Website Optimization: Things you need to know

If you own an online business or you are planning one, you would have heard about website optimization. Every visitor visits a website to find a solution to their question, or to complete a task. An optimized website makes it easier for the visitor to land on the correct webpage to complete their task. It assists users to be more successful with their visits to the website.

An optimized site is more effective for your business as it has the potential to increase the revenue for your business. An optimized website can also reduce overall cost and increase revenue through better conversion rates on existing advertisement expenditure. Moreover, it may also reduce customer support expenditure through better information for the visitors.

For example, if you are an eCommerce website that sells only luxury watches, an optimized website will filter out users who need normal watches thus increasing the conversion rate through better targeting.

It is important to be updated with the latest optimization strategies to ensure the best results, and thus, higher ranking for your website. We have listed a few techniques through which you can optimize your website and thus stay ahead of the rest.

1. High quality and SEO Friendly content

There is one thing that will remain the lifeblood of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Content impacts everything in SEO. The better the content, the better the chances of users visiting your website. The content must add value and should be relevant to the users.

One must strive to produce the best content on the web for a particular topic or subset of your topic. The practice will ensure not only demand your content but also build site authority which in-turn will ensure better ranking in search engine results.

2. Mobile-first optimization

You must optimize your web property for mobile-first, and, then make it compatible with Desktop or Laptop. This solves a lot of problems as most of the prospects use a mobile device for the first visit to your website. And remember first impression sticks in the minds of users.

However, optimization for a mobile device does not stop there. One needs to study the search engine result pages for mobile devices to understand what kind of traffic can they expect, and to find the best possible optimization that will click for the website’s performance. Also, one must keep track of all insights that reflect the performances of mobile devices on priority.

3. Structuring of data

We all understand the importance of quality content. However, search engines do not fully understand contexts. This forces us to provide hints to these search engines for better understanding and thus, better results.

This means structuring the data so that search engines get to know what is on the page, how each element of the page is related to the other elements on the page and how that page is linked to other pages of the website.

With structured data, you will be able to serve your customers in a better way across any medium. Moreover, it will also help in improving the analytics to understand and evaluate which part of the content is driving results. This data can be used to prepare future content and marketing strategies.

4. Website Upload Speed

The upload speed of your website has a direct impact on its traffic and conversions. We all understand the importance of quality content. However, search engines do not fully understand contexts. This forces us to provide hints to these search engines for better understanding and thus, better results.

According to Google, as page load goes from 3 seconds to 5 seconds, the probability of bounce rate increases 32 % whereas the probability of bounce rate increases to 90 % if the page load time increases from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.

Slow upload of the website gives the user a poor experience. This is why Google takes page upload speed into consideration while ranking a page. If users are staying longer on your website as compared to other competitors, you will get to see improved rankings of your website.

Some of the common practices for optimizing page speed includes reducing file sizes by compressing them, minimizing HTTP requests for several parts of the page, like images, and CSS, reducing DNS upload time, making JAVA script load after important files, improving server response time, keeping plugins to a minimum and minimizing image sizes.

5. User Experience

The user interface plays a pivotal role in a website’s optimization and its ranking. A smooth user interface with easily accessible features meets the visitors’ expectations.

Taking note of one’s business consideration, several parameters have to be fine-tuned to match user expectations. The user experience has interlinkages with other features like website speed, unique and engaging content, easily accessible features for targeting audiences, and quality of products and services offered by the website.

6. Link Building

While some consider link building as an old tip for website optimization, you need to be assured that it is equally important in 2020. Link building is vital for the ranking of webpages. It has started to evolve itself through concepts of relevant and irrelevant links thus, emphasizing the need for quality content.

With constant updates taking place in the Google algorithm, contents linking to irrelevant links will not be successful in the future. We urge you to produce high-quality linkages for success in the coming years. Also, one must ensure irrelevant links are removed from the website.

Conclusion

Optimizing a website can be a challenging task. However, the potential returns of optimizing a website are worth the effort and investment. The visitors may come from different channels but once they enter our website, we must ensure through website optimization that we are able to help them. The inability to serve or making them roam around on the website due to lack of optimization may lose customers and thus hamper business.

Remember, website optimization is a continuous process that showcases its benefits over time. We must identify and prioritize different aspects of optimization for a better result.