Your business probably has a website, right?
From a Digital Marketing point of view, this is basic stuff if you want to build an online presence.
But what many companies don’t know is that just having a website is not enough.
You need to optimize it to keep customers engaged with your content.
And you must also do this to increase your chances of being found by them on the first pages of search engines, whenever they look for your products and online services.
Want to know how easy it is to prep your site and harvest the benefits of web optimization?
Keep reading!
What Is Web Optimization?
Web optimization is a long-term strategy that focuses on search engine optimization (SEO) practices.
With it, various techniques are employed to ensure your website is visible when your customers are typing search queries in search engines, like Google and Bing, that relate to your products and/or services.
Do you want some quick examples of these practices? We’ll explore them further ahead.
↳ First of all, specific keywords that describe your products/services must be included on your website.
Additionally, the keywords your customers use to find your products/services must also be included.
In that regard, it can be interesting to invest in a Content Marketing strategy in order to produce relevant and keyword-driven content that your audience will love.
↳ Your website must also be built with the user experience in mind.
This means that the front and back-end of your website need to be written in a way that users can easily navigate and find the information they desire.
By taking the time to focus on the user experience, you also satisfy the bot crawlers (also called spiders) that are crawling your website for this same information.
↳ When you design your site, it must also be mobile-first.
This means the design is based on how users will navigate your website from their smartphone or tablet.
Since Google and other search engines are mobile-first indexes, any website that is not designed with mobile use in mind will not rank high on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Once implemented, web optimization begins its long-term efforts.
This is not a one-and-done strategy. All old content must be reoptimized to meet current standards, and all new content must be created with this in mind.
When algorithms change, you or your team will need to go through your entire website and make sure that it satisfies any new requirements.
What Are The Benefits Of Web Optimization?
In addition to helping your site to be at the top of search engine results, there are other benefits of web optimization.
You gain the site traffic you actually desire
There is nothing worse than having your analytics skewed because the traffic that is arriving at your website is not your target audience.
This can lead to higher bounce rates and poor conversion rates.
You understand your target audience better
With concrete data after the optimization, you will see what pages users reviewed the most and the longest.
Then, you can determine which call-to-action (CTA) was the most successful at converting your leads.
You can also discover if short or long-tail keywords are the most beneficial for your business.
You gain a higher ROI on your digital marketing services
Web optimization can lead you to customer insights you would previously otherwise miss — and this can be incredibly valuable when defining your investments.
While it is a long-term strategy that takes time to provide significant ROI, it is the one digital marketing strategy you can rely on for as long as you have a website online.
How Do You Optimize Your Website?
With the numerous tactics for optimizing your website, it can be easy to become overwhelmed.
Before making any adjustments, you must first determine what you want the outcomes to be for your optimization strategy.
Otherwise, you will be working blindly and possibly spending numerous resources on efforts that do not support your end goal.
Once you know whether you want more site traffic, conversions, or blog subscribers, for example, you can then begin the process for web optimization.
The first step is to complete a web audit
Your web audit will allow you to see where your site stands against current SEO practices.
Typically, the results of a web audit are logged in a spreadsheet for easy review.
Your web audit contains every page on your website and includes the metadata, keyword, internal links, and external links. It should also include the image(s) and any alt tags.
Notes on the content itself should also be added, but the content does not need to be copied into the spreadsheet.
If the content is available in a Word file or Google Doc, the path or link should be added.
The second step is to conduct an in-depth keyword analysis
This keyword analysis should consist of keywords that relate to your business, brand, products/services, and commonly asked questions.
With this, you will gain a list of short and long-tail keywords that you can use to optimize your main web pages, location pages, images, and blog posts.
The third step is to develop a strategy
That way you can determine how your pages will be updated to meet current SEO standards.
Will a team edit five pages a day? Will an outside marketing firm be asked to handle the task entirely?
Once this is known, you can begin to optimize your website and reap the benefits of web optimization.
5 Essential Web Optimization Techniques
There is no one-size-fits-all solution for SEO web optimization.
However, there are a few essential techniques that all businesses need to employ in order to meet current SEO best practices.
They have been outlined in detail below.
1. Mobile-first design
Most traffic on the web is now mobile. You can check your own web analytics and see that most of your traffic is mobile, too.
