58 practical guides
Guides for a website that gets found, and pays its way
Straight answers to the questions small business owners and online shops ask: getting found, selling, measuring. Backed by Google’s documentation, public sources and measurements from our own sites.
Where to start
Profitability
Make your website pay
Online shop or service business: the 7 levers that make a website pay, in the order we apply them on our own sites.
Case study
What our own sites taught us
What we measured running 37 sites (shops, PDF guides, quotes): mass publishing, pruning, Bing, AI, the buying journey.
Conversion
61 %
of measured visits happen on mobile
Conversion rate
How to calculate a website’s conversion rate (formula and example), why averages mislead, and the levers that raise it, for shops and service sites.
5 min
70.22 %
average cart abandonment rate
Abandoned cart
Why 70% of carts are abandoned, the causes to remove, and how to follow up an abandoned cart once, usefully and by the rules.
4 min
61 %
of measured visits happen on mobile
Sales funnel
A small business sales funnel, for shops and service sites: the stages that matter, a real example, what loses customers and how to measure it all.
5 min
12 %
cannot see the total cost up front
Trust signals
Ecommerce trust signals that make people buy: delivery, returns, payment, proof. Where to place them, how to word them, what never to show.
4 min
5,400
monthly searches for “avis vérifiés” (verified reviews)
Customer reviews in e-commerce
Customer reviews for an online shop: how to get and display them, what French law requires (verified reviews, mandatory notices) and what it punishes.
5 min
45 %
with no H1 saying what the business sells
Landing pages that convert
A landing page or sales page that converts: the structure block by block, the copy, the proof, the form and the mistakes to avoid.
4 min
5,400
monthly searches for “heatmap” in France
A/B testing and heatmaps
A/B testing for small businesses: what it measures, the traffic you need to conclude, heatmaps, and what to fix before you run a test.
4 min
1,600
monthly searches for “call to action” in France
Call to action (CTA)
Call to action examples and rules: how to write a CTA that gets clicks, where to place it, how many to use, for tradespeople, practices and shops.
4 min
1,000
monthly searches for “proposition de valeur” (value proposition) in France
Value proposition
How to write your business’s value proposition: what it must say, a 5-step method, examples by trade and where to put it on your website.
4 min
390
searches for “site vitrine prix” (brochure website price)
Small business website
Small business (brochure) website: what it is, what drives its cost, the pages that bring calls and quote requests, common errors and how to get found.
5 min
E-commerce
€196.4 billion
e-commerce revenue in France in 2025
E-commerce SEO
SEO for an online shop, step by step: searches that buy, category pages, product pages, technical base, free Shopping listings and AI.
6 min
5,000 characters
maximum length of a description
Google Merchant Center
Create your Merchant Center account, send a clean feed, avoid suspension and appear for free in Shopping, Images and Lens: the method.
5 min
7
basic required attributes in the feed
Free Google Shopping
Free Google Shopping listings: where they appear, how to get in within a day, what makes them get clicked, and when to move to paid ads.
5 min
40 %
of shoppers abandon because of extra costs
Product page that sells
How to write a product page that ranks and sells: title, first sentence, photos, specifications, proof, price and FAQ, with a complete example.
6 min
26 %
lighter than PNG, lossless
Product photos
Product photos for an online shop: which shots to take, background, framing, WebP format, file size, alt text, and what never to publish.
5 min
38
products in European stock tested
Profitable dropshipping
Is dropshipping legal and profitable in France? Real margin, choosing a supplier, seller obligations, and what our own test showed.
4 min
60
characters recommended for the page title
Shopify SEO
Shopify SEO: titles and descriptions, URLs, redirects, sitemap, robots.txt, hidden pages, structured data and speed, step by step.
5 min
2.5 s
threshold for a good LCP
PrestaShop SEO
PrestaShop SEO for your shop: friendly URLs, canonical URLs, the product SEO tab, redirects for offline products, robots.txt and speed.
