There are almost 2 billion websites online right now all competing for internet user’s attention. That harsh reality and the resulting stiff competition means that you need to do everything in your power to cut through the clutter and get your website noticed.
That’s where website optimization tips can come in handy.
Website optimization tips take into account a variety of factors search engines and users look for when accessing websites and ensure your site is in line with expectations so you can maximize your exposure.
If you’re not sure where to get started with maximizing your website, our team is here to help!
Below, we’ve compiled a list of simple website optimization tips.
1. Make Your Content Valuable
There is no better way to optimize your website than to make sure your content is good.
Too much material is online right now for you to think that you’ll be able to get any sustainable traction without offering high-quality writing, video, products or whatever other elements are present on your site.
Our recommendation is to reread/watch all of your content and scan for errors. Then, have family, friends or customers give you feedback as well.
Do everything in your power to make sure the elements on your site are providing real value to internet users and you can be sure that more people will start flocking to your pages.
2. Utilize Proper Web Formatting
Writing for the web is a lot different than writing papers or novels.
For example, online, people don’t like to see big blocks of texts. The like to see 2-3 sentence paragraphs with ample white space.
Also, people expect content to be broken up with descriptive headings. Remember, we live in an age where people scan content more than they read it. Without headings breaking up your content, scanning becomes hard which is a sure-fire reason why people will click away from the content.
3. Target Specific Keywords
Website optimization is often a term used interchangeably with SEO. SEO (search engine optimization) is the practice of understanding Google and other search engine’s process for ranking pages and using that knowledge to your advantage.
One of the top ways you can do that is by tailoring your content around certain highly-searched, highly-relevant, keywords.
You can learn more about what this process entails by reading beginner SEO guides but in summary, the process revolves around using paid tools like ahrefs to deduce good keyword opportunities, selecting one of two of them, and then working those words liberally (and naturally) into your article.
4. Link to Sources
For your website’s information to seem more credible to search engines, you’ll want to link to sources.
As a general rule of thumb, have about 2-3 external links (links to sources) per 1000 words you write and 2-3 internal links (links to other pages on your website).
Those figures aren’t hard and fast rules. Just be sure to stay aware of the need to include links in the content you write to improve your website and search engine optimization.
5. Request That Your Pages Get Indexed
The way that your website’s pages get funneled into Google and other search engines are via a process called indexing. With indexing, Google periodically crawls the internet, reads all of its web pages and then ranks them in its engine.
Sometimes, Google will skip over pages during this process.
To make sure that doesn’t happen, one of the best website optimization tips we can give you is to get set up on Google’s Webmaster Tools and upload a sitemap of your site.
You can create your sitemap for free here.
6. Pay Close Attention To Headlines
The number one factor that’s going to inspire people to click onto your webpage from search engine results pages is your page’s headline. Your headline is the title of your article or product page and it should incorporate certain things to improve its clickability.
For starters, your headline should be eye-catching. In addition to being eye-catching, your title should utilize the keyword you’ve chosen to work into your content.
7. Write Meta-Descriptions
Whenever you create a webpage, you should be filling out its meta-description. This can typically be done from inside of your “article’s” settings if you’re using a content management system like Joomla! or WordPress.
If you’re coding by hand. Your meta description should be inserted manually in your HTML’s head-tag.
Make sure your meta description communicates to search engines and readers what your page is about and also be sure to include your target keyword in your description.
8. Speed Up Your Site
Rounding out our website optimization tips is the ever important need to make sure your site is loading quickly. Page speed is definitely a factor major search engines look at when determining rank.
If your pages are slow, not only can you expect low search engine result page positioning but you can also expect that when users do click onto your site, they’ll click away the moment they feel your site is running slow.
Speeding up your website can be difficult and a variety of factors may be at fault. For most, speed will be largely affected by lack of image compression and the speed of your web host.
To learn more about how your website’s speed is performing, check out Google’s page speed tool.
Wrapping Up Website Optimization Tips
There you have it! 8 website optimization tips that will improve your search engine ranking and make it so more people feel comfortable browsing your site.
We recommend implementing as many of the tips as you can above to unilaterally improve your online presence.
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