To capture customer interest and drive sales conversion, users must be able to quickly and easily find your site. If they can’t, it doesn’t matter how much time and effort you’ve spent increasing page performance and creating great content — without top-tier search results, your site is effectively invisible.
And there’s no time to waste when it comes to getting noticed: Google now handles upwards of an estimated 2.2 trillion searches every year — and this number is only going up. So how do companies connect the dots between current content resources and potential search results? It all starts with web optimization — tools and techniques designed to get your site indexed by search engines and noticed when it matters most.
In this beginner’s guide, we’ll break down the basics of web optimization, tackle key techniques to improve your search standing and highlight some of the best tools available to get your site front and center.
What is Web Optimization?
Put simply, web optimization is anything that helps your site get noticed by search engines. This starts with content that appeals to automated search engine “spiders” — pieces of code that comb the web for relevant, keyword-driven content.
But having your page found isn’t enough; your content must also pass checks for relevance, originality, and even search intent to be consistently displayed as a top result.
Given its focus on search success, web optimization is often called search engine optimization (SEO). Different SEO solution providers and industry experts have differing ideas about exactly what makes optimization efforts successful — for example, many focus on targeted keyword usage to boost your ranking for specific search terms.
And while this is both useful and potentially profitable, it’s not enough in isolation; effective web optimization requires the reevaluation of all component website parts and content to ensure the collective end result is ideally suited to satisfy search engine preferences.
But what does this look like in practice?
Key Web Optimization Techniques
Before putting time and effort into SEO and web optimization strategies it’s critical to define specific outcomes.
Here’s why: The sheer volume of tactics, tools, and techniques available to improve search-friendly design is staggering — by understanding where your website struggles and focusing your efforts to address these shortfalls you can maximize impact while limiting overall spend.
As a result, the best way to start any website optimization effort is with a complete audit of site performance and pain points. Tools such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights can identify loading and usability issues, while basic keyword research can help determine which terms your target market customers are searching for — and how your site stacks up.
For example, if you run a lawn care business in Detroit, you’ll want a high search ranking for terms like “lawn care Detroit” and “Detroit lawn service”. If searching for those terms doesn’t return your site as a top result, you’ve got work to do.
And while there’s no single, standardized solution to optimize your website, some common techniques include:
Pinpoint your market.
Before you can optimize your website, you need to define your target market. Start by identifying your ideal customer: What products or services are they looking for? How much are they willing to spend? What are their priorities when it comes to contacts, contracts and communications?
Develop your keywords.
Next, select keywords aligned with your target market and use them to return search engine results. If your site isn’t on the first page, top competitors provide key data to help optimize your content.
Optimize your content.
Great content relies on relevance; any blog post, video, podcast, or digital resource you create should be geared toward your target market. But it’s also critical to optimize your content for search engines by adding keyword-based page titles, integrating specific keywords where applicable (and without overstuffing), and developing meta-tags that highlight key concepts.
Account for user intent.
Improved, AI-driven analysis now helps companies like Google extrapolate user intent based on their search inquiry and display contextually relevant results. This makes it essential for site owners and operators to think like users rather than marketers when creating new content and optimizing site design.
Improve the user experience.
Better user experience means increased satisfaction — and can also impact your search ranking. As of 2018, Google began incorporating mobile page speed as a factor in search rankings, making improved performance a factor in favorable results.
Build better backlinks.
Backlinks from other highly-ranked sites can help organically improve your standing in search results. Best bet? Create and submit relevant, market-focused content to industry news or knowledge sites. It’s also a good idea to regularly search for your company or brand name to identify any missing attributions and ask for backlinks to be included.
Address image attributes.
Images optimization for web content is also critical. Start by giving your images file names that succinctly describe what they display; do the same for any image alt attributes. When it doubt, err on the side of plain language and straightforward descriptions — superfluous image details can result in penalties to your overall ranking.
Measure and monitor.
Effective optimization requires ongoing measurement and monitoring to ensure long-term ROI. Here’s why: As customer preferences evolve, top keywords change and search engines shift their focus. Regular evaluation of SEO efforts helps keep your optimization strategy on track.
Image Optimization for Web
The goal of any image optimization strategy is to improve web performance — and the single best way to do that is by compressing images on your site.
Compressing your images — while maintaining image quality as much as possible — is a crucial component to any broader web optimization strategy. Even if you spend hours optimizing every other facet of your site, if your image file sizes are too large, they’ll slow down your site’s overall load time — and visitors won’t wait around for them to load before bouncing.
To learn more about compressing images, check out our post on the subject here.
5 Great Web Optimization Tools
While the right techniques can help boost the impact of your site’s content and marketing campaigns, the right tools can help streamline the process and give your team more time to focus on what matters — building your brand.
With hundreds of tools now available both free and for-pay, we’ve compiled a list of useful options to help your site maximize optimization efforts.
1. HubSpot CMS
The HubSpot content management system (CMS) is a full-featured solution with optimization tools for marketers, developers, and IT teams alike. Optimized web pages can be easily created, managed and personalized for different visitors and modified to suit specific device types or conversion objectives. Interested? Try a 14-day trial to see what HubSpot CMS can do for your business.
2. Moz Local Listing Score
Moz uses multiple data sources to see how your local business listings are performing across the web. 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.
3. 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 rank higher in search results.
4. Ahrefs Backlink Checker
As noted above, great backlinks can help boost your site’s ranking in search engines and drive referral traffic. Ahrefs Backlink Checker lets you see the top 100 backlinks to your site to help improve linking strategy and drive better search results. The trial version of this tool is free, while the premium option comes with a monthly cost.
Worth noting? You can also use this backlink checker to evaluate competitor sites and capitalize on gaps in keyword strategies.
5. Google Keyword Planner
Google makes the list again with their keyword planner. This tool not only identifies the search volume of specific terms but also suggests potentially relevant keywords that reflect user intent and may not be on your marketing radar, in turn opening new avenues to help boost your site’s overall relevance and ranking.
Optimally Speaking
Want to boost conversions and generate better ROI? Make sure your site gets noticed with targeted website optimization.
Start with an evaluation of current site performance, then implement key strategies to capture the attention of popular search engine spiders. Finally, deploy the right tools at the right time to automate key processes and discover new optimization opportunities.
