10 Steps You Should Take to Optimize Your Website
You could have the most amazing website in terms of content, layout, and design, but it’s not going to do your business any good if it’s not optimized. Since most of your efforts with online engagement will eventually take searchers back to your website, it’s important to optimize it. San Diego web design professionals at Saba SEO share ten steps you should take to optimize your site.
1. Analyze Your Existing Site
Take a look at your website’s visible text and code and determine how well these things are working. Consider factors such as:
- How relevant your website’s content is to your target audience
- How your website currently ranks on leading search engines
- Actions searchers take when they visit your site (e.g. bounce rates, time spent on each page, conversion rates)
2. Check Out Your Competitors
Do a Google search for your products and services and see which other businesses come up on the results pages. These are your competitors. Use tools like SEMRush and SpyFu to see the keywords and phrases they are using.
3. Make a Keyword List
The simplest way to make a keyword list is to think like a searcher. Type in the words you would use to find your business or the products or services you offer.
4. Analyze Your Keywords
Once you have a keyword list to work with, use tools like Google’s Keyword Planner, KWFinder, and Moz’s Keyword Explorer to prioritize your keywords based on what’s likely to resonate well with your target searchers. Don’t forget to consider things like common misspellings and variations with plural and singular versions of words.
5. Track Your Keyword Results
Make a spreadsheet with your keywords on it and track the results in increments (e.g. 30 days, 45 days, 2 months). If your keywords are performing well, you should see a steady increase in your website’s traffic.
6. Set Goals and Objectives
You’ll get a good ROI with your optimization efforts if you have clear goals and objectives as a reference. Make decisions about:
- How many website visitors you’d like to see each day, week, or month
- The minimum number of conversions you expect
- How much of your sales, phone calls, and overall revenue should come from your website
- Results you would like to see with specific pages on your site
7. Do the Technical Parts of SEO
Use your top-performing keywords as a guide for your various tags (e.g. title tags and meta descriptions for each page). Meta tags aren’t all that helpful with ranking, but they do inspire clicks. Make it easier for search engines to crawl your site with new sitemaps for Google and Bing.
8. Create Relevant Content
After you’ve researched your keywords, use those words and terms within the content on your various website pages. When it makes sense to do so, increase your page word count. Studies suggest pages with higher word counts tend to perform better. Keep the focus on making your content easy to read with:
- Descriptive headers and subheads
- Short paragraphs for better readability
- Relevant images or videos
9. Track Results
Google Analytics can give you an assortment of customized reports so you can see what kind of results your website optimization efforts are getting. You can also use your own spreadsheet data to track results. Another option is to A/B test pages to see which one gets better results.
10. Maintain Your Site
Keep track of details such as how your keywords are performing, the quality of your backlinks, and how well your individual pages are performing so you’ll know when to make some adjustments here and there. Maintenance of your website for optimization purposes also includes:
- Updating website content as necessary
- Checking page load times
- Making sure your internal links are directing visitors to the right pages on your website
- Ensuring your website is performing well on both PCs and smaller screens on mobile devices (a responsive website design can help with this)
In addition to the steps mentioned here, there are plenty of off-site SEO things you can do to steer traffic to your website once it’s been optimized. For instance, email marketing can be a cost-effective way to present your site to customers. You can also include your site’s link in directory listings and mention your website in print, TV, or radio ads. Being active on your blog and on certain social media platforms can also generate interest in your website, which could lead to increased brand awareness and a boost in conversions.
Hiring a professional SEO agency is one of the best ways to optimize your website. If you’re looking for a reliable search engine optimization company, turn to Saba SEO, a San Diego SEO agency you can trust. Our experts use a variety of white hat techniques to optimize your website, increase your online ranking, and boost your conversion rate. For over ten years, we have helped businesses all over the world benefit from a range of winning SEO strategies. To learn about our digital marketing and SEO services, give us a call at 858-951-1717 today.