With most of the traffic now coming from mobile devices and search engines becoming mobile-first indexes, mobile-first web design is crucial for success.
If your website hasn’t been updated in the last five years or you have no idea what mobile-first design is, it’s probably a good time for a website redesign.
If you can remember having your website revamped recently, run Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
Produced by Google, the results of this test will show you where you can improve.
By implementing these changes, you are closer to optimizing your website and reaching the top results pages.
2. Focus on user experience
The user experience is incredibly important to Google and other search engines.
These companies spend millions of dollars to produce AI and machine learning software that can provide a better experience to their users during search queries.
With that being said, they also place heavy emphasis on ranking websites that provide a positive user experience.
If your users can’t easily find the menu, navigate pages, or find the contact information they are looking for, they are not having a positive user experience.
Try to navigate your website and see if you can easily do it. If you struggle, how are your users going to feel?
Additionally, page speed is incredibly important.
No one wants to wait an excessive amount of time for a web page to load. This means you need to have a good server hosting your website.
Several speed tests are available online for you to compare results.
If your website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, you are likely going to see a high bounce rate and negative user experience.
ROCK’ TIP: we have a post with 8 pagespeed tools that can help you analyze your site’s performance. Check it out!
3. Incorporate the right keywords
The right keywords are crucial for optimizing your website and driving traffic.
Keyword analysis should be completed at least once a year (if not more often) to ensure your audience is still using the same terminology and keywords to find your website.
If they have changed the way they search, you will not receive their business.
4. Create captivating metas
Metadata is the information that your customers see when they are reviewing the top links on search engine results pages (SERPs).
This includes the title and small paragraph underneath. These are called the meta title and meta description, respectively.
The meta title should be between 50 to 60 characters.
The length of the meta description has changed over the past few algorithm changes, but most users tend to respond best to a meta description that is around 150 characters.
The meta description should always contain the primary keyword. However, you need to do more than include the keyword.
You need to give the user a reason to click on your link versus your competitor’s website.
Captivating descriptions and a good hook are necessary to drive traffic, even if you are one of the top results.
5. Build backlinks
Backlinks help improve your domain authority (DA), which is another factor in ranking highly online.
The higher your domain authority, the more likely you are to earn the top ranking spot in search results.
Backlinks allow you to acquire a higher DA because your website is now linked to another website.
If this website also has a high DA and is related to your industry, it improves how your website is positioned online.
However, you must be careful. You cannot acquire poor backlinks with low scores.
These can hurt your domain authority and lower your SEO ranking.
You can run backlink reports and request to have your domain removed from websites with poor DA.
What Are The Best Web Optimization Tools?
Numerous web optimization tools exist online.
In the list below, we selected four of them (some paid, some free) that can be used to improve your SEO ranking while you focus on other areas of your business that need the most.
HubSpot CMS
HubSpot CMS is a great option for those that already use HubSpot products.
It allows fully optimized web pages with high conversion devices to be built right into the system.
The web pages can also be personalized to meet different buyer personas. This is especially helpful when using the HubSpot CRM.
Google Analytics
If you want to know how your site is performing across the world’s biggest search network, start with Google Analytics.
This free tool provides both critical site metrics and actionable data about user behavior at scale to help better tailor online content and campaigns — and also rank higher in search results.
Stage
Remember when we mentioned the importance of page speed?
Stage, a platform created by us, can completely transform underperforming websites with an optimized hosting solution.
Counting with the technical support of a team specialized in WordPress, Stage basically clears the way for you to focus on other activities while the conversion rate on your pages increases.
Moz Local Listing Score
Moz uses multiple data sources to see how your business (and your competitors’ businesses) are performing online.
Designed for companies with brick-and-mortar storefronts, Moz shows how your listings compare and offers suggestions to help correct inaccurate data or supply more detailed, SEO-friendly information.
Basic Moz checks are free, while more in-depth results come with a monthly fee.
Wrap Up: Web Optimization Is An In-depth, Long-term Strategy
And it’s also vital for ranking online.
So, whether you have an international, national, or local business, it can help grow your web traffic and get you in front of customers while they are in the middle of their decision-making process.
Now that you know the essential aspects of web optimization, how about leveraging the SEO strategy of your business?
Take our SEO Maturity Assessment and discover what else you could be doing to achieve better results with search engines and your public!
