Best Practices for website optimization and SEO

Best Search Engine Optimization(SEO) practices are tested and proven tactics for enhancing a brand or a website's visibility in SERPs without spending on ads. When a website is designed it is usually made with the user's mind and for them to explore the content easily. It is not wrong to say, that one of those users is a search engine that helps people to analyze your content.

So, keep in mind, that the better visibility of your website pages in search results, the more likely you will be clicked on and found and this can only happen if you have executed website optimization. In short, SEO aims to help grab and attract the website visitor who can become a new customer, loyal client, or an individual who keeps visiting your website for the sake of knowledge and information.

In this blog, you are going to understand how to build a result-oriented and effective SEO strategy that will drive your business to endless success.

So, before any delay, let's get started!

What is an SEO Strategy?

When the word strategy comes, it indicates there is something to prepare, design, and organize. Here, we have an SEO strategy, which means creating, optimizing, and promoting content to enhance your website visibility in SERPs to drive more organic traffic to your business website. 

It consists of different techniques and key points to be considered, such as on-page website optimization, keyword research, link building, and technical SEO. In simple words, we can say that SEO Strategy is a method to follow if you want to get organic traffic.

What is Organic Traffic?

The number of website visitors that visit the website from the unpaid search result is known as organic traffic.

What is Website Optimization?

Website Optimization is the method of utilizing refined strategies, advanced tools, and experimental techniques to boost the overall website performance intends to increase the website's organic traffic, increase conversion rate leading to growth in the company's revenue. 

To improve these things companies perform A/B testing to experiment with different techniques on pages to determine which change will result in to increase in conversion rate and reduced bounce rate. You can check out our Website Optimization services.

To help out our users we have compiled a list of elements of website optimization. 

Have look!

Important Elements of Website Optimization

• Create a headline or a message targeting the company's values and mission
• Try to use visual media, such as videos and images.
• Display customer case studies that explain their success using your service or product.
• Work on the style, text, and placement of the CTA - Call to Action Button.
• Organize website navigation, it helps in user experience improvement
• Place the social sharing buttons correctly with the active URLs.
• Do not forget to optimize the website according to Mobile SEO Best Practices.

What Are the Best SEO Practices?

There is no doubt in saying that search engines have a single job to provide users with what they are looking for, answer their queries, and provide them with the correct information. You must have seen, their algorithms keep changing and choose only those pages that are the most related to your/users' query and prioritize to rank them on the top of the first SERPs.

There are some effective website optimization strategies to follow to get on the top. Here we have compiled a detailed list of best SEO practices. Take a look!

Watch your Competitors

Whatever the niche of your business, there is always another leading company available on the internet which may be your competitors. In Technical language, we say, these competitors are the already ranked websites with similar keywords and targeted audience as you are.

It's important to know what your competitors are doing and what strategies are they implementing. There is no better way to look at that than their websites. Analyze what type of content they are writing, and look at the design and overall presence of the website.

It can tell you a lot about the business strategies they are implementing. It's a short way to get to know what your audience likes and prefers.

Write Valuable Content

Content is the heart of any website. If your content is good, effective, attractive, informative, and useful, thus, it's not hard for you to get on top.

But wait wait wait... Just writing the content is not enough, writing optimized content is more important it refers to on-page SEO optimization. Here comes the use of primary keywords, which you will learn later in this blog.

While writing optimized content, try to repeat the primary keyword several times in your blog - once or twice in the opening and closing of the blog, but write it smartly, strategically, and authoritatively.

Don't forget "the content you're writing is essential to improve your SEO.”

Leverage Primary Keywords

A primary keyword is the main word on which you want your website to rank on top of SERPs. We can say that, it's the main query or search term. Using this query or primary keyword strategically can help your website to rank more effectively. 

There are four standard types of search queries/keywords: 

• Informational
• Navigational
• Commercial
• Transactional

We suggest you add your primary keywords strategically in the given locations:

• Meta Tag: The page title can appear in the SERPs.
• Meta description: The HTML page overview that can appear in the SERPs.
• Header tag: The HTML tag that includes the primary on-page heading.
• Body content: The primary content on the page.
• Slug: The part of the page link.

While putting your keywords in the following locations, don't forget to be natural and user-friendly.

Perform SEO Page Optimization

It will be not wrong if we say this step is also about placing keywords and optimizing your content for SEO prospects. Here we have three main on-page SEO strategies that we suggest focusing on.

Internal Linking

Simply, you have to link from high-authority web pages to pages that require more authority. For example, If you have published a guide/blog a few times ago and it got ranked you find the page with a lot of authority. Simply link from that page to the new page. It will rank more easily. When we talk about SEO, short URLs outperform long URLs.

Semantic SEO

Optimize the content for Semantic SEO. In other words: Find words that are associated with your targeted keyword. And use those terms in your content.

It's not that hard to find these semantic keywords.

• Simply, type your main targeted keyword into Google Search Bar.
• Google will show you words and terms they view as closely relevant to that topic.
• Then, type the exact keyword into a normal Google search bar, and scroll down the cursor to the “Searches related to…” area.
• Spot any of the words that you discover in your content.

And you are all set!

Make SEO-Friendly URLs

An SEO-friendly URL give search engines an idea of what content is about. Organize your content so that URLs are created logically and understandable. Here is how you can create an SEO-friendly URL.

• Include your target keyword in the URLs to increase the chance of ranking.
• Use short URLs because they tend to beat long URLs in SERPs.
• Include types/categories or subfolders. For example, if you are selling something, you may have a shop subcategory. This enables users to guide your site.

