Best Way to Optimize Your Website for Search Engines

We are living in a highly digitized world, and having a website has become an essential part of surviving the stiff business landscape. Your website represents your brand online, so it must speak what your brand speaks. 

But the question is: is your website reaching out to the right people?

It’s easy to put out content on your website. However, what’s challenging is how to get your audience to take action. If you want your visitors to subscribe, download, book an appointment or buy something, then your website must compel your audience to do just that. If your website isn’t doing what you want it to do, which is mainly to convert, then it’s probably not optimized. 

Knowing how website optimization works is a vital asset to any website owner. Your website is more than just a destination for information about your brand, product, or service. It must breed a relationship with your audience, and you can only do that if you apply effective website optimization strategies.  

What is Website Optimization?

Most of us have heard about website search engine optimization, but what is it, and why is it important? 

Optimization is the process of equipping your website so that it achieves your goals, whether to improve traffic, enhance conversations, make more sales, or all of the above. It uses both technical and marketing techniques so that your website serves the audience and search engines in the best way possible. 

Website optimization is a huge umbrella, and under it are specific strategies that you need to consider. To have a fully optimized website, you need to look into: 

• SEO
• Technical performance 
• User experience

Most people think of website optimization as a scientific process. You need data to back up your strategies. You don’t want to leave your tweaks to chance or luck. Those who don’t fully understand how to execute website optimization strategies often hire experts because they know it requires a lot of skills and knowledge. 

If you want to succeed in digital marketing, you need to implement website optimization. Optimization is all about improving your conversions, and more conversions can bring in more sales. It’s simply one of the first few non-negotiable steps that you have to take. 

Reasons Why You Need Website Optimization

Making the best and getting the most out of your website can take some thought and effort, and it often begins with website optimization. Optimizing your site can mean a massive difference to your brand, marketing success, and sales, so you must optimize your website regularly. But what are the benefits of website optimization, and why is it essential that you implement this on your business?

1. Brand building

Brand building is imperative, even in traditional marketing, but we are living in a fast-paced digital world, and the competition is tighter than ever. It only makes sense to try to create a memorable brand that your target audience won’t forget. 

Website optimization allows you to understand your audience’s needs and how you can meet those needs. You need to create content that your audience will find useful, and at the same time, will promote your brand towards them. You also need to collect high-quality links that give your brand more boost. Therefore, if you try to optimize your website correctly, you’ll also establish a solid, reputable brand for your business on the web. 

2. Increase organic traffic

Marketing is expensive, but if you do it the organic way, it becomes cost-effective. And website optimization is a fantastic marketing process that doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg. SEO website optimization brings your site up on the search engine results pages or SERPs. It tells users that your website is a fantastic resource for their search query. 

While you always have the option to run ads for your website, it can get costly fast, and they don’t always assure long-term results. It happens the same way in the traditional marketing scenario. You place an ad or commercial for your business, and it will run for a pre-determined length of time. Once you’ve reached the time limit, the ad stops appearing, therefore making your brand less visible.

However, if you aim to rank high through organic efforts, not only will you pay less (or nothing at all), but you also build other good things such as brand recall, image, and authority, and you can hardly put a price on these. 

3. Increase traffic

In the digital world, having lots of traffic is always good. It means people are clicking and visiting your website, and it presents a wonderful opportunity for you to convert. But traffic can be elusive, especially if you don’t have an optimized site. 

Having more traffic gives you more opportunities to capture leads and direct them through your sales funnel. First, website optimization allows you to improve your site rankings. People can find your website quickly, and your website becomes more visible to a broader audience. But beyond that, you want to optimize your site to increase traffic. And if you have more traffic, you also have more potential for conversion. Which leads us to the next point. 

4. It improves conversion

Conversion refers to converting a “searcher” into a buyer, a student, a member, a subscriber, or whatever it is that you want your audience to become. Conversion is all about turning a person, who may or may not be randomly searching, into someone you want them to be. 

Traffic and conversion always go together. You want to capture your traffic and lead them down to your funnel so that they may be converted. These people become part of your inner circle. They’ll submit their data to you (often in exchange for a lead magnet) because they feel you have something that they’re looking for. And then you have this fantastic opportunity to pitch them something more, whether that’s access to exclusive discounts and promos, content, and more. 

These people that you convert, they are the first people who’ll be interested when they hear something about your business. They become part of your targeted audience. It’s now easier for you to market to them because you know they aren’t just random people surfing the internet. They’re the people who will most likely buy from you, and boost your business. 

