and webmasters who we contact so they can place articles and other links on their sites.
Image Shares
As well as writing content, we’ve found it effective to create beautiful infographics, quotagraphics and other image shares and then distribute them on social media and infographic sharing sites. One example of a quotagraphic is shown below. You can also view examples of our:
How to do link building
Since our establishment in 2006, we have gained significant experience in building high-quality links in France and throughout Europe. Our service is tailored to offer an excellent return on investment.
If you are looking for information on how to do link building yourself, then we recommend the following approach:
1. Create something worth linking to
You are the expert in your business. That means you will understand your industry better than an SEO consultant getting to know your company for the first time.
If you have an innovative product or service, start by describing what’s unique about it while focusing on the benefits rather than the features. Write a company blog that is well-researched and offers something unique and truly valuable to your website visitors. This could be an in-depth how-to-guide, insightful content that benefits your customer instead of solely selling your products, or blogs on other relevant topics that help demonstrate your expertise, educate the customer, and differentiate you from your competitors.
2. Do keyword research for France
Keyword research will provide a range of statistics for each word or phrase, but for French SEO, the two most important measurements are:
- The number of monthly searches from France
- The organic competitiveness of each keyword
We measure the organic competitiveness or “SEO Challenge” by taking the average strength of the top 20 domains for any given keyword. This is different from the PPC competitiveness, which measures how many companies are bidding on a particular keyword in Google AdWords.
For well-established sites looking to grow further, targeting high-traffic keywords (monthly searches) and paying little attention to the competition is a valid strategy. For new sites (including established English-language sites that have recently been translated into French), initially excluding keywords that are too competitive will give you the best return on investment. Once you’re ranking well for mid-range keywords, we can then adapt our link building strategy to also target more difficult keywords.
It's worth thinking about two sets of keywords - those you want to rank high for, and those that will make good topics for a blog.
Google will typically only show one page of your site for any given keyword. So, decide which page or two to prioritise per keyword, then ensure that the on-page SEO is strong for this keyword – see details of how to do an on-page SEO audit to achieve this. After optimising a page for a given keyword, focus your incoming links on that same keyword. That way your link building will complement your on-page SEO.
3. Build only French backlinks
This may seem obvious, but the vast majority of French link building you do must come from French websites. If you have a lot of links from English websites (or any other language) going to your French site, it will look odd to Google and won’t help your SEO.
4. Prioritize quality over quantity
Backlinks to your site must be relevant and come from websites with a high domain authority, a healthy amount of traffic, and a good reputation with Google. We use tools to measure the Domain Authority, TrustFlow and Traffic of each site. However, when you’re looking for potential sites to approach for backlinks, a simple way to find quality sites is to search for the kinds of keywords you want to appear, or for the broad topics that your website is about.
For example, if your keyword is, “Montre connectée femme” (“Women’s smartwatch” in English), look for blogs or directories for women, fashion, sport, etc.
Similarly, if a directory has a maximum word count of 250 words, write 230-250 words to describe your company. This way you’re taking advantage of the available opportunity.
5. Focus on guest blogging
Guest blogging is a fantastic way to get backlinks to your site.
Write at least 500 words (ideally more) of engaging, informative content and include a link from it to your site. Create or buy an image to go with it, then contact relevant webmasters or blog owners and ask them if they’ll add it to their site.
This is a way of building highly relevant links with just one or two other links on the page from in-depth content on high authority sites. Google value this kind of link more than less relevant links.
6. Build a wide variety of links
That said, Google also look for a natural link building pattern. Our experience is that if you focus 100% on guest blogging, then you don’t get the same benefit you would if you also built some links from social media, directories, infographic sites, etc.
Do a search on Google.fr for your most important keywords. See what sites appear - if you can add your link to any of those pages, do it! Regardless of whether it’s a Facebook page, a directory, a blog, an advert - just go for it!
It’s also important to vary the anchor texts, and not use keywords exclusively.
7. Grab yourself a cup of tea
Most keywords with a high monthly search volume also have high competition. It takes time to move up the rankings and appear on the first page with Google. As you start to rank for some of the easier keywords, you can then move on to more competitive keywords with higher search volumes.
Keep in mind that link building is an ongoing process. With patience, and by following the steps above, you should see traffic to your site steadily increasing - both from Google and from visitors clicking the links. Bon chance!
View details of our other French SEO services, or contact us for a free link building quote.
