Optimization

What are the 3 Fundamental Principles of a Business Website Optimization

Nowadays, a lot of business owners do engage their businesses online. That’s not surprising with the age of technology we have today. It is now possible to elevate your business into the most innovative way of marketing and business profiling. There are also a lot of reasons why the business’ online presence is important today. And one way of getting your business into the digital world is by establishing a website for it. 

Read on to discover more about the basic knowledge of website optimization, its importance, its principles, and more.

What is Website Optimization

A few years ago, a website is the most fundamental key for a business to get into digital marketing. As technology evolves, many platforms were introduced to increase the web visibility of a business – Facebook for social media, Google My Business for business listing, and YouTube for video-sharing sites.

A website has become an online asset to a business as it showcases your products or services. But business marketing and profiling don’t end with having a website. It has to be well-optimized to perform in the digital marketing field. 

To optimize a website, there are two parts that need to consider. These are the on-page and off-page optimization. The off-page or also known as Search Engine Optimization is the process of working on the traffic of the website within the search engine. You can achieve this traffic by doing such Off-page SEO activities as link building, influencer outreach, forums, content marketing, and others. 

While On-page refers to everything you can work on your page/post. Each work helps improve the website’s SERP or Search Engine Ranking Position. One element that you can optimize on the On-page is video content. You can optimize it by creating a search engine-friendly Meta Description and Title tags.

As you create your video, see to it that you are using the tools that can provide the best result. A video editing tool can ensure that you are making creative and engaging video content. This includes choosing the appropriate keyword and its proper placement. But before you post it on your website, make sure that you are done with everything on your video. Resize and crop videos online before getting it done. By resizing or compressing your video, you can secure that your video will not take up so much bandwidth on your website. You can also add music or record your voice to make your video more creative.

Important Reasons Why Your Business Website Needs an Optimization

Search engine ranking is a competition for websites that want to get the top position. Like in any other competition, some factors can affect how well your website ranks in SERPs. Therefore, optimizing your website is crucial to its success.

Website optimization is the process of making sure that all of the factors that can affect your website’s ranking are taken into consideration and given the appropriate attention. Optimization includes Title tags, Meta descriptions, and other elements for the keywords you want to target. 

It also ensures that the website content is relevant, has keywords that are properly used, and its codes are clean and free of errors. Listed below are a few of the many reasons why website optimization is important to a business.

• Improves ranking performance in the SERP
  The Search Engine competition is a reason why website owners optimize their websites. Search engine optimization can help boost a website’s ranking in search engine results. Google, Bing, and Yahoo are some search engine platforms where ranking competition occurs. They want their sites to be eligible to rank in the highest position. The higher the rank of a website, it appears on the first-page position. Where top 1 is recognized to be above them all.
  
• Increases website traffic
  Website optimization is important because it does a lot in terms of increasing traffic. An increase in traffic refers to the increase in the number of visitors that visit your website. One factor that increases traffic for a website is when it is ranking in the top search results. A website that is in the top position is more likely to get more clicks compared to those in the lower rank.
  
• Increases conversion rates and ROI
  A well-optimized website has an improved visitors usability interface. It makes a website user-friendly so that it can help visitors navigate the site easily and fast. Its purpose is to give a positive and engaging experience for the visitors. That experience will lead them to buy a product or service, and sign up for a newsletter. Taking these actions will increase conversion rates and ROI.
  
• A place for the business’ full information
  A website can be used for many purposes, including marketing, advertising, and communication. However, the most important use of a website is to provide information to users. It is important to optimize websites for both search engines and users so that it can provide the best possible experience.
  
• Gateway to the Social Media Platforms
  Technology has changed our way of living a lot. As it changes, it also introduces innovative ways for communicating and marketing a business. A few years ago, social media platforms are made known. Now it is also being used for communication with potential customers and provide with what can be valuable to them. Nowadays, social media platforms are a very important part of a lot of people’s lives. Right from the website, visitors will be led to the business’s social media accounts. On social media platforms, there are a lot more engagement can happen.
  
• It integrates the Live Chat feature
  Websites now integrate live chat supports. If your website doesn’t have it yet, you may find tutorials on the internet on how you can install it on your platform. Or better yet, ask your developer to do it. It is important for a website to have live chat support features. It is an effective way to reach out to customer support for inquiries and concerns. Having this feature on your website can increase the customer’s overall experience. This, in turn, can lead to more sales and conversions.

