The Agent: definition and SEO perspectives

Through our SEO Agency Optimize 360

In the world of online search, understanding the workings of natural referencing is essential if you want to increase your visibility and optimise your communications.

The term "agent" takes on a special meaning in this context, and analysing it will help you refine your search engine positioning marketing strategies, such as Google.

This article provides a full definition of the agent and its implications in the field of SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

What is an agent?

Originally, the word "agent" has its roots in the Latin "agens", meaning "one who acts". This noun covers several dimensions:

The concept of action
The force that sets a phenomenon in motion
Any process
A cause

A contemporary variant of this multidisciplinary concept, the definition of agent in the SEO world concerns two main aspects: user agents and indexing robots.

User agents, online search vectors

The user agent is client softwareA browser-based application, generally integrated into the web browser, which interacts with servers and other devices to enable Internet users to consult online resources. Characteristics differ according to the technology used and user preferences. Here are some examples of user agents:

Web browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge
E-mail clients: Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird
Media players: VLC Media Player, Windows Media Player
IT repositories: Aptitude, Yum

The mobile market and compliance with best practice

With the growth of the mobile market, mastering the rules of ergonomics and complying with the standards recommended by the W3C have become essential if you want a site that is optimised for all media.

Some solutions offer a precise view of the specific characteristics of the user agent in question, such as the technologies used, the definitions or browser versions.

This information is used to improve your adaptive content (responsive design) and your performance on search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo.

Indexing robots, the key to SEO positioning

Better known as crawlers, spiders or botsIndexing robots are computer programmes that systematically crawl web pages following hypertext links. Their main purpose is to browse, analyse and index online documents, enabling a search engine to provide relevant results based on the queries made by Internet users.

How an indexing robot works

The exploration and indexing process involves several stages:

1. Content retrieval the crawler accesses all the URLS of a web page, in particular the meta tags, titles and main text.
2. Element analysis It locates relevant keywords, identifies new pages and checks the quality of links.
3. Updating the index The data collected is then integrated into the search engine index to help classify pages and determine their ranking according to various criteria such as relevance or popularity.

Optimising your site for indexing robots

To ensure that your pages are accessible to crawlers, you need to follow a few good practices:

- Suggest a file sitemap.xml file which lists all the URL relevant to your site
- Avoiding duplicate content and navigation errors
- Optimise site performance by reducing loading times
- Caring for meta tagstitles and descriptions to facilitate content analysis by robots

By following these recommendations, you will improve your chances of obtaining a good SEO positioning and therefore greater visibility for your website.

The agent as a whole: synergies and complementarity

Understand the dual role of the agent on the user side and on the indexing robot provides a comprehensive approach to SEO.

So not only do we need to take into account the ergonomic and technical requirements of user agents in order to offer the best possible service, we also need to take into account the needs of our customers. user experience possible, but also to optimise the site's structure and content to make it easier for the crawlers, which are responsible for ensuring that it is properly indexed by the search engines, to crawl.

As an integral part of online communication marketing strategies, mastering and optimising the agent are invaluable levers for establishing your presence on the Internet and reaching your targets more effectively, whatever their viewing media.