Whether your goal is to get more leads, sales, or reduce customer service phone calls, website optimization can be used to make your website more effective at meeting those goals.
Let’s first make sure we understand the absolute basics of SEO, including why it matters and how it compares to other marketing channels.
What is web optimization?
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. First of all, specific keywords that describe your products/services must be included on your website. 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. 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).
Web optimization is not only about expecting more traffic, but being able to optimise your website so that your visitors will stay on it.
Why is web optimization important?
Web optimization is important for three main reasons:
First, web optimization helps your website rank higher in search engines. This means that your content will be more visible to a wider audience and it will help you sell more.
Second, web optimization helps your website load faster and run smoother. If your website is slow or unresponsive, it can lose potential customers who would rather go to a competitor.
Third, web optimization helps you make your website more accessible to people with disabilities. For example, if you want to make your website ADA compliant, web optimization is the key to making this happen.
A more effective website can increase revenue for your business through new sales or leads, and reduce cost, through better conversion rates on existing marketing spend, or by reducing customer support needs through better information and clarity for visitors with questions.
What Should I Optimize On My Website?
Every business is unique, therefore every website will need to be optimized for different things. The place to start is to understand two things:
What is your website visitor’s intent? In other words, what task are they trying to accomplish? When you know this you know what behavior you’re trying to help and facilitate. If their goal is to find a job, you can focus on getting them to the right spot on your site. If it’s to learn more about a product, you can focus optimizations on helping them achieve that goal.
What are your business KPIs? Hopefully your business goals are related to your visitor goals. Know what you are trying to optimize your website for is the first step in deciding what to test, change and fix. Prioritize your business objectives for your website and those business goals will help you decide where to invest in optimizing your website.
Once you’ve identified the priorities of both your business and your website visitors you can then determine what you should optimize first. Here are a few common areas that people choose to focus on when doing website optimization.
Landing pages – Optimizing your website means optimizing the entry or landing pages where visitors first come into contact with your site. Whether they come from Google, Facebook or somewhere else, the landing page is where people make an initial decision on whether you can help them with their needs.
Optimizing the landing pages on your website can lead to lower bounce rates and greater conversions as people gain confidence that they’re in the right place to get their questions answered. Don’t confuse landing pages with your home page. Look at your top landing pages reports in your analytics package to figure out what landing pages to optimize on your website first.
Conversion points – If you’re asking your visitor to fill out a form or take some other action that counts as a conversion for you, you’ll want to investigate the user behavior on those pages. How many people visit those pages versus how many complete the form? Can you test different elements of that experience to improve the conversion rate? Focusing on these conversion points is always a great place to look for website optimization opportunity.
Checkout process – If you’re an e-commerce company, your checkout process is your biggest source of opportunity and biggest source of frustration. Studying the user behavior through the checkout process can provide you with all sorts of inspiration for optimization opportunities.
Home page – This is a special landing page, the front door to your website online. While not everyone will start here, a large portion of your traffic will use this as the jumping off point for their journey. Website optimization requires time spent optimizing your homepage. Collect insights on the jobs people want to accomplish when they come to your homepage and develop an optimization plan to meet those needs.
These are just a few areas where website optimization can be immediately valuable, but the best bet is to look at your site performance through the dual lense of what your visitors want to achieve and what your main business objectives are.
Best Practices that will Increase Your Website Traffic and Success!
- Create an attractive website design that has a professional look and is easy to navigate, with clean content for all of your visitors.
- Add engaging content on your blog or website that is unique to your business.
- Create a landing page with an objective that will be of interest to specific audiences, such as “We are hiring!” or “Sign up for our newsletter!”
- Add social media sharing features on your website that will help you to grow your audience and share content with them. Social media can help spread your message and build awareness of your brand while simultaneously driving traffic to your website.
Some of the best ways to increase website traffic are as follows:
- Try Search engine optimization (SEO), it is a process that can help improve your site’s ranking on search engines by making your site more relevant to search queries.
- Affiliate marketing is a popular way for companies to generate revenue by selling their products or services to other companies.
- Increase your website’s social presence by promoting your site on third party sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.