We’ve published this guide to help you get the most out of your website, maximize your sales and help search engines discover your business, so we’ve covered the 9 best ways how to optimize your website for search engines. This way, you can make sure your business gets the most amount of exposure possible.
Website optimization is an essential step every website must have before it can rank on search engines, and without knowledge of how to do it, your website may find it difficult to appear on search engines like Google, Bing, etc.
In this post, you are going to learn about the 9 best ways to optimize your website for search engines using the proper guidelines as stated below.
What is website optimization for search engines?
Website optimization refers to the dos and don’ts that you ensure your website has to enable it to rank or get indexed by search engines, and it can include keywords, meta description, SEO, and more. Website optimization is the bedrock to help your website be well-positioned to get organic traffic from search engines.
Why should I optimize my website?
There are lots of reasons why you should optimize your website, and they include
- It helps your web visitors to easily navigate through the contents on your site.
- Helps your website for SEO purposes, which is an essential step for organic traffic.
- It makes your website load faster, and this helps retain your traffic.
- It gives room for web visitors to trust and return to your website when they have a search query they need to know more about.
Here’s how to optimize your website for search engines
1. Choose the right keywords
When you’re choosing keywords for your website, it’s important to pick ones that are both relevant and popular. The very first step to help you rank on search engines is to choose the right keywords that people are searching for.
Just like on daily basis you write up some search queries(keywords you need to know more about) on search engines like Google, that’s also how many other people input some search terms on google and these keywords are being shown to bloggers who do keyword research before they write a post, and this is to let them know what people are searching for.
So to optimize your website, you must make sure that you discover what people are searching for on search engines and then write your blog post based on that, and that will help your website rank on search engines. Because you simply write on things that people are searching for, search engines have no other option than to rank your website owing to the fact that your website has the information people want to learn about.
You can use software like AdWords Keyword Planner, ahrefs, semrush, etc, to help you find the right keywords for your business.
2. Optimize your website content
One of the best ways to optimize your website for search engines is to also optimize your website content.
Once you’ve selected the right keywords, make sure to include them in your website content. This will help improve your site’s ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs).
To help you understand this, when you have chosen your keyword and started writing on it, you have to make sure that you mention that keyword in your article, as this will help you appear more on SERPs( search engine results page)
For instance, looking at this our post about 9 ways to optimize a website for search engines, you will discover that we mentioned this keyword phrase many times in our post and you must also take note that we did that effortlessly without it looking like we are spamming the keyword over the entire content, this is to help you understand how you can also represent yours in your contents without making it look spammy.
Always ensure that your website’s content is of the highest quality and adds value to the readers, covering all the readers’ search intent and queries.
3. Use SEO-friendly URLs
When creating URLs for your website pages, be sure to use keyword-rich titles that accurately describe the page content. This will help improve your site’s ranking in SERPs.
An SEO-friendly URL makes it easier for your website visitors to understand what your page/post content is all about, and not only that, it also helps your website to rank on Google search engines easily.
Before writing a post, make sure that you switch the URL from your reader’s settings tab to the post URL.
To do that, simply head on to the settings area in your WordPress dashboard, go down to click on readers and navigate to the URL and make sure the post name is activated.
You can view the image below to understand better how to set up your post permalinks.
By simply doing this, your URL stands a chance to rank on search engines, and your readers can easily understand what they’re about to read on your website.
4. Add meta descriptions with post titles
Each of your web pages should have a meta description and title tag that accurately describes the page content. These tags help search engines understand what each page is about, which can improve its ranking in SERPs.
The easiest way to do this is:
1. Make sure your meta descriptions accurately describe the page content.
2. Structured data markup can help search engines better understand your website’s content.
5. Optimize your images for search engine visibility.
Another easier way of ranking a website for search engines is by making sure you structure your images well.
Here are the easier ways to optimize your website images:
* Make sure you convert png and jpg files to webp, and you can do this by using this website convertio before uploading the image on your site.
* Make sure the image you want to upload on your site is very minimal in size, that is, at least less than or almost 200kb, as this helps save a huge space on your website.
*Give your images an alt text( that is a title relating to the topic of the content you are talking about in the post). The alt text helps search engines be able to read your website’s image titles and provides it to people who search on such topics. For example, if you have an image of a dog, you would name the file “dog-photo.jpg” and include the keyword “dog” in the alt text. This tells search engines what the image is about, which can help improve your site’s ranking.
6. Use external links to improve the authority of your website pages.
One of the best ways to optimize your website for search engines is by taking this step as a necessity.
The use of external links not only improves your website’s authority but also makes it easier for you to be recognized by the websites you link to and thereby creating room for the mutual relationship between your site and the other.
When you see a good article from another website that relates to the post you are writing, instead of trying to duplicate what the content of that site entails, you can easily link to that post and have your audience benefit from such a post. While doing this, you are letting the search engines know that your website is open to help people get the best information or answer their needs when they make a search.
7. Promote your website on social media platforms for increased visibility.
Social media publishing has, over the years, been a good source of traffic if you know how to organize your content, time to post, the required content to post, and, of course, how to make your content appear engaging to your audience.
To rank more on search engines, you also need to optimize your website to be easily promoted on social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and more, and as you’re doing this, you have to understand that not every social media network you need as a startup unless you’ve grown over the years. Make it easier to share your content on social media and also have a social network where you share your content and relate with your audience practically to help them solve their problems.
You can also direct them to your website to read in full about what you published on your social networks and when you do this, search engines take notice of it and thereby push your website to rank better and so receive more traffic organically.
8. Ensure that your website is accessible from all devices and browsers.
The accessibility of your website is based on how it appears on the devices people use to view it.
When creating your website, you have to check how well your website appears on mobile devices, tables, and pc, it is very important to do this because from statistics, over 70% of people access the internet using their mobile phones on daily basis and this means the can easily check in to your website with their mobile phones and so if the mobile version of your website is not optimized, then you would notice that people would not be willing to visit the site again no matter the promotion you do on it.
You have to understand that search engines are not human and so they only respond to websites based on how people react to such websites, so if you want to rank high on search engines, you must consider the act of making your website look optimized on mobile, tablet and pc for users to easily navigate on.
9. Monitor your website’s search engine rankings regularly and make changes as necessary.
Search engine ranking does not happen overnight, so be ready to check on your website ranking to know how well you have performed. This will help you know where you are doing well and where you are falling.
When you notice you are doing some unnecessary thing, don’t hesitate to make changes to the right steps just as I have stated above, and this will help you to rank on search engines.
Frequently asked questions on the 9 best ways on how to optimize your website for search engines
Conclusion
Website optimization is very important for any website that wants to rank on search engines organically, and applying the steps in this post will give you an idea of the various ways you can do that.
You have to understand also that when your website is optimized, both your web users and search engines love it and would rate you the best way it should be. But also understand that it takes time to have your site fully optimized in all rounds, so go through the process and don’t rush it.
If you have any questions on any of the steps listed above, you can comment below or comment on any step(s) you’ve done already on your site and the impact it has brought to your website.
Related: How to boost your website with SEO.
Related: Serps || Everything you need to know about it.
