What Is Website Optimization And 8 Steps To Achieve It

Thomas Hess • Jul 07, 2017

Website Optimization And 8 Steps To Achieve It

Mawazo-meta-title-website-optimization

We all know the term Search Engine Optimization (or SEO), but what is Website Optimization? It has the same objectives but with a different approach. For website optimization, we focus on optimizing your website for specific subject matter to make it highly relevant to an audience interested in that subject matter. This requires a different approach than what is required for SEO, which is to optimize your website for search engines.

We recommend website optimization versus search engine optimization for constant and long-term search engine results. Since Google’s sole objective is to provide the best results for their users’ searches. This means that if your site is highly relevant to search terms for which you want to be found, you will be ranked well, no matter how often Google changes its algorithms.

What Are SEO Keywords?

SEO keywords are the words and phrases a person puts into a search engine. It is also known as a search query. To find SEO keywords for website optimization, there are a few things you should do.

Start by Studying Your Niche

Before learning what keywords can be used for site optimization, you need to learn everything you can about your niche. Get to know existing customers and try to see things from their perspective. You can also get involved with online communities within your niche, including forums and social media platforms. This helps find pain points that may be mentioned regarding your specific niche.

Define Your Goals

Next, you must define your goals and decide on a brand mission. This will help direct any SEO strategy you implement. Your SEO and keyword strategy should be segmented into different content marketing funnels to align with your goals. It will be the framework for your online marketing strategy and help you optimize your website. 

List Relevant Topics

It is time to find the topics best related to your business and buyer personas. Think about what topics your target audience will search for. You can then take these topics and break them down into keywords you can use. For example, if your brand specializes in baby products, some topics closely related to your brand may include baby shampoo and diaper rash treatment. 

Develop Seed Words

Create your seed words now that you have a list of subtopics based on your niche. A seed keyword or primary keyword lays the foundation for your keyword research. It helps identify your competitors while also defining your niche. 

Use Keyword Research Tools

When conducting your keyword research, there are several tools you can use that will provide you with a good advantage. Google Keyword Planner is one option. It is a free tool you can use to find keywords related to your business. It also allows you to see search estimates and the cost of targeting them. When doing SEO keyword research, you want to find the best short tail keyword and long term keyword options.

What is a short tail keyword compared to a long tail keyword? A short term keyword is a more generalized search query with only one or two words. Long tail keywords have three to five words. A long tail keyword has a lower search volume and are less popular search terms. However, compared to short tail, they are more specific, provide greater detail, and clearly signal search intent. 

There are also semantic keywords. These are keywords more closely related to your original keyword and provide search engines with greater insight into a topic. This helps rank the web page more accurately.

The Importance of SEO Keywords for Website Optimization

To rank on search engines, you want to drive organic traffic to your site from the search engine results pages (SERPs). The keywords you choose to target determine the kind of website traffic you get for your web page.

Keywords are about your audience as well as the content you use on your webpage. For content to rank well organically while driving more visitors to the site, you need to use the language they use and understand the kind of content they are searching for. 

How to Optimize Your Content for SEO

With that in mind, here are 8 important steps to ensure your website has been optimized to its full potential.

Research Keywords

Keywords, or keyword phrases, are the search terms that people enter into the search engines in order to find information. In order to help potential customers find you online, you will need to feature the appropriate keywords in important areas throughout your website. The most important factors about keywords are:

  • “Search volume” – this number indicates how many times this exact keyword phrase was searched in a period of time
  • “Competition” – this percentage shows how many other sites are optimizing their websites for the same keyword phrase

The best opportunities for you are to select keyword phrases with high search volume and low competition. It is important to be a bit creative with the types of keywords that you use. This could include keywords that potential customers who don’t know they need your products or services might be using.

An example of this is optimizing for a keyword phrase of “party decoration tips” for a florist, “how to unclog a toilet” for a hardware store, or even “gifts for mother’s day” for a spa.

Assign Keywords to Your Webpages

Keywords, or keyword phrases, are the search terms that people enter into the search engines in order to find information. In order to help potential customers find you online, you will need to feature the appropriate keywords in important areas throughout your website. The most important factors about keywords are:

Selecting keywords per page of the site enables you to target your website to your specific audience with keywords that span their interests or speak to their pain points.

Optimize Webpage Content

For best results, select a keyword phrase for each page of your website, and be sure to use it in the content of the page at least 1-2 times. A general measurement could be 1.5-3% of the content should be the keyword, no more than that.

Selecting keywords per page of the site enables you to target your website to your specific audience with keywords that span their interests or speak to their pain points.

Create Meta Tags & Descriptions

Use the keyword in the meta title and meta description of each page.

A meta-title is the text that appears on the tab of your browser when you are hovering over the page.

create Meta Tags & Descriptions

A meta description is the text that appears in the description on the Google Search Results Page when listed. (This text should, therefore, be written to encourage the searcher to click on your link!)

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Optimize Images and Video Content

Google bots cannot read images and video content, but this is valuable content that further shows your depth of knowledge about your subject matter. Therefore, use ALT texts for this content to describe the image for Google.

This text is also used for those who are hearing impaired and may have software to read pages for them, so the more descriptive you are, the better.