5. Visitors will quickly find answers to their questions

What if you’re a pet-grooming business owner in your area. Then someone types on the search bar a query like “how to remove matted dog fur,” and your site happens to have a content that directly answers this question. If and when users find your website, they’ll be most likely to stick around and read through your content. Even better, they might consider coming to your shop for a pet-grooming session. 

With website optimization, you make it easier for people to find content that they’re looking for. It creates a beautiful and seamless user experience on their part and builds trust and authority on yours. If you look at it, website optimization brings you and your target audience together, creating a win-win situation for both of you.

Top Website Optimization Strategies

 A lot of things have changed in Google over the past decade. The ranking factors have come and ebbed away. Some carry more weight over the others. But if you want to learn how to optimize your website, then you need to focus on the essential website optimization strategies.

Make it mobile-first

First on the list is to make your site a mobile-optimized website. If you don’t have a mobile-optimized website yet, you’re definitely missing out. After all, modern smartphones are now equipped with internet connectivity that allows users to take their searches and commerce to mobile. 

Additionally, since Google rolled out its mobile-first index, which means your website both runs on mobile and desktop, then Google will give your site its vote of confidence. That vote can have a profound impact on the overall optimization of your website. 

If you’re committed to optimizing your website and make it mobile-friendly, you should: 

• Invest in mobile responsive design. This means using a web design that responds automatically to any screen, whether the user is searching from a desktop, an 11-inch laptop, a tablet, or a smartphone. It automatically detects screen design so that the elements of your webpage are readable and accessible from any device. 
• Speed it up. Mobile users have a very short attention span. They get impatient and frustrated if they don’t get what they need right away. If your website takes a lot of time to load on mobile devices, then you ought to do a code cleanup that ensures the speedy loading of your web pages. 
• Simplify. When you put mobile users in mind, you begin to feel more aware of how your website might affect their user experience. Those who access your website from a laptop or desktop are most likely sitting down with some moments to spare. But those who use a mobile phone are most likely on the go, and they don’t need the unnecessary frills on your mobile website design. 

Perform keyword research

Keywords are the first touchpoints between your website and your audience. You need to know how to SEO optimize a website by looking for and using the appropriate keywords for your content. You can’t just pick a random search phrase, use it in your content, and expect to improve your ranking on SERPs. Nowadays, using keywords needs to be intentional and deliberate, and they sometimes call for more sophisticated processes. 

To optimize your website with the right keywords, you need to:

• Identify a base of keywords that apply to your brand, niche or industry. 
• Look for other related keywords based on volume and number of searches. Ideally, you want to incorporate high-volume keywords with low to mid competition. 
• Analyze the first 10 Google search results to reveal what keywords people are using based on search intent. 
• Don’t forget to incorporate long-tail keywords as these are more specific and targeted. Use keyword suggestions to uncover potential long-tail keywords. 
• Check out what keywords your competition is ranking for. Then look for high-ranking keywords and create a winning content around it.
• Use keywords organically into your content. Don’t cheat the search engines by stuffing your content with keywords. Not only will your site get penalized, but it’ll also negatively impact your ranking. Always keep your focus on the content and insert keywords as naturally as possible. 

Create And Publish Valuable, High-Quality and Optimized Content

You can go down the rabbit hole of optimizing the technical aspects of your website, but you should never neglect content. People came to your site because of your content, hoping that you have the answer to their questions or solution to their problems. You must remember that your content is the heart of SEO, and producing high-quality and relevant content will boost undoubtedly help optimize your website. 

Here’s how to optimize your website through relevant and high-quality content:

• Write to the people. Too many website owners are lured to creating content that was designed to “outsmart” Google, only to fail, or worse, get penalized. The problem with writing for search engines is that algorithm updates happen frequently, and what may work right now may not work later on. Stuffing your content with keywords, posting thin content, and focusing too much on high-volume keywords can prove to be detrimental to your optimization efforts. 
• Always keep your target audience in mind. Your target audience doesn’t really care about the mathematical calculations that go behind the algorithm updates. They care about the content that meets their needs. And if you write with the people in mind, your content grows organically and wins the vote of search engines. 
• Consider the length of your content. Search engines look at long-form content more favorably because it is more comprehensive and in-depth, and therefore provides more value to the readers. Plus, long-form content allows you to integrate a variety of keywords without stuffing it. According to most studies, content with over 1,000 words is beneficial to your website than thin and short content. 
• Distribute your content. It is often not enough to leave your content lying on your website. You need people to find it. And one fantastic and cheap way to do this is through social media sharing. Make your content easy to share, as well as proactively share your content with your social circles. It’s also good to look up what others are saying and then create content that revolves around that topic. 

