5 Website Optimization Essentials to Get You Started

5 Website Optimization Essentials to Get You Started

I'm often asked if there was just one optimization strategy or piece of advice I could give someone, what would it be. Unfortunately, there is no fair answer to that question. If I were to give just one tactic, strategy, or piece of advice, it would fall woefully inadequate in helping someone achieve their online marketing goals.

Web marketing has grown so fast, with so many different avenues for success, that even providing a single insight or tool requires more detailed explanation. For example, if someone asked how to build a quality fence, a skilled builder might tell them to use treated wood. Great advice! But in SEO, we can't just say, write title tags. Or fix your website architecture. Or do keyword research. Each of these are important, but that advice is completely insufficient at giving the askee anything close to the answer they need.

On the other hand if the question is, "What are the optimization essentials needed to succeed in web marketing?," that's a question that can be answered. Not quickly or succinctly, mind you, but with some detail and explanation. To be as succinct as possible while providing what I feel is enough information to start a successful web marketing campaign, I have narrowed this down to five areas. This isn't an exhaustive list, nor is the explanation of each complete in their own right, but this should give you a good place to begin the web marketing processes that bring success.

Always Start With Keyword Research

Keyword research is the foundation of all your online marketing efforts. I've said this many times before! Everything you do with online marketing starts with understanding how people search for what they want.

Now Google has done a great job of integrating key concepts so content can rank without keywords, provided it's topically relevant. But (believe it or not) Google's not perfect, and it will be a while before they can sufficiently map every related term together. Not only that, but each variation of terms may weight differently toward the topic being searched. All this simply means that keywords are still a relevant factor in both search and how visitors understand your website.

For instance, if I'm talking about keyword research but only used the phrase "search terms," Google may be able to correlate these two phrases as being topically relevant. And even if Google did decide that my page about "search terms" should rank #1 for a search for "keyword research," the visitor may not find the content specifically relevant for their intent. Therefore, I need to use "keyword research" in my content just so the visitor makes the connection between their search and my content.

Keyword research can be valuable in finding those synonyms, correlations, and co-occurrences that you can use to work into your content. This can help with getting Google to give more weight to your content for these phrase varieties they have already tied together.

When determining which keywords are worth targeting, keep in mind that search volume is not the only valuable metric. You want keywords that have a realistic chance of ranking and that will produce a payout worth the effort required in getting them to rank.

Optimize Your Page Titles and Tags

If you don't have time to optimize all your content on all your pages right away, start smaller by focusing on your page titles and tags. The title tag is crucial for both search engines and visitors and can be a determining factor in driving quality traffic to your site. If you have time to optimize only one thing on each page, this should be it.

Spend some time to think about what your page represents and write a compelling title in the 50-55 character range. It's a good idea to search for your keywords and look at the titles of ranking pages. See what entices you and what doesn't and use this as a benchmark to craft your own title tag that is even more compelling than the others.

Beyond the title tag, you should work on your meta description tags as these are a secondary factor in enticing visitors to click into your site from the search results. A compelling meta description should expand on what you could not say in the title, giving the searcher even more context to make the decision whether your page offers what they need or not.

Next, focus on your heading tags. Specifically the h1 tag, which should be located at the top of the page above the content. This is usually the first thing a visitor sees when they open up a page, so it must let them know they landed on the right page and compel them to stay on the page to read or explore further.

Additional paragraph headings are great for helping to break up content and making it scannable, which is needed for pages with long content. Make sure these headings, when scanned, continue to keep the reader engaged.

Finally, you want to make sure all your images use alt attributes. This text can serve multiple purposes, all benefiting your searchers and visitors. Primarily, this text acts as a replacement if the image fails to load for whatever reason. Perhaps the image was moved and the URL was not updated, or maybe the visitor is using a screen reader. The text serves as a replacement for what cannot be seen.

Search engines also use this alt text as a factor in image rankings. While you may not think that image search is valuable, you never know who might find your content and begin engagement with you from such a search.

Use Great Content and Smart Link Text

Content and links are the two of the most primary ways the search engines know what each page of your site is about. While they can make a determination based on either one of those, a page that utilizes both authority content and keyword rich links sends a much stronger ranking signal to the search engines.

Let's start with content. At the very least it needs to be authoritative content. That doesn't mean it has to be several thousand words long, but you need to make sure that whatever your page is about, your content provides value to the visitor. This is just as true of blog posts as it is of content on pages that display your products.

When a visitor comes to your site, they need to leave feeling they have received something of value. If they get nothing but regurgitated product descriptions or information that is, at best, equal to what they can find on dozens of other websites, then your pages lack true value. Use your content to give your visitors something special.

Your content should also link out to other sources of value, whether those sources be on your site or another. Don't be afraid to link out, but if you can link to something on your own site that expands on a thought or idea, do so. The text you use in your links should make it obvious to the reader what they will get when they click the link, even if they read nothing else on the page. Many people skim pages for the next place to go. If they read just your link text, they should have a good idea of what is being offered on those pages.

Look For and Fix Navigation Issues

While you should not rely on navigation alone to move your visitors from one page to the next, it is one of the primary ways visitors find what they are looking for. Navigation that doesn't help the visitor quickly find what they want has simply failed at doing its job.

Site navigation should offer sufficient, albeit streamlined, options for your visitors. Navigation that tries to give the visitor every possible option seems like a good idea but rarely helps the visitor. Instead, figure out the fewest navigational options needed to get the visitor closer to what they want and use a secondary navigation to help them refine their options even further.

Focus on your visitor goals. Determine what it is they came for or what you want them to accomplish and use your navigation to help drive them to that end result. Make sure you have organized and categorized your navigation in a way that makes sense and doesn't force the visitor to think too hard about what the options mean. Use their words, never your own. If the visitor doesn't know what a navigation option means, they'll have a harder time achieving the goals, or they just may abandon your site altogether.

Build Authority and Drive Traffic

The final essential in building a successful web marketing campaign is to build authority. Without this, all the other areas above will, essentially, be worthless. Having optimized your titles, tags, content, links, and navigation, you are left with an optimized site that may match what visitors want, but the search engines assume that other content on the web is simply more valuable. It's a popularity contest.

On the other hand, authority by itself will only get you so far. If you want to appear in the search engine rankings then you have to have optimized content so the search engines know how to rank your pages.

There are several ways to build authority to your site. Each of these should drive traffic in their own right while also showing the search engines that you are a force to be reckoned with:

Link Building: Yes, links still matter and will for the foreseeable future. Stay away from purchasing links, but links can still be made the old fashioned way. Producing good content that people like and use relationships to get those links.

Social Media: Social media, done right, can be a great way to let people know about your content. But don't just focus on yourself. Use social media to engage and interact with others. This, more than anything, helps establish you as an authority.

Epic Content: Without great content, you really have nothing with which you can earn an authority reputation with. Very few people will link to meh content, and many in the social sphere will be looking for content of yours to determine how much you really know. Look for ways to wow your readers by giving them something that proves you truly are the authority.

It's possible to run a successful site and business without investing in these five areas, but without them you will always be working with a handicap. You will just never quite be as successful as you could otherwise.

However, putting these five essentials together is the best starting point for a long-term web marketing effort. Each plays a very unique and essential role and together they all play off each other to ensure you're getting the most value possible.

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