Enable Social Sharing from Web Pages

Social sharing buttons are incredibly useful for helping more people find your business online. Consider it powerful free advertising every time someone tweets your website or shares it on Facebook.

Make social sharing easy by providing share buttons on pages that have informative content.

Socialsharing

Add Structured Data Schema to Webpages

Structured data schema is a standard set of HTML tags added to your web pages which tells Google what type of content is included on the page and in what format you would like it displayed on the SERPs. Google likes it when you make it easy for them to understand what your website is about, so you will be rewarded for these efforts in your ranking.

Frequently Add Content, Such as a Blog Post Articles

Getting ranked well on Google SERPs requires very specific efforts, as you have read from our previous tips. But you can’t stop there. To maintain your ranking and improve it, ongoing content creation is required.

Content optimization allows the search engine and site visitor to easily understand your SEO content. Content optimization leads to search engine friendly and high quality content that is easy to find and easy to navigate.

What to Avoid During Website Optimization

Now that you know what to do to optimize your website, you must look at a few things you should avoid. These common SEO mistakes can hurt your site rather than help.

Targeting the Wrong Keywords

Every SEO strategy starts with keyword research. Stay away from highly competitive keywords when first starting out. There are tons of websites out there already trying to rank for the same keywords. Instead, target long tail keywords that include a location and other relevant keywords that boost your ranking factor. 

Local SEO is important because Google processes more than 8 billion daily searches. Almost half of these searches are made by people searching for local services and products. You can gain valuable online traffic with the right local SEO strategy and keywords. 

Keyword Stuffing

Another common SEO mistake is keyword stuffing. This is when you add a ton of keywords to a webpage in hopes it ranks well. However, when Google sees this, it will demote the page. Avoid adding lists of phone numbers that will not add value to your page, blocks of text with lists of words you are trying to rank for and repeating the same keywords and phrases. When you do this, the content begins to sound unnatural and does nothing positive for its rank. 

Irrelevant Title Tag 

A title tag and meta description are parts of HTML code that tell a search engine how to display them in SERPs. A title tag and meta must be relevant to the topic and accurate. It shouldn’t be vague or too long. You want it to appeal to people, so they click on your page.

Publishing Low Quality Content

Content is king, which becomes apparent when you learn more about SEO. Only invest in good content that is valuable to your target audience and meets their needs. If you post low quality content that doesn’t resonate with your audience, it won’t do much good. Image quality should also be considered.

Not Using Quality Backlinks

Search engines look at backlinks as a sign of authority and an important ranking factor. Avoid using low quality backlinks like those that don’t link to high-quality and credible sites. The backlinks should be to relevant and authoritative sites. You can use a domain authority checker tool to ensure your backlinks are good for search engine ranking.

Slow Loading Time and Site Speed

Slow site speed and a slow loading time can wreak havoc on a website. If your site speed is slow, your page won’t rank well, and you can miss out on valuable website traffic. To increase website speed, optimize the images you use and enable browser caching and compression. You can also use a tool like PageSpeed Insights. It provides suggestions on what you can do to improve page speed. 

Lack of Mobile Compatibility

For better website performance and improved user experience, you want to ensure mobile compatibility. People are using their phones and mobile devices more than ever, so you want to be sure you are in the ranking algorithm sights when it comes to your mobile compatibility. So, don’t just optimize your website for desktop use. Make sure you also have a mobile friendly design that loads quickly for mobile website visitors.

Too Many Internal Links

As a website owner, avoiding using too many internal links on your landing pages, service pages, blog posts, etc., is best. While internal links can help Google understand how all the pages are related, too many can be overwhelming and negatively impact your SEO. Use simple URL structured data that helps Google Index rank your site more easily. 

Not Using Web Analytics

Web analytics are an important part of any SEO optimization strategy. If you don’t use web analytics, it can be hard to determine if your SEO efforts are working and improving website performance. Web analytics can be used to compare to competitor sites and shows you what works and doesn’t. Since the world of SEO optimization is always changing, it helps to use website optimization tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console.

Google Analytics helps evaluate and measure how your marketing and content perform and encourage user behaviour and engagement. This SEO tool collects important data and sorts it into useful information a website owner can use to improve. 

Google Search Console is an SEO tool that allows you to monitor and sometimes resolve errors related to your web page, including site loading issues and security problems. It ensures your page runs at an optimal performance level and has a good search performance overall.

Web optimization requires that your website has the appropriate on-site efforts and ongoing content development to ensure that Google still finds your site relevant to desired keyword searches. This is not a “build it, and they will come” strategy.

Mawazo Marketing focuses on long-term findability for businesses. With a focus on strategic keyword planning and content development, our clients see improvement in search ranking regularly.

Contact us for a website audit and consultation.

Do you have any questions on the above, or would you like to share your experience? Just email ideas@mawazo.ca or call +1 (833) 503-0807.


At Mawazo Marketing we work with owners of B2B companies who want to accelerate their business. We help them with a concrete digital growth plan, a  website that saves operational cost, and a digital marketing system that generates leads. For qualifying clients we offer a 5x ROI guarantee: if we don't reach the objective, then we pay back the difference. Book a Free Strategy Session to find out more.

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