Website Optimization: Everything A Website Designer Needs To Know
Website optimization is the first step in any SEO campaign for a website designer. But trust me, it’s far more in-depth than just meta description optimization. Today, I’ll share everything you need to know about website optimization. Well, we’ll cover a great deal because ‘everything’ would require several posts.
What is Website Optimization?
Website optimization is a step-wise and strategic procedure for improving the performance of a website. A crucial component of website optimization is search engine optimization (SEO).
Each search engine has its own best practices and set of rules. However, some of them are similar due to the common goal of providing the best results to searchers. An SEO expert applies these best practices to the website for the opportunity to receive higher search rankings.
Using the example of a bodybuilder, the first thing he/she needs to do is work on their body. They’ll need to endure a strict diet and lots of workouts to enhance their physique. Likewise, a website needs to go through different on-page optimization related changes to realize the SEO benefits.
Website Optimization is Not All About Search Engines
A website’s ranking factors are in-part contributed user behavior on the website and user experience. Thus, the optimization is focused on making a website both SEO and user-friendly.
As a business owner with branding and lead generation goals, optimizing your website is crucial. Especially if you’re desiring positive results from your SEO marketing strategies. But even if you’re not ready for regular SEO services, you must optimize your website as a prerequisite.
Benefits To Optimizing Your Website
Whether you receive brand benefits, lead generation, or top rankings from optimization efforts depends on your industry. One would hope that at least a glimmer of success is realized. But the truth is, it depends on the competition in your industry. If your industry is highly competitive such as digital marketing agency or website designer, then website optimization is not enough.
You will need to do intense digital marketing activities such as SEO, SMM, PPC, etc., to beat the competition. Conversely, if your industry is relatively low competition then website optimization should be a good start. At least for receiving descent search rankings, brand benefits and generating leads.
However, regardless of the competition, optimizing your website provides the following benefits:
- An indexed-friendly website
- Easier for search bots to crawl
- Decreased bounced rate
- User-friend website which will improve visitor interaction and engagement.
- Boost in targeted keywords, organic traffic and organic score
- An indexed-friendly website
- Website audit and speed optimization
- Optimizing the website’s responsiveness
- Keyword, title tag, URL, header tag and meta description enhancements
- Image optimization
- Link structuring, canonicalization, sitemap, txt and meta robot adjustments
- Navigation, footer, 301 redirects, 404 customization
- CSS and W3C validations
Activities Performed During Website Enhancements
Generally, when an SEO professional mentions website optimization, people immediately focus on title and description. Albeit, these are two important elements for a page optimization, they’re not the only players in the optimization process.
The following list of activities performed as part of website optimization is subject to change when search algorithms changes.
The Best Time To Start Enhancing Your Website
The best time to start optimizing your website is during the development process. And the developer, website designer and SEO team should work in tandem. If the optimization is performed after the development is complete, additional processes will have to be performed. For example, the SEO expert will need to invest time in auditing the URLs. Then, he gives the list of SEO friendly URLs to the development team who needs to add those URLs. Plus, sometimes the new URLs require performing additional activities such as 301 redirects.
So, if you don’t have an SEO expert on staff, you should consult with one prior to buying a domain name. And before building a website. If your site is already developed, hire an SEO expert soon to optimize your website. That way, when you’re ready to invest in paid advertising, your website is ready to go.
When you’re ready, we are too! And we’ll help you get started with our domain expertise. We offer affordable SEO services, including website optimization, and other affordable digital marketing services. Get in touch to know how we can help you with your digital journey.
You may also enjoy reading: Expert Tips On How To Improve Your Social Media Channels For Small Business
Hazel Burgess
FOUNDER/SEO DIRECTOR
Hazel is the Founder & SEO Director at Envisager Studio, a premier website design agency specializing in WordPress website design, development and internet marketing. In her spare time, she writes about search engine optimization, website design, and internet marketing.
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