BEST WAYS TO OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBSITE PRODUCTIVITY IN 2022: STRATEGIES AND TIPS
Your web presence and performance directly impact your business, as 88% of people are less likely to return to a website after a bad first experience. Therefore, it is critical to know the best ways to optimize your website productivity to avoid a poor, unprofessional impression and achieve a seamless user experience keeping leads coming back to your site.
Learn the basics of web optimization, the most important techniques for improving your website, and some of the best free tools available to help your website rank high in this beginner’s guide.
What Is Website Optimization
Website optimization is a set of actions that can help you improve usability, traffic, and conversions on your website. By optimizing search results for your website plus technical SEO, you make it easier for visitors to find your content through search engines. As traffic increases, so do the chances of converting potential leads into buying customers. And by optimizing the quality of your content, you can create a world-class experience that appeals to your customers and leads alike.
To optimize your website’s performance, you need to know how your visitors currently perceive it. You can use SEO services for photographers and other creatives or do your own testing and auditing in any area of website optimization [for example testing microphone before using or buying it] you want to work on, be it SEO, accessibility, or user experience.
The optimization process looks like this:
● Analyze results and audit reports to identify improvement opportunities.
● Define your expected results and make sure they are in line with the resources you have available.
● Confirm your priorities in all areas you wish to focus on.
● Roll up your sleeves and start tweaking.
● Monitor your progress as consistently and set up your activities as needed.
● Repeat tests and audits on a regular basis to make sure you stay on track as your website evolves.
What Should Be Optimized on Your Website: Common Strategies
The best start to any website optimization effort is a complete audit of the site’s performance and bugs. Tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights help pinpoint loading and user experience problems. Basic keyword research can help determine what terms your target market's customers are searching for - and how your site ranks.
Pinpoint Your Market
Before optimizing search results for your website, determine your target market. Start by identifying your ideal customer. Answer questions such as: What products or services do they have in mind? How much are they willing to spend on it? What do they prioritize when it comes to connecting, contracting, and communicating?
Use Google Analytics and Facebook Insights to gain insight into users and create accurate, detailed reader profiles.
Track User Behavior
Track user behavior on your website to optimize the user experience. Make sure you take the time to look at the pages and links that visitors are clicking, how they are scrolling, and where they are dropping off or bouncing. Use tools like Google Analytics and Search Console to track clicks, scrolls, and session recordings.
Reduce Your Website Bounce Rate
Your bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave your site without visiting multiple pages. The lower your bounce rate, the better it is.
Such actions can help to narrow rejects:
● Interlink blog posts
● Reduce ads
● Improve readability
● Keep content up to date
● Speed up your website
● Add related or popular posts to the bottom of articles
● Test different anchor text to navigate the site
● Rearrange posts on category pages to show the most popular ones
● Enhance featured images for posts
You can use tools such as Google Analytics and SolarWinds Pingdom to view the Reject Index.
Improve UX with A/B and Multivariate Testing
Multivariate and A/B testing are excellent ways to create a better experience for the people who use your website.
A/B testing can be useful for starting something new, or for having an existing large audience. A/B tests compare two different elements of a website to see which one is more effective.
For more complex changes, multivariate testing is constructive. Applying them, you’ll see how everything interacts with each other, as websites are often comprised of different elements.
Testing tools: Google Optimize, Optimizely, VWO.
Create a Seamless Mobile Experience
Enhance your site for all devices, not just desktops. That is particularly true of mobile, which represents over half of the world’s web traffic.
Beyond optimizing load times, boosting your site for mobile may require:
● Make your menus more compact
● Remove pop-ups or ads
● Make sure the search box or icon is easy to find.
● Provide filtering and sorting options
● Place CTAs above the fold
Tools to help you analyze how mobile-friendly your site is: Google Mobile-Friendly Test, Google PageSpeed Insights, and Google Search Console.
Optimize Your On-Page Content
Enhance your content to get indexed. On-page optimization is a great way to increase rank and traffic for your site. There are many ways to do it right, such as the following:
● Add keyword-based page titles
● Include relevant keywords
● Add useful images
● Create meta tags that highlight key concepts
● Manage keyword density
● Insert internal and external links
Find Your Target Keywords
Choose keywords that match your target market and use them to get found. Don’t forget about user intent when researching keywords.
Type your keyword into a search engine and evaluate the results. Then make sure your content matches the intent of these top results that Google deems relevant.
If your site isn’t on the first page, it's also a good idea to look at your top competitors. They’ll give you metrics to optimize your own content.
Such tools can also be very useful for keeping track of keywords: SEMrush, SEO PowerSuite, and KWFinder.
Build Better Backlinks
You can gradually boost your position in search results with backlinks from other highly-ranked sites. Create and submit relevant, market-focused content to industry news or expertise websites.
Also, it’s helpful to periodically search for your company or brand name to find any missing attributions. Once found, you can ask other site managers to backlink.
The most popular backlink management tools are Semrush, Sitechecker, and Ahrefs.
Speed Up Your Website
In 2018, Google began considering mobile page speed as a factor in search rankings, making improved performance a factor in favorable results. Even a small decrease in your website's load time on mobile devices can improve conversion rates.
Among many other ways to speed up your website, you can use CDNs, reduce redirects and limit HTTP requests. And don’t forget about download speed estimation tools like PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and Screaming Frog.
Compress Your Images
Enhancing website functionality is the target of any image optimization strategy. And the single best way to do that is to use image compression on your website.
If your images are too large, they’ll take longer to load - and visitors won’t wait for them to load before they bounce. Remember, your images can undermine trust in your brand if they aren’t high quality.
Image compression tools: EWWW Image Optimizer, JPEG Optimizer, Kraken.
Think About Using a CDN
CDN means Content Delivery Network. Knowing that a CDN can improve your user experience is crucial when optimizing search results for your website. CDNs can help speed up the time it takes for web and mobile visitors to load. Even during traffic spikes, they can make your site more reliable.
Some HubSpot plans include a free integrated CDN. Additional tools include the CDN Finder and CDN Performance Checker.
Optimize Your Image Attributes
This route can help you get product & brand images ranked alongside your written content. First, give your images file names, which concisely describe what they show. Then do the same thing for the alt text of your images.
When in doubt, use plain language and simple descriptors. Excessive image detail can penalize your ranking.
To check if images on your website use alt attributes, you can take advantage of Image Alt Test.
Keep Your Website Up-To-Date
Keeping your website up-to-date improves search engine rankings, reduces bounce rates, and increases conversions.
Here are a few things that you will need to keep your website up to date:
● Copyright date
● Dates mentioned in posts
● Blog content
● Fix broken links
● Keeping social media accounts up to date
Tips for Website Optimization
Before making any changes, back up your site. If you’re going to optimize your website, back up your site before making any changes. This makes it easier to restore your site if your changes don't work as hoped.
Test the changes you make as you update your site. You’ll want to run tests as you make changes to optimize your site, in addition to the A/B and multivariate testing mentioned above. It’s also a good idea to monitor your website analytics. Constructive tools for this are Google Analytics, Hotjar, and Clicky. Review your analytics after making changes. This way, you ensure that your updates haven’t broken or changed anything on your site.
Keep your focus on the quality of your content. The content on your site should help your visitors find relevant information, not just sell you stuff. Therefore, you should design it as informative, insightful, accurate, and engaging.
Ensure your optimization tools integrate with your MarTech stack. Website optimization tools can be expensive, so before purchasing, always make sure any new tools integrate seamlessly with your existing digital technologies, such as your CMS.
Prioritize critical technical SEO issues. If you’ve identified relevant technical problems affecting SEO, fix them as soon as possible.