4 min
Acquisition
39 %
of sites with no tappable phone or WhatsApp
A website that brings enquiries
Lead generation for tradespeople, practices and small businesses: service pages, a short form, a tappable phone number, proof and measurement.
5 min
320
searches for “référencement payant” (paid search)
SEO vs paid search
SEO or paid search: the difference between organic and paid, what each channel costs, when Google Ads pays off, and how to combine the two.
5 min
47 %
via Google
Bing Webmaster Tools
Set up Bing Webmaster Tools, import from Google Search Console, submit pages with IndexNow, and why Bing matters more than you think.
4 min
47 %
of visible impressions on those same queries
Long tail
Long-tail keywords: long, precise searches convert better and are won faster. How to find them, group them and answer them without mass-produced pages.
4 min
135,000
monthly searches for “google ads” in France
Google Ads for small businesses
Google Ads for a small business: auctions and cost per click, estimating your budget before you pay, a first campaign, negative keywords, profitability.
5 min
0 to 100
scale of the Google Trends index
Google Trends
Google Trends for a small business: read the 0 to 100 index, compare words, spot your trade’s season and find rising topics worth a page.
5 min
1,900
monthly searches for “backlink” in France
Backlinks and link building
Backlinks and link building: what links do for Google, what its spam policies forbid, and how a small business earns links the right way.
5 min
1,300
monthly searches for “eeat” in France
E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trust): Google’s definitions, its real role in ranking, YMYL topics and what to do about it.
5 min
Technical
590
monthly searches for “maillage interne” (internal linking) in France
Internal linking
Internal linking that helps Google find your pages and takes visitors through to the sale: the 3-click rule, anchor text, categories, mistakes to avoid.
5 min
50,000
pixels minimum recommended per product image
Structured data
Structured data and rich results (rich snippets): Product, Offer, returns, shipping, LocalBusiness, JSON-LD examples and testing.
5 min
0.1
CLS: visual stability
Website speed
Test your website speed with PageSpeed Insights, understand Core Web Vitals (LCP 2.5 s, INP 200 ms) and fix what slows you down first.
5 min
50,000 URLs or 50 MB
maximum size of one sitemap file
XML sitemap
XML sitemap for a shop or service site: format, an honest lastmod, splitting by page type, submitting to Google and Bing, mistakes to avoid.
5 min
98
Google impressions per day after
Pruning your site: 410 or 301
Zombie pages: which to keep, merge with a 301 or remove with a 410, and what removing 8,000 pages really changed on one of our sites.
5 min
390
monthly searches for “hreflang” in France
International SEO
Selling abroad from your website: URL structure, error-free hreflang tags, translation, local currencies and prices, and the traps to avoid.
5 min
90
monthly searches for “cannibalisation seo” in France
Keyword cannibalisation
When several pages of your site compete for the same search: how to see it in Search Console, and when to merge, differentiate or remove.
4 min
Pricing
3 months
minimum term
SEO pricing
What SEO costs: what drives the price, how it compares with paid clicks, and how to judge a quote. Our price: €499 excl. VAT a month.
4 min
720
monthly searches for “prix psychologique” (psychological pricing)
Psychological pricing
Prices ending in 9, the left-digit effect, number of options, bundles and anchoring: what research measured and how to apply it to an online shop.
4 min
30 days
reference period before the sale
Struck-through price: the rules
In France, a struck-through price must be the lowest price of the 30 days before the sale: the rule, examples, successive reductions and penalties.
4 min
3.20 billion
online transactions in France in 2025
Upsell, cross-sell and bundles
Upsell, cross-sell and bundles: the difference, where to place each extra offer, and how to raise your average order value without slowing the sale.
4 min
€499 excl. VAT
FindMyCompany SEO Max, per month
SEO consultant
What an SEO consultant does, what drives their rates, the questions Google says to ask, the warning signs, and the alternatives for a small business.
5 min
Measurement
2.0
break-even ROAS in our example
ROAS
How to calculate ROAS (formula and example), what a good ROAS is given your margin, and why ROAS, ROI and customer acquisition cost are not the same.