On-page Optimization

On-page SEO refers to the optimization process of the pages on your website. And it can make or break your website optimization success. You can optimize your webpages by modifying your content, HTML, and copy. And unlike off-page SEO, on-page SEO is totally under your control. Elements like title tags, URL, keyword density and placement, and links fall under this category. 

But what is the best way to optimize your website for search engines in terms of on-page SEO? What does a properly optimized webpage look like? 

• Place keywords strategically. Ideally, it should appear on the title, the description, and the subheadings. You don’t need to have all matching keywords, but it makes sense to use them in these places for better optimization. 
• Create unique titles for each page. Since the title is your first point of contact with your potential visitor, make every character count. Create a compelling title, and make sure titles on various pages are different from one another. Use your keyword within the title to give Google an idea of what your page or content is all about. 
• Write a concise meta description. The description should reinforce the title, and together, they should signal the focus of your content. 
• Use short, descriptive URLs. The first three words of the URL should describe what the content is all about. Avoid generic URLs, as well as longer ones. 
• Use subheadings. Not only do they break up the text in chunks, but they’re also great places to use your keywords in. 
• Optimize your images. Using ALT TEXT, you should be able to describe the image as well as optimize it for search. It’s also a great idea to include your target keywords when you assign ALT TEXT to your images. 

Boost Site Speed

Who likes a slow-loading page? Most likely not you and your visitors. Even Google hates it. So, if you want to properly perform web page search optimization, make sure your pages load fast. Did you know that most people expect a page to load in less than 3 seconds? If yours take more than that, then you’d lose the opportunity for traffic and conversion. 

Fast-loading pages have better odds for conversion. Google even takes into account how fast your site loads up in mobile devices, as well. You can imagine visitors abandoning your website when it takes so much time to load, bringing their business to your competition. 

Fortunately, you don’t have to guess your site speed second anymore. Tools like Google Speed Insights give you the advantage to check your site speed as well as give you insights on areas that you can improve. 

Additionally, you can further improve site speed by considering these tips on how to optimize web page for search engines.

• Minimize HTTP requests
• Reduce DNS lookup or server response time
• Compress your files
• Reduce the size of your images
• Pick high-quality hosting or server

Once you’ve improved your site speed, you’ll also start seeing its positive impacts on your traffic. Make sure to regularly check your site speed and do an audit so that you’re always optimizing web pages for search engines. 

Create a fantastic user experience

You want your visitors to have the most desirable experience while on your website. When they do, they’re more likely to stick around, check you out, and have the best probability for conversion. Your website should offer only the best user experience and find your site valuable, accessible, navigable, and useful. 

Here are the top website optimization best practices when it comes to creating excellent user experience: 

• Utilize white space. White space allows your visitors to focus where you want them to focus, reduces clutter as well as make your content easily readable. 
• Use readable, even kid-friendly texts. This means using fonts that are easier to read, whether on the computer or mobile devices. It also helps to use headings and subheadings to break up the text into chunks. 
• Make CTAs attractive. Whether you want your visitor to sign up, subscribe, download, or buy, you want to create CTA buttons that direct your visitors efficiently. Think of contrasting colors, appealing fonts, and word enablers.
• Opt for a clean-designed website. Too many pop-ups, distracting colors, and other animations only make your site look cluttered. Not only do they hinder your visitors in finding the information that they’re looking for right away, but they also create distractions. Your website needs to be well-designed without unnecessary clutter. 
• Make links obvious. Links are there for a reason, but if they aren’t visible, then people won’t be clicking on them. Use underlines or different text colors to signal the visitor that those are texts that they need to click on.  

Conclusion

SEO website optimization can seem like a lot of work, but it has huge tradeoffs, going by the name of traffic, better brand image and credibility, and conversions. If you know how to optimize your website, then you’re in a great position to crush your competition who don’t. 

It just pays to remember, though, that you won’t see the results right away, so be patient as you try to optimize your website regularly. You may have to perform more than one modification at any given time. After all, web page search engine optimization requires repeated testing and measuring until you figure out what works for you.