Top 7 Essential Website Optimization Strategies

Learning to optimize your website can be a daunting task. That is why we have prepared a list of the essential optimization strategies that will help you understand the most important aspects of SEO and will give you some easy tips that you can implement immediately.

Why You Need To Optimize Your Website

The importance of optimizing your website cannot be overstated. Optimizing your website for search engine optimization (SEO) and for conversion will help organic traffic reach your website and will help make sure the traffic that reaches your website is transformed into sales.

Most consumers nowadays use the internet (usually Google) to find the product or service they are looking for. Many of these search’s result in a sale. This is more likely to happen with traffic that reached your page organically rather than through a paid advertisement.

Because organic traffic is so important, your search engine ranking is decisive. Especially since consumers are not likely to scroll through many pages on Google when they are looking for a product or a service.

Top 7 Essential Website Optimization Strategies

  1. Take advantage of SEO tools
    Keeping track of your SEO statistics, such as your ranking, the keywords visitors used to find your site, your backlinks, possible malware on your website, is not easy. There are many tools out there that can automate some of this work for you.

Some of the most common ones are Google Search Console, SEMrush, and Rank Ranger. While they will not do all of the work for you, you can use them, among other things, to conduct keyword research, understand your ranking, analyze your competitor’s page, making them an important part of your SEO toolkit.

  1. Incorporate images on every page
    Making your website visually appealing is essential. You probably know the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words,” well this is certainly the case when it comes to SEO. Make sure that the picture you choose is relevant to the page and make sure that you optimize and format it correctly.

Responsive images are a great solution, as using them ensures they are formatted correctly for any screen. In case you do not find an appropriate image, you can always opt for a fun GIF. However, it is best not to go overboard with GIFs as they can slow down your website speed.

To help you make use of visual media, you can leverage a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution, which will make the organization, storage and retrieval of rich media files simpler and more efficient.

  1. Add catchy titles and subheadings
    Adding catchy titles and subtitles is extremely important because viewers will skim these to decide if they want to continue reading. Make sure these are keyword-rich, and do not forget that the first word weighs the most on your SEO, so pick it carefully. Update your titles to keep them up to date with the most important keywords.
  2. Make your website mobile-friendly
    Embracing mobile sites will help your SEO significantly, especially since Google has officially added the first mobile index. Beyond affecting your ranking, mobile-friendliness is important as we are using our phones more and more. In fact, 74% of smartphone usershave used their phone to make a purchase.

Making your website mobile-friendly means adapting your site for devices with lower bandwidth and smaller screens. Until a few years ago mobile-friendliness was considered supplementary, today this is an SEO basic.

  1. Conduct keyword research
    Researching keywords should be your top priority. This is the way your audience finds your page and is one of the main factors that determine ranking. You can start your keyword research by asking yourself what you would type into google to find a website like yours. You should also check industry-specific lists and sources to pinpoint keywords.

However, while identifying the right keywords used to be relatively straightforward once upon a time, today it is much more complicated. Checking lists may not be enough. However, there are plenty of tools that can help keep you up to date on keyword trends, such as Google Search Console, Uber suggest and Solve. Being up to date with keywords will prevent traffic to your website from dwindling as new trends and content emerge.

  1. Focus on user experience (UX) and website speed
    Ensuring your website loads quickly is imperative. Website speed does not just affect your ranking (which in and of itself is a cause for concern) but also determines your UX. Online customers do not have a lot of patience, and will not hesitate to abandon your page if it does not load quickly—and by quickly we mean a few seconds.

There are many free tools you can use that will tell you how well you are doing in terms of website speed, such as Google Page Speed Insights. They will also help you identify the problematic components of your website. The usual culprits are:

  • Too many HTTP requests
  • Too many widgets and plugins
  • Images that are not formatted properly
  • Dense code
  • Poor hosting services.

Nothing frustrates customers more than a page that is loading too slowly. Focusing on your UX will make sure your customers keep coming back to your page.

  1. Produce quality content
    Getting lost in the technical aspects of SEO can distract us from the bottom line: great content is the bread and butter of SEO. To appear in more searches, you have to keep producing content. However, quantity is not enough. You need to keep your customer in mind, the content you generate needs to be relevant.

Remaining up to date with keywords will help you identify the topics that are trending at any point in time. If you can consistently provide great content, you will be rewarded by Google and other search engines deities.

Wrap Up

Anyone can build a beautiful website; the difficulty is making sure your target audience can actually find it. That is the crux of SEO.

While there is no strict formula to optimize your website, keeping the UX in the foreground will go a long way. This means making sure your pages are visually appealing, that your content is relevant, and that the site works well on a technical level.

Moreover, optimizing your website should not be a onetime thing, it is a continuous process. Understanding the basics of optimization will serve you well in the long term, as it does not seem like we will be weaning off the internet anytime soon.

Content’s source: Codementor community