10 steps to a well-optimized website
Even the most appealing, well designed website with interesting content can go unnoticed if it’s not properly optimized. You want it to be both user and Google bots friendly to make your business visible in the online world and outrun your competitors. There are some factors that need to be considered while optimizing a site. And here are ten most essential steps to follow.
Even the most appealing, well designed website with interesting content can go unnoticed if it’s not properly optimized. You want it to be both user and Google bots friendly to make your business visible in the online world and outrun your competitors. There are some factors that need to be considered while optimizing a site. And here are ten most essential steps to follow.
1. Thorough analysis and audit
First, you need to analyse your current website to identify all its drawbacks and potential errors. This step will allow you to evaluate what exactly needs to be done to make your site well-optimised. The best solution is to hire a professional agency that deals with web positioning to do an in-depth audit and list all the things that need improvement.
2. Competition check
Take a look at your competitors’ websites. Check what phrases they are visible in Google and evaluate if these are the keywords you want to be visible too. Using SEO tools like SEMRush can be quite useful.
3. Choose your keywords
Next, an extremely important step is to choose the keywords you want to be visible on by your potential customers in the search engine results. They have to focus on the services and products you have in your offer.
4. Create valuable content
Content is king and well written, interesting articles on your website are key to attract your future customers. You should also remember to fill them up with previously selected keywords.
5. Technical on-site optimization
There are a few technical issues that need to be adjusted on your website: meta tags, meta descriptions, headings, pictures descriptions and alt text, proper URLs, and more.
6. Mobile friendliness
Google pays significant attention to websites’ mobile friendliness. You should as well. Making your site readable on mobile devices is key, mostly due to the fact that more and more people use mobiles to browse the internet.
7. Internal linking
Proper internal linking within your website tells Google bots which content is valuable, should be indexed and recommended to users. You can link to other products or services, articles on your blog or to a contact page. Don’t forget about call to action (CTA).
8. Site’s speed
If your website loads too long, it’s a signal for both Google and your users to search for a product of service elsewhere. Quick loading states that your business is worth visiting.
9. Link building
Apart from the internal linking, search engine optimization doesn’t exist without a proper link building strategy. To make your website more trustworthy you have to provide it with some backlinks. The more popular the website that links to your the better.
10. Monitoring
Last but not least - when you’ve already optimized your website and started a link building campaign, it’s not the end of your efforts. You still have to check how it all worked out and analyze the results of your actions. It’s best to measure it with Google Analytics and some SEO tools like Senuto. Remember that first changes won’t be visible after only a few days, but probably after weeks or even months.
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