Are SEO and eco-design compatible? The case of the RATP Groupe website redesign by hyffen

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Is it possible to combine SEO requirements with digital sobriety? Answer with Mathieu Barascou, CEO and founder of SEO agency hyffen, responsible for the SEO overhaul of the RATP corporate website.

The RATP group has launched a new eco-designed website in line with its CSR policy and digital sobriety program. The aim is to limit its carbon footprint by reducing CO2 emissions, while improving content accessibility. A mission entrusted to hyffen, an SEO strategy consulting agency. Interview with hyffen.

What was your mission?

In July 2022, the RATP Group entrusted us with the task of redesigning its corporate website. Our SEO consulting agency was asked to implement a strategy aimed at improving the site's visibility in Google results, with an eco-designed site. The group's missions are multiple, so each persona had to be included in the strategy. Media, future recruits, île de France Mobilité, partners, staff (65,000 employees)...

What were the priority projects?

The main constraint was the number of pages. To increase SEO performance, we tend to assume that 1 query = 1 page. This has the effect of multiplying the number of pages. We had to divide the number of pages by 5 (500 vs. 100 pages) while targeting more keywords to increase traffic. We had to group our content together as much as possible as soon as search intentions were close, develop our content to go after the long tail around the target subject and therefore position ourselves on more keywords.

How can you target more keywords with less content?

We carried out a semantic study to identify web users' searches on all the subjects that are important to the RATP Group (HR, CSR, employer brand...). We also mapped all the content: inactive pages (which don't generate SEO traffic), content that can be merged, duplicate content... We then worked hard on the structure to keep only the essential elements. This was the first big project, and the most challenging. A real challenge.

We also worked on all long-tail* declinations in the same content for the same search intent. By supplementing existing content with paragraphs, for example. To limit weight, we had to activate various levers, such as internal and external link anchors.

Images, videos, fonts... everything matters. Is the devil in the details?

For images and videos, beyond the fact that we have favored certain formats (SVG, PNG...) we have established a sort of importance scoring for each file. Even if the file doesn't weigh much, it's still an additional file.

Thinking about fonts is also strategic. Google defines a crawl budget (time spent on a site) for each site. This is to ensure that loading performance, and consequently visitor browsing quality, are not affected. Google recommends certain fonts. Using fonts that are not recognized by Google can impact the crawl budget, in the sense that robots have to spend more time on them than on other fonts. Even if the RATP Group site benefits from a larger crawl budget than other sites, due to its notoriety and strategic role, monopolizing part of the time allocated to fonts was not an option. This is just one example of how SEO can have an impact on eco-design.

So SEO and digital sobriety are compatible?

It's a virtuous circle. Digital sobriety means limiting energy-intensive content, but not only: optimizing loading time, reducing the load on servers, optimizing and simplifying user paths and experience, non-automatic videos... All these elements promote eco-design and SEO, but also eco-design. It's a win-win situation.

Our approach was to focus only on what we needed. For each element, we had to constantly calculate the risks. What is the risk in terms of SEO if I remove this feature to align with eco-design? What alternative lever could I activate if I gave it up? It's a succession of choices and trade-offs, really. SEO isn't an exact science. From one site to another, the weighting of criteria changes for Google. So we spent a lot of time analyzing each query and assessing the weighting of each criterion.

Does this type of project force you to be more creative?

Yes, making choices means giving up. Which is very hard in SEO, since our challenge was to position the site in pole position on certain keywords. There's always the fear of not doing enough. It was this uncertainty that we were asked to master. What's more, there were a lot of stakeholders involved in this project (development agency, UX, communications, etc.). They all relied on our expertise to make the best choices. There was no room for error, and we had to justify our choices. Even though we had already managed site redesign projects and had acquired a certain know-how, it was a big challenge for the team to step up our skills.

Did you also have a responsive design challenge?

For a long time, we created desktop versions of our sites, and then adapted them for responsive use. Today, the first mock-ups are mobile, and we adapt the desktop version. This is a plus for eco-design. On mobile, we often pay attention to the volume of content to lighten pages and limit scrolling. In the end, this forces us to start with a streamlined version. The aim then is to add as few elements as possible. Ultimately, it's part of this effort to reduce the amount of useless content on a page. We go for the essentials.

Does Google award a "bonus" to eco-designed sites?

There's no communication about it. It's not a ranking or positioning criterion. But beyond the fact that it's clearly already a social issue, eco-design and the associated constraints have had a positive impact on SEO. For example, if we hadn't been pursuing a logic of digital sobriety, we wouldn't have worked so hard on the number of pages criterion, and we wouldn't have deleted so much content. Nor would we have taken several weeks to work on our JavaScript and limit calls to external resources. It may not be a ranking criterion for Google, but eco-design has forced us to activate certain levers that ultimately pay off for SEO.

Does eco-design increase team commitment?

This is as true for the RATP team as it is for hyffen. RATP succeeded in creating a very close-knit team, very concerned by the challenge and not afraid of constraints. The success is also due to the cohesion of all the teams involved in the project. It's a project that makes sense. While everyone takes action on a daily basis at their own level (waste, energy efficiency, limiting travel, etc.), a project like this enables teams to contribute on a much larger scale.

RATP's new corporate website has been online since July 2023. Mission accomplished?

We have managed to achieve an EcoIndex B score on every page of the ratpgroup.com website. We are on a trend of + 110% SEO traffic over three consecutive months since the redesign. In addition, we have +75% of keywords positioned in the top 50 (before vs. after the redesign), i.e. +2K keywords positioned). Finally, 100% of Core Webs Vitals validated (the essential KPIs for an optimal user experience). So yes, mission accomplished for the hyffen team!

*Long tail SEO is a technique that consists of ranking on search engines on multiple very specific terms consisting of 3 words or more.

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