For Example:

Write Eye-catching Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

While optimizing a page for search intent, try to write a persuasive title tag and meta description. Both components can appear in SERPs. Google utilizes your title tag to understand what your content and page is about. 

If the tag doesn't include your targeted keyword, it can mean that your page isn't relevant to the result. Follow these SEO tips to optimize title tags and meta descriptions on your website:

• Make sure they’re unique
• Use the primary keyword front-loaded if possible
• Staying within 50-60 characters for titles and approximately under 105 characters will help stop text from being trimmed in the SERP
• Rather than being subtle, calls to action convince users to click through
• Prove that your page will match the search intent
• Use impactful benefits (ex: free delivery) to make your result pop on the page.

Don't Forget to Optimize Your Images

Images are an important aspect of enhancing user experience and as well boosting the website rankings in search engines when it comes to optimizing a site for SEO

Optimizing images means that they are viewable by as many people with the shortest price to their download times - which in turn can lead to reduced page load and higher search engine rankings.

Below are a few suggested guidelines for uploading images and enabling those images to rank well in Google:

Choose the Right Format

Choosing the correct image format is the foremost step towards optimization. Popular formats include JPEG, WEBP, PNG, and GIF. 

Compress Your Images

If you have large image files, it can generate your website to last forever to load. Deal with the bloat by utilizing image compression tools such as Adobe Photoshop, tinyPNG, or JPEG Optimizer.

Try to make sure your images are less than 100KB in size whenever you can.

Optimize Alt Text

Alternative text-Alt text is important for SEO. It enables search engines to comprehend what the image is about and delivers a description for visually impaired users. Ensure your alt text is descriptive and includes relevant keywords, but avoid keyword stuffing.

Use Responsive Images

Make sure your images are responsive to deliver a good user experience across all devices. Use the “srcset” attribute in your HTML to do various image sizes based on the user's device and screen resolution. This allows for maintaining image quality while decreasing excessive data usage.

Optimize Your Website Speed

It's a very important factor for Google. Specifically when it comes to mobile, which is why we suggest making the site load fast ASAP. For that purpose, there are a lot of tools available in the market to check the overall performance of your website, such as the Pagespeed insight tool.

Create an Internal Linking Structure

Links between pages of your website are essential because they enable search engines and users to navigate to your website and understand how they are relevant to each other.

If they are used strategically they can help you rank more easily. To check your site structure, screaming frog is one of the best options.

Make Authoritative Backlinks

If your web page has more authoritative backlinks, thus you have more chances to rank well on Google. We are not saying every backlink is the same, no they aren't. Some backlinks can help you boost your ranking for the search queries exponentially while on the other hand, it may be harmful.

You must focus on building high-authority backlinks and niche-relevant Backlinks to improve your chances of ranking higher on your primary keyword.

Pro Tip: One of the most useful methods to build authoritative backlinks is copying your competitors’ link-building strategies.

Look at their practices in the top pages’ topics, length, format, and style.

For example:

• What your competitor is writing about?
• Are they writing long-form content or short-form content?
• Are they using visuals a lot?

These questions can help you to make your content strategy.

Sidestep Distracting Advertisements

Ads are a common part of the internet and are intended to be seen by users, but they should not be overly distracting or prevent users from reading your content.

For instance, avoid using advertisements or interstitial pages (pages displayed before or after the expected content) that make it hard to use the website.

Give Links to Relevant Resources

Links are a great way to connect your users and search engines to other parts of your site, or relevant pages on other sites.

Further, links can also add significance by linking users (and Google) to another resource that verifies what you're writing about.

Control your Snippets

Snippet is sourced from the content of the page the search query and result are linked to. It means you have complete control over the words to be used to generate snippets. Snippets can also be sourced from the content of the meta description, which is normally a brief, one or two-liner summary of the page. 

To write a catchy and to-the-point meta description, try to make it short and unique to one page. A meta description is referred to as a pitch that convinces the user that the page is exactly what they're looking for.

What is a featured snippet? 

In simple words featured snippets are the particular boxes that appear on Google's search page.

They just take out the content from the page and place it instantly on the initial search, intent to answer the user's query. They can also appear in the "People also ask" section.

Tools to Use for Website Optimization

Getting your website ranked on top shouldn't be a difficult task to do. A website's ranking depends on fulfilling its users'/visitors' needs and expectations.

Some of the website optimization tools play a vital part in achieving these goals. These tools boost a website’s visibility on search engines, design, user experience, and information.

What are website optimization tools?

Website optimization tools are those digital tools that enhance how nicely a website performs in other necessary areas. They analyze different factors of a website, such as its appearance, speed, user experience, and search engine visibility. 

Based on this thorough analysis, they deliver valuable insights and helpful tips for improvement. Website optimization tools present practical guidance for determining what’s delaying your website or practices to boost user engagement. 

By following these recommendations, you can effectively fine-tune every part of your website.

Here we have compiled a list of top website optimization tools for you. Have a look!

List of top 10 website optimization tools

The below-mentioned tools don't charge to start website optimization, however, if you want to have a deeper optimization of any specific section of your website, for instance, website speed enhancement, you can upgrade their plans.

1. PageSpeed Insights
2. Google Search Console (GSC)
3. Screaming Frog
4. Optimizely
5. GTmetrix
6. WAVE
7. Site Audit 
8. On-Page SEO Checker 
9. Log File Analyzer
10. Yoast

Final Words

Utilizing the correct website optimization practices and tools is important for companies aiming to enhance their user experience, online presence, and overall performance.

These practices and tools come with various useful elements, such as content strategies, website page speed, user experience improvement, optimal strategies for website performance, thorough survey options, and advanced analytics. 

They help businesses to gather useful insights, study user manners, and continually improve their websites.