Blog Post Contents
Learn How to Optimize Your Website for Search Engines and Users
Introduction
Arggggh website optimization! Do you feel a sense of your brain about to hit your boots? Or are you super excited that you can create an amazing website that everyone will rush to? Does SEO bore you silly, or have you tamed the SEO beast and its purring for your website?
Website Optimization
If you’re looking to increase your website’s visibility and attract more traffic, then optimizing your website is a must. Website optimization involves a series of techniques that help your website rank higher on search engines and provide a better user experience.
Your website is a fantastic resource and marketing tool; it helps you raise awareness about your services or product, is one of your sales tools, and provides helpful information to your visitors including getting to know about you and your services or products.
But for it to work advantageously it does need a bit of TLC and attention. Just like taking time to look after and water your plants, nurturing and taking care of your website will pay dividends for you.
So do a mindset swipe and see your website as a friend and not just that ‘thing’ you’re supposed to do because you’re in business; it isn’t a set-it-and-forget it, it’s one of your core tools in supporting your business in attracting people.
It helps you share your expert status and it enables you to take payments, increase revenue, and become a learning hub; it’s versatile and an extension of you helping your clients.
So in this blog post, we’ll cover some essential tips to help you optimize your website for search engines and users. And if this post is a bit further down the path than where you’re currently at, and you’re perhaps not at the website developing stage yet, then go here and explore whether you need a website when first starting up.
Getting Started
If you’re starting out and relatively new to website optimization, the first thing to consider is whether this is something you want to do yourself or hand it over to someone who has experience in doing this and thus can save you time, effort and money.
Because even though you’ll be paying them to undertake this aspect of your business, you’ll be freed up to focus on what are your strengths in your business, and they’ll get you further faster.
But in order to understand whether or not you’ve got someone in your business corner supporting and helping your business thrive, it is useful for you to have some awareness of the process of optimizing your website so that you can see whether you’re getting ahead or not.
So here are the 3 key things to do when it comes to optimising your site.
1. Conduct a Website Audit
Before you start optimizing your website, you need to know what you’re working with. A website audit will help you identify issues affecting your website’s performance. Some of the things to look out for include broken links, slow loading speed, and missing alt tags. GTMetrix is a great place to start. It will give you a breakdown of your website in line with Google’s Core We vitals and identify any problems to fix.
Core Web vitals were rolled out by Google in 2021 and are a set of standardised metrics for web developers to understand how people (users) experience a web page.
These metrics are based on 3 pillars:
- Speed
- Responsiveness
- Visual stability
So your website needs to run nicely, be quick to load, responsive and not have things moving around.
To help improve your score :
- Run the analytics to get your performance score
- Check the size of your photos and make sure they are correct
- Check ‘buttons’ don’t move during page loading
- Speed up your hosting server by Upgrading your plan
- Look at the overall health of the site
2. Use Relevant Keywords
Keywords are the foundation of search engine optimization. You need to use relevant keywords in your content to help search engines understand what your website is about. Use Google’s Keyword Planner to identify relevant keywords for your website.
Keywords are important because they help you understand what your visitor is looking for and therefore what you need to be creating in terms of content (information, education, product info etc) to enable the visitor’s needs to be met. SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) is the response that Google shows you when typing in a query. They are derived from paid ads, organic searches, video results, snippets etc.
So knowing your keywords also helps you in terms of working out what topics you need to put on your website in terms of content and creating this content strategy will enable you to really focus and plan out how you consistently help bridge the gap between what people are searching for, and how you’ll meet those needs.
This will also save you time as you’ll be zoning in like an arrow rather than running around on a paintball spree hoping to capture some unsuspecting visitors who don’t really want what you’re offering!
If you get it right, SERPs then bump up your content as it’s answering what people are typing into Google which is also why you need to optimise your content (blogs, vlogs, infographics etc).
3. Optimize Your Content
Your website’s content is one of the most critical optimisation elements. Ensure that your content is well-written, informative, and engaging. Use subheadings, bullet points, and images to break up your content and make it easier to read.
SEO tools such as Yoast or RankMath can help you optimise your blog posts so that you can check that you’ve got a keyword, good structure, relevant links, and images.
So that’s your basics. Now if you’re a bit further along the path and you’re wanting to further tweak and improve your website optimization then try these two
Use Schema Markup
Schema markup is a type of code that you can add to your website to help search engines understand your content better. It can help improve your website’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Improve Your Website’s Loading Speed
Website loading speed is a crucial factor in website optimization. Users are more likely to leave a website that takes too long to load. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to identify issues affecting your website’s loading speed and make necessary changes.
Conclusion
Optimizing your website is an ongoing process that requires continuous monitoring and improvement. Implementing the tips above can improve your website’s visibility and attract more visitors. Conduct a website audit, use relevant keywords, optimize your content, use schema markup, and improve your website’s loading speed to take your website optimization to the next level.
If you’re not sure you want to take this on, find a really great techie who can guide, advise and implement the changes to ensure your website is optimized.
