An effective website optimization
What is website optimization?
Search engine optimization (SEO), or website optimization, is the process of making changes to your website so that it will appear higher in search engine results pages (SERPS). Based on a number of factors, search engines evaluate your website’s relevance and readability before assigning it a position or ranking on the search engine results page. The more relevance the search engines determine your website has for a given search, the higher the website will rank.
This process will help increase your customers!
SEO basics for website optimization
- Responsive design – Nowadays it is vital to have a mobile responsive site to rank well on search. Google started penalizing unfriendly mobile sites in 2015.
- Site speed – A page loading speed is an SEO ranking signal. A site shouldn’t take more than 4 seconds to load: MunchWeb found that 75% of users wouldn’t re-visit a site that took longer than 4 seconds to load.
Site’s can load faster by using a CDN, compressing images, and switching to faster hosting. You can check your site’s loading speed on GTMetrix.com - Sitemap – contains all your pages, products, collections, and blog posts.
- The robots exclusion protocol (REP) or robots.txt is a text file webmasters create to instruct robots (typically search engine robots) how to crawl and index pages on their website.
- Outbound links – Using outbound links to related pages is a relevancy signal that helps Google figure out your page’s topic. A recent study fund that pages with outbound links outrank pages without outbound links.
- Internal links – Using internal links between pages helps search engines understand better the structure of your site. It is best practice to add 2-3 links per page.
Page elements for website optimization
The title element of a web page is meant to be an accurate and concise description of a page’s content. Title tags – H1, are often used on search engine results pages (SERPs) to display preview snippets for a given page, and are important both for SEO and social sharing.
Meta descriptions are HTML attributes that provide concise explanations of the contents of web pages. Meta descriptions are commonly used on search engine result pages (SERPs) to display preview snippets for a given page.
The easier and more descriptive the URL is for humans to read, the better it is for search engines.
Content optimization – Have a clear structure with at least one subheading- H2 and paragraphs -P detailing the purpose of the page.
Image optimization – Having descriptive alt text can help your images show up when users search for images. As well, alt text is an important accessibility feature: it describes your product images to people who have visual impairments.
Optimizing content
Content is king. The more content on your page, product description, collection text, or blog post, the better chance your page will be found on Google and other search engines.
Identifying keywords and themes relevant to your business. Keywords should be analyzed by search volume,
competition/keyword difficulty and traffic value/cost. You can search for some keywords on Semrush
Prioritizing lower-difficulty topics focusing on high search volume and value. Targeting these less competitive spaces will guide your content marketing strategy, helping you focus your efforts where they will make the most impact.
Regularly updating and maintain existing content. Repurpose existing assets into something more linkworthy and useful. Include a “last updated” function to manage content freshness.
Structured data is on-page markup that enables search engines to better understand the information currently on your business’s web page, and then use this information to improve your business’s search results listing. For example, structured data makes it easier for web crawlers to determine company basics, such as NAP (name, address, place) data, as well as more complex information such articles, events, products, recipes, etc. on your web site.
Optimizing images
Images need to be hi-resolution and crisp. But, that comes at a price. Large, high definition images can have huge file sizes. which make loading time slow. Large images not only will cause visitors to bounce, but in time, Google will notice as well, and this can affect your SEO.
Choosing the Right File Format: jpg, png and gifs that are supported by all browsers.
Compressing images will reduce the size to the minimum possible while keeping the required level of quality
Creating descriptive, keyword-rich file names is crucial for image optimization. Search engines not only crawl the text on your webpage, they also crawl your image file names.
Optimizing alt attributes carefully. Alt attributes are the text alternative to images when a browser can’t properly render them.
On another hand another very common problem are pixelated logos on a mobile devices or HD screen. That’s because the image isn’t optimized correctly.
Adding an SSL Certificate:
- Authenticates your business.
- Adds a padlock next to your web address in the browser. Establishes a secure connection between a browser and a server.
- Great for search results! HTTPS is one of the most powerful ranking factors for organic search, an SSL certificate will help boost your rankings and overall visibility.
- Increases users trust: users trust sites that have a website seal clearly on display. One study revealed that over 60% of customers said they abandoned a purchase because a trust logo was missing.
- Why is this important? Because the certificate encrypts communication—reassuring visitors their sensitive information, such as credit card information, is safe.
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