Website Optimization for Increased Traffic

Business success today is much due to online performance and website optimization is the key to increased traffic to your site. The world is online waiting to search your business! On average, Canadians spend 4 hours online more than people in any other country in the world. That is a whopping extra 36.7 hours per month!

With so many people browsing the internet, if your website is not optimized, you could be missing out potential clients!  You are probably wondering how to optimize your website. The entire SEO process can be very overwhelming so we created a list of the 10 golden rules of website optimization. What is it about these keywords that are so important to site optimization? These rules should help you understand how the SEO process works and teach you website optimization techniques!

Let’s get started!

1. The Importance of Keywords

Unless you’re new to SEO, then you know the importance of keywords to website optimization.  Sure, there are many research Tools such as Ad Words by Google that will generate keywords that get the most hits but it will take some time to learn which ones will work best for you and your business.  Follow these 3 steps to grow your SEO using keywords.

1. Research the right keywords for you.
2. Create a list that will generate the most hits for you.
3. Use them in well-written, relevant posts without giving the impression you’re just sprinkling them in.

Be sure to stick to the keywords you have selected.  It’s the best way to optimize website for search engines and you will rank higher.

According to Mike Zhmudikov from Seologist: “Never fall in love with the keywords you’ve once chosen. Always keep on digging more keyword opportunities, for example, via Google trends or competitors’ analysis. Infinite keyword research must become your weekly or monthly routine”

2. Follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines

Many web searches are performed through Google. Thankfully, Google wants to help website owners succeed and has created a list of Webmaster Guidelines to follow when you are optimizing your website.  The guidelines act as a site optimization tutorial and will help make your website rank higher in SEO.

Add a Sitemap

The best way to help visitors on your website to find their way around is to add a sitemap. These are menus that will lead your visitor to other pages on your website.  You will often see these repeated across the top of each webpage so people can get from one place to another easily. Adding a sitemap to your webpage will also win you some SEO points with Google.

Text Links and Text

If you’re going to include links, make sure they come from reputable sources such as a newspaper, journal, or niche magazine. Don’t surpass 100 links per page. This might raise red flags and your site could get flagged as spammy. Check your text links to ensure they’re not broken. If they are, it’s important to replace them.

Check for Technical Issues

When you are building your website, be sure to check for technical issues. Paying attention to the length of your URL’s. These are what appears in the search bar and the golden rule is – the shorter the better. You never know which internet browser visitors will use so you must ensure your website is compatible with all of them. Also, long URLs are very unappealing and difficult to share or type.  Website Optimization from the start will put you on top of the charts!

User Testing

If you are an app developer or running any type of SaaS Business, you should have User Acceptance Testing set up to ensure your UX is both intuitive and fluid. If you have not heard about UAT testing before, you can learn about how to set up a walk-through for the end user or the client to verify the workflow of the software by visiting Design Rush in the link.

3. Use Quality Content

Let’s face it, great websites use quality content and website visitors are attracted to it! Bloggers who constantly update blogs, adding quality content, tend to be the most successful ones. Many seasoned business people often wonder how new and young bloggers are able to attract so much business to their sites. This is because their blogs keeps readers engaged and coming back for more. If you want to attract more visitors to your website, ensure you post engaging content on a consistent basis and share it through various social media channels.

4. Follow Keyword Rules

It is imperative that you follow keyword rules when building your website. It’s not as simple as picking the right ones and placing them in your text.  These generate more visitors and traffic to your website but it’s easy to get a bit carried away with your keyword placement.

One of the web page optimization best practices is not to exceed 40% keywords in your content.  If Google Crawlers catch you using keywords in more than 40% of the text per page, they will most likely flag your website as spammy and it won’t show up on organic searches.

A way to ensure you don’t over do it with the keywords is by adding them after you’re done writing the blog post. Some bloggers use a technique to add 1 keyword for every 2 or 3 paragraphs depending on the length of your post.

5. Add Optimized Images

The best London ON SEO expert encourage adding optimized images to your website. A picture says a thousand words!  If you are going to add high-resolution images, make sure you size the images properly to reduce their loading times.  The higher the resolution, the longer they may take to load. The longer the load, the more likely they will leave your site.  Optimized images load faster and keep your website traffic longer.

6. W3C Accessibility Checklists

Similar to the Google Webmaster Checklist, the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) has developed a list of standards.  This checklist focuses primarily on the user experience. Following these guidelines will ensure that people with disabilities will be able to easily use your website.

7. HTML

Not many people know how to write HTML and today’s do it yourself websites may not require the knowledge but this doesn’t mean it’s not important. For example, if you copy and paste text from a word processor into your website, it could complicate the HTML.

The text may appear correct but the code could have security holes, causes memory leaks, leak customer credit card information or contain a backdoor that gives access to a totally different site that is restricted.  Make sure you take the time to understand the basics of HTML or hire someone who is an expert in the language.

8. GZIP Compression

Using a GZIP compression, similar to a ZIP file, helps reduce the total size of the page, so it can load faster.  Internet users have less patience to wait for pages to load. For example, users will leave a mobile site if it takes longer than 2 seconds to load.   This is crucial to web page optimization.

9. Shorter, Conversational Sentences

Google rewards bloggers that use shorter, conversational sentences. Most people overlook this detail when they’re in the process of website optimization but sentence length is important. The rule is to keep your sentences to no more than 20 words. The longer a sentence is, the better chances it can get flagged as robotic and non-conversational.  This will give you a lower SEO rank.

Also, take a look at your paragraphs. Make sure you break paragraphs and sentences to 300 words per subsection. If it’s getting quite long, add a subheader to divide it.  Readers like to skim the text for subheaders.

10. Reduce HTTP Requests

The more HTTP requests a website has, the longer it will take to load.  Each page on your site is composed of text, images, scripts, stylesheets, and more. Every one of those elements has an HTTP request.

If you want to reduce loading times, figure out how many HTTP requests your site has. You can do this by opening up the browser and inspect each page to figure out the exact number .

Website Optimization: The Bottom Line

Now that you know about the 10 golden rules of website optimization and gathered some search engine optimization tips, it’s time to put your skills to the test. Are you trying to improve your SEO in Canada? Would you like to increase your website traffic and clientelle?  Need a website optimization company to do the work for you?  Let SEO Bank help you! Contact us fo web marketing Chatham-Kent  and one of our SEO Experts will be in touch to offer you the help you need.