The tech giant Google stopped by Montpellier to talk about SEO (search engine optimisation), and Digital Campus welcomed Vincent Courson on Wednesday 10 October for this exceptional event. That same day, the school also hosted Nicolas Jardillier, a specialist in website tracking and web analytics data. Over 200 people attended!

7 events in 7 different cities in just 10 days — that was the schedule of Vincent Courson (Search Outreach Specialist at Google) between 9 and 18 October. He visited 7 French cities: Bordeaux, Montpellier, Nancy, Lille, Caen, Angers and Nantes to discuss natural referencing on the Google search engine.

The conference was split into two parts: first, a presentation of SEO news by Vincent Courson, and second, a session on managing and optimising your online business by Nicolas Jardillier (digital performance consultant).

During his presentation to our students in the Bachelor Web and Mastère programmes, Vincent Courson discussed the concept of mobile-first indexing. Given that over 50% of browsing now takes place on mobile, Google will henceforth prioritise the mobile version of a web page over its desktop version. This parameter boosts mobile crawl — the process by which Google explores web content for indexing purposes.

He then covered the 'Speed Update', which incorporates page loading performance into Google's algorithm. Since July 2018, loading speed has been a mobile ranking factor, not just a desktop one.

Nicolas Jardillier (consultant specialising in website tracking and web analytics data) then took the floor to share his tips for optimising an online business: it is important to distinguish between a physical store and an online store, as conversion rates are completely different — 10 to 30% in a physical store versus only 2 to 3% online. You therefore need to know how to manage your website, meaning setting measurable objectives such as the number of newsletter sign-ups. Nicolas Jardillier also emphasised the importance of analysing user attention when browsing a web page, as attention spans are increasingly short. It is therefore essential to adopt language suited to the user and to make regular updates.