As a webmaster, digital marketer, or business owner, you need to do everything you can to improve your website’s performance.
In this article, you will learn some website optimization tips that can be used to improve your website’s performance in search engines.
What is website optimization?
Website optimization is the process of improving various aspects of a website’s performance using a variety of tools, strategies, and tactics. The end goal is to increase search engine rankings, organic traffic, and ultimately conversions.
What are the advantages of website optimization?
Performing website optimization on a site has several advantages.
The first advantage is improved search engine rankings. Higher rankings in search engines such as Google and Bing is the main focus of website optimization so it’s no surprise that this is one of the benefits of the process.
Secondly, because website optimization focuses on improving rankings, it also results in more targeted organic traffic. If a website is optimized and able to rank for target keywords, then the result will be an increase in traffic from people who are interested in what the business has to offer.
This is much better than generating a lot of traffic from untargeted visitors.
Thirdly, performing website optimization yields results that are sustainable and cost-effective in the long run. Unlike social media marketing or paid lead generation, website optimization doesn’t require paid marketing.
Website optimization tips for your website
Here are 5 website optimization tips for your business website.
Find any issues with your site’s SEO
The first step in the website optimization process is checking if there are any major problems preventing the website from performing as it should.
An SEO audit can be used to find any potential problems that a website might have.
To conduct an SEO audit, a webmaster or marketer can make use of an SEO audit tool or conduct a manual audit of the website.
An SEO audit checks the following aspect of a website:
- Site speed and Core Web Vitals
- Mobile responsiveness
- On-page SEO factors such as the correct usage of title tags, meta descriptions, and heading tags
- Search engine indexing and crawling
Do keyword research to find content opportunities
Before you think of producing a new blog post or building a product page, you should first do some keyword research to determine which keywords to use.
Keyword research is the process of finding keywords that have a high search volume and low competition. By building pages and writing content based on low-competition keywords, you increase the odds of high rankings in the search engine results pages.
Here are the steps to doing keyword research for your website:
Step 1: Think of a broad keyword that describes the main idea of your page. Let’s imagine you want to create a blog post on “chicken pie recipes.”
Step 2: Use a keyword research tool to find keywords that are related to the broad keyword you identified. Ideally aim to find keywords that have got a lot of search volume, but low competition.
In our example, we typed in “chicken pie recipes” into SEOptimer’s keyword tool. Based on the data, we can create a piece of content specifically targeting “chicken pot pie recipes.”
Step 3: Take the target keyword you discovered in Step 2, and find 2 to 3 variations thereof using the keyword research tool.
For our example, we found “easy recipes for chicken pot pie” and “best recipes for chicken pot pie” that we can also use throughout the blog post.
Optimize your content
The next tip to increase search engine rankings is to optimize your website’s existing content.
By optimizing content, you’ll ensure that Google and other search engines have a clear understanding of what your website is about.
If you notice that a page isn’t performing well in the SERPs, then you can update the content with the below suggestions.
- Always use your target keyword in the title of your webpage. Google uses page titles to get an understanding of what your page is about.
- Try to use the target keyword at the beginning of the page title.
- Use different HTML headings in your blog posts and on your product pages. Also, try to naturally include the target keyword in page headings.
- Mention the target keyword and its variations all throughout the body of the content. (But avoid keyword stuffing)
- Update the content to properly address search intent. Make sure the on-page content answers all potential questions that the user may have.
Optimize for mobile devices
Nowadays, most users will visit a website using their mobile devices. Because of this, it’s important that webmasters check that their sites are optimized for mobile devices.
In other words, their websites need to be mobile-responsive.
There are 2 main reasons why webmasters should prioritize mobile responsiveness.
The first is that it creates a pleasant user experience.
Have you ever accessed a website that isn’t built for mobile devices? These sites tend to cut off content and website elements that aren’t in the viewport and require users to scroll horizontally to view these elements.
Image source: Google
Secondly, Google actually prefers ranking websites that are responsive. In April 2021, Google started using mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal.
Luckily, most Content Management Sytems such as WordPress and modern website builders come with mobile-responsive web design functionality.
Boost page speed
The last website optimization tip is to follow best practices for boosting your website’s page speed.
Google favors a website that loads quickly and it has been confirmed that a page’s loading speed is a direct ranking factor.
So what are the best practices for increasing page speed?
If you notice that your website is taking too long to load, then one of the first things you can do is upgrade your hosting package.
Secondly, the webpage size plays a big role in the time it takes for a website to finish loading. To reduce page size, you can compress images and other media files, remove any custom fonts, and minimize HTML, CSS, and Javascript files.
Another way to improve page loading speed is by using a Content Delivery Network, or CDN. These networks store your website’s files in various locations around the world. This is useful because when users visit your website from different locations, they won’t experience any lag.
Conclusion
Website optimization is the key to increased search engine rankings.
By following the suggestions in this article, you can increase your website’s ability to rank for target keywords.
Interesting Related Article: “What is search engine optimization (SEO)? SEO explained“
