Learning about web optimization is worth it because of its importance to your site’s success. It will not only help your website rank high in search engines but will also make your site fulfill its primary purpose and drive conversions.
In the following part of this post, we will be showing you what web page optimization is and how to achieve it. So, if you have been thinking of how to give your website that extra push it needs to produce the best results, this will be a helpful guide for you.
Website optimization is the process of improving your website performance by using certain tools, strategies, and experiments. A well-optimized website will drive more traffic, increase conversions, and grow revenue.
One critical aspect of website optimization is search engine optimization (SEO). This is a technique designed to help various pages of your website rank high in SERPs for specific keywords. It also makes it easier for prospects to find your brand online, hence giving you an edge over the competition.
Another important aspect of website optimization is on-page optimization. This refers to strategies put in place to make sure users get the best experience on your site, and so are encouraged to take desired actions and convert into leads.
All these make website optimization an effective tool that can help your website tap into an untapped market in the most efficient way. It helps boost conversions and revenue gains without you having to jump on the calls for advertisements.
There are several reasons you should consider optimizing your website. Here are some of them.
Any company or Small business can use GMB, even if you don’t operate a storefront. Examples of entities that can list on Google my business includes:
Even if your business doesn’t have a physical address, you can still list it on Google my business to allow people to find you.
The average business spends about 1% of its total revenue on advertising. That means if your business makes $1 million in a year, $10,000 will likely be going into advertising. This can even be more if your business is in the retail industry because you need to spend more on ads to drive conversion.
But you can get good organic traffic with SEO when your website is well optimized. That is arguably a much cheaper and long-term traffic source than pay-per-click.
Get your site’s SEO optimization right, and Google will favor your website by ranking it high on SERPs.
It’s not enough to get huge traffic to your website. If your content is not appealing to potential customers, nobody will convert. With a well-optimized website, you can be sure your visitors will be more successful with their visits to your site.
Every visitor is on your website for a particular reason. This may be to get answers to their questions, find a solution to their problem, or complete a task in one way. Having a well-optimized site will make it easier for these people to accomplish those tasks.
While anyone can build a website, not everyone knows how to create a website that reliably converts. You want your audience to convert at much higher rates and increase revenue. That is why you need to make sure your site is well optimized. Website optimization will help your visitors quickly find what they need, and will be glad your brand is offering that help.
Isn’t that an excellent way of building brand loyalty?
Customers can post ratings, reviews, and photographs on your Google My Business listing. Consider it a more personalized and current version of Yelp.
This is beneficial since satisfied customers can tell others about their positive experiences. However, angry and dissatisfied customers can also drop negative reviews about their experience.
Now that you know that website optimization is good for your site, then you should know how to get it done. There are several different approaches to improving a website. Here are some important ones.
With more and more people accessing the internet through their mobile devices, it is no longer enough to make your website look great on desktop computers. You also need to focus on your site’s mobile experience to succeed in the online marketplace.
Google is now literarily indexing and ranking mobile pages first. That means if your website is mobile-friendly, you will have a better chance of ranking high for relevant search terms.
So the first thing to do is to test how mobile-friendly your site is – by running a basic mobile usability test. A good example is the Google Mobile-Friendly Test.
Conduct the test and correct any issues that pop up. Also, test to be sure your website adapts to different screen sizes.
Some more things you might want to consider to make your website mobile-friendly are:
No one likes to sit around a website that takes forever to load. A 5 second load time can result in about 38% bounce rate. The longer a site loads the higher the chances of having the visitor hit the back button every time on the site.
Apart from having a huge impact on user experience, page speed is also one of the ranking factors Google uses in ranking a page. The load speed of your website has a direct impact on your SEO. Fortunately, there are tools you can use to gain insight into how fast the pages of your website load. Good examples are Google Pagespeed Insight and Pingdom Website Speed Test.
Some of these tools will also suggest ways to improve it. However, some common issues that cause websites to slow down are:
Many years ago, it was easy to just pick a keyword from anywhere, write a 250-word article on it, and rank for it the next day. SEO has evolved in recent years – things no longer work like before. Thorough keyword research is now needed for any successful SEO tactic.
So, to properly optimize your site to improve the conversion of your visitors, you need to understand what keywords or search phrases your visitors are typing into Google. This knowledge will come in handy in everything you do – from planning and writing your content to designing your landing pages and creating your ad campaigns.