4 min
70.22 %
average cart abandonment rate
E-commerce KPIs
E-commerce KPIs to track every month: the formula, where to read each one (Search Console, GA4, payments) and what to do when one of them slips.
4 min
14
ecommerce events documented by Google
GA4 e-commerce
Set up ecommerce tracking in Google Analytics 4: the recommended events, purchases without duplicates, consent mode and the French CNIL rules.
4 min
37
Search Console properties tracked on our sites
Google Search Console
Google Search Console step by step: add and verify your site, read clicks, impressions and position, fix indexing, and what to check every month.
6 min
1 − engagement
bounce rate = 100% − engagement rate
Bounce rate and engagement rate
Bounce rate in GA4: the exact definition, how it relates to engagement rate, why there is no universal good bounce rate, and how to lower it.
5 min
Google Maps
27
reviews per listing (median)
Local SEO
Local SEO: Google’s 3 ranking factors (relevance, distance, prominence), a 30-day plan, and what 4,631 Google Maps listings in 7 French cities show.
4 min
9
photos per listing (median)
Google Business Profile
Create or claim your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business), verify it, complete it and link it to your site. 4,631 listings studied.
4 min
4.64/5
average listing rating
Get more Google reviews
How to get Google reviews with a direct link, reply to negative reviews, and report and remove a fake one. With 4,631 Google Maps listings surveyed.
6 min
AI
80 %
have no llms.txt file
Get cited by ChatGPT and AI
Generative engine optimization (GEO) for small businesses: how ChatGPT and AI pick their sources, what to fix, and 2,747 sites reviewed.
4 min
260
monthly searches for “chatgpt shopping”
ChatGPT Shopping
How ChatGPT chooses the products it shows, what OpenAI asks of merchants, and the settings to make on your shop so it gets recommended.
5 min
2,900
monthly searches for “ai overview” in France
Google AI Overviews and AI Mode
AI Overviews and Google AI Mode: how they choose their sources, what it takes to appear, what is useless, and how to measure it.
6 min
Diagnosis
18 %
publish no sitemap
Why my website is not showing on Google
Site missing from Google? Indexing, robots.txt, noindex, new site, relevance: the diagnosis in order, with the errors found on 2,747 sites.
6 min
3
sites that came back after merging pages with 301s
Google traffic drop
Traffic down after a Google core update? The checks in order, what Google says, what worked on our own sites, and the mistakes to avoid.
6 min
Tool
71
median score out of 100
Free SEO audit
A free SEO audit of your website in 30 seconds: what it sees, the 20 checks explained, what to fix first. Results from 2,747 sites analysed.
5 min
Tradespeople
49 %
with no enquiry form
Tradesperson website
Building a tradesperson’s website: pages per service and area, photos, tap-to-call number, quotes, and the mistakes of 833 French building sites.
4 min
Profitability
61 %
of visits happen on mobile
Make your website pay
Online shop or service business: the 7 levers that make a website pay, in the order we apply them on our own sites.
6 min
Case study
479,265
Google impressions in 90 days
What our own sites taught us
What we measured running 37 sites (shops, PDF guides, quotes): mass publishing, pruning, Bing, AI, the buying journey.
6 min
Payments
3.15% + €0.25
international card
Stripe fees
Stripe fees for a French account card by card, worked examples on baskets from €9 to €89, hidden costs to watch and how it compares with PayPal.
4 min
Payment
9 %
for lack of enough payment methods
One-click checkout
Go from button to payment in one click with Stripe Checkout or a payment link, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Link: the method we use on our own sites.
4 min
Digital products
14 calendar days
standard right of withdrawal period in France
Sell PDFs online
Sell PDFs online: pick the topic, set the price, take payment with Stripe, deliver instantly and follow EU withdrawal rules. Our guide sites’ method.
5 min
Free audit
And your website: what does Google see?
The same check as on this page, run on your website, in 30 seconds. Free.
Free30 secondsno commitment