There are several keyword research tools out there that can help. Popular among them is Google Ads Keyword Planner. It is a free tool created by Google to help you find relevant keywords with high search intent and volume. The only downside is that it doesn’t show how competitive those keywords are.
But you can consider some more premium third-party tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush, and Moz for complete keyword analysis. However, irrespective of the type of tool you use for your keyword research, when choosing keywords, here are some requirements you may want to consider:
Well, the length of your content actually depends on your keywords but the ideal length for a blog post should be between 1000 and 2000 words. To make sure your website is well optimized both for your visitors and search engines, you need to create long but information-rich content on the website.
So, before you settle for a particular word count, type in your primary keyword into Google and visit the top 10 results in the SERPs. If you see some of those pages having more than 1000 words, then yours should not be anywhere lower than that.
However, while it is important to create long posts, it is more important to see that your content is value-loaded. Don’t just rack up irrelevant information for the sake of providing long content. That will have a bad effect on your website in the long run. If a lot of people spend a long time on the page, and read to the very end, chances are that Google will pick up the page and rank it well.
It is not just the pages you decide to create that impact your SEO. Many more factors come into play, including how you structure the content on the page, how the content is written, your site’s structure, internal and external links, navigation, etc.
All these optimizations that can be made by just editing your website are referred to as on-page SEO, and it plays a huge role in your overall web page optimization.
This is a very important on-page SEO element. When creating a URL for a new page, be sure you consider your target keywords. Always include that in your URL and separate them with hyphens. If possible, make your URLs short and concise. Avoid URLs with numbers or special characters, and make sure the URL is descriptive of what the page is about.
Include your target keyword in your title tag. It is recommended you keep it close to the beginning of the title tag. Your title tag should not also be too long – 50 to 60 characters is a soft spot.
This is another important ley element of on-page SEO. A clear and compelling meta description will tell search engines and prospective visitors what your content is about, and can help improve click-through that can lead to more traffic for your site.
Also, include your target keyword in your meta description and keep the length down as well. Keep the length between 70 and 160 characters – you don’t have to use up the whole 320 characters allowed by Google.
Also known as the H1 tag, and it is usually your blog article title. It is important that you are able to describe what the content is all about with your header tag. Make sure it is not too long (20 to 70 characters is good).
Though we have mentioned in several places in this article how important keywords are to web page optimization, it is good we still reemphasize it here. It is a powerful SEO factor and must be used correctly to harness its potential.
Make sure your target keyword is used in the first paragraph and throughout the rest of your post. Use your keywords in the most natural ways and avoid keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing can harm your online reputation and damage your ranking potentials.
Add at least two to three internal links to your content. This will enable your users to find relevant content on your site and also keep search engine bots on your site for a longer time. That means more pages will be indexed.
You can also further boost trust signals by linking out to two or three authoritative sites. This will altogether give your SEO a huge boost.
Yes, images are one of the key elements in on-page optimization. Blog posts with images do better in search engines than the ones without images. However, when you are adding images to your post, here are some things to consider:
Add at least two to three internal links to your content. This will enable your users to find relevant content on your site and also keep search engine bots on your site for a longer time. That means more pages will be indexed.
You can also further boost trust signals by linking out to two or three authoritative sites. This will altogether give your SEO a huge boost.
Off-page SEO is used to describe strategies you implement to optimize your website via external means. They don’t involve editing your website as in on-page optimization. Off-page optimization includes social media activity, guest blogging, brand mentions, and influencer marketing.
All these efforts you put into promoting your website outside the environment of the site play a huge role in boosting its ranking on search engines. However, when getting links from guest blogging, for example, make sure you are getting links from high-quality, authority sites.
This is more like the last point. Backlinks play a critical role in website ranking. With high-quality backlinks to your site, Google will see your site as a reputable one, and worthy of being ranked high. Quality backlinks will help your website rise to the top of SERPs in no time.
Learn different means of getting quality backlinks to your site, and it will definitely pay off in no time.
More than just having a website, there is a need to carefully optimize it for search engines and your ideal customers. However, there are many factors that go into this.
We have carefully highlighted all these important factors in this post. So, you shouldn’t have any problem figuring out how to properly optimize your web pages.