The 3 Fundamental Principles of Website Optimization 2022

If you are an internet marketer or a website owner, you are probably aware of the importance of optimizing a website for search engines. However, many individuals who are into website optimization are not aware of the fundamental principles that should be adhered to ensure optimal optimization results. Keep reading and find out the 3 fundamental principles of website optimization.

Focused on the User Experience (UX)

An important aspect of website optimization is the user experience. It focuses on ensuring that this website provides what users need, what it values, what it can do, and also what it cannot do.

It is important for a website owner to put the user experience as the top priority. This principle aims to provide a meaningful and relevant experience to users. This includes speed, visual design, and human-computer interaction. Also, the user-friendly and mobile-friendly interface has a lot to tell. 

Here are some important things about your wanting to improve the User Experience of customers on your website.

• If a website has a poor user-friendly interface, users will likely leave and go to a competitor’s website. To provide the user experience design of a website, you must consider three things. First, what a user can do with the product. Second, why is this product valuable to them. Third, how can they avail of the product? With these factors being considered for the design, you can deliver what the potential customer is looking for.
  
• Not only the design but the usability and functionality are also important. A well-optimized website is fast at speed in terms of shifting from one page to another. Visual designs such as photos and videos should also show no signs of buffering.
  
• And lastly, your website must also be mobile-friendly. The research was conducted by Perficient, Inc. They have proven that 61% of the US website user visits in 2020 came from mobile devices. While there are only 35.7% of them are from desktop devices. And globally speaking, 68.1% of website visits in 2020 came from mobile devices as well. 

Accessible and easy to use

An optimized website should be accessible and not difficult to navigate. Especially for those who have disabilities. If you think your website needs to improve its accessibility and difficulties with navigation access, keep reading and find out some solutions. 

Given below are some of the accessibility features that a website must have. 

1. Visual Impairment accessibility features
   It is created for individuals who are partially or unable to see or perceive color contrasts. Here are some tips to help your customers who are visual impairment:
   1. Provide a sufficient contrast ratio by making adjustments to the colors and textures. 
   2. Consider making adjustments to the size of the text, too. 
   3. Ensure that your website is accessible with keyboard shortcuts for visually impaired individuals.
   4. Provide non-text content on some descriptions. It can help a lot when a screen-reader reads an image and say out loud what is written in the description.
      
2. Hearing Impairment accessibility features
   The benefits of the internet are not limited, especially to people with disabilities. They have found it a real boost that it helps make their lives easier, too. Persons with hearing impairment should also enjoy its benefits. To make your website accessible to individuals with hearing disabilities, make sure to: 
   1. Provide multiple contact options
      People with hearing disabilities can reach out to the staff through online messaging, chats, and emails. Be sure to provide such options. 
   2. Add subtitles to video contents
      Videos are used to create engagement with the customers. This should not be limited to a person with a hearing disability. Adding subtitles or captions to your video can help a lot in creating engagement with them. 
   3. Proper content structure
      Provide a proper content structure so it can be easier for them to understand things on your website. Make the best use of the headings, paragraphs, and lists to format your article.
      
3. Cognitive Disabilities
   Persons with Cognitive Disabilities or Intellectual Disabilities have certain limitations on such skills and mental functioning. These particular skills include self-help, communication, and social skills. A few of the conditions that affect cognitive ability are dementia and dyslexia. To make our website more accessible for them, we must:
   1. Ensure that the website’s appearance is well-organized and has a uniform outlook. 
   2. You must avoid enlisting too much information or choices on one screen
   3. Be consistent with standardized navigation controls
   4. Make every part of the website easy to identify (Homepage, Inner page, Contact Page, etc…)
   5. Avoid prolonged sentences.
   6. Provide appropriate graphics to every content to enhance understanding. 

These accessibility features seem particular to those with disabilities but they can provide an excellent user experience to normal individuals, too. 

Search engine friendly

A search engine-friendly website makes it easier for search engines to crawl and index the site. Optimize your website so you can rebuild it and be search engine ranking competitive. Read on to learn the many ways to make a website search engine optimized. 

Optimizing the Title Tags

The title of a website is one of the most important factors for SEO. To create a properly-optimized title, include the main keyword for which you want your website to rank. Make sure to write a catchy and interesting title. When writing a title, be concise, informative, and targeted to the reader. Make sure your title entices the target users to click. Also, observe the ideal title length which is 60-70 characters only, the exceeded characters will be cut and not be visible in the entire part of the page. 

Optimizing the Meta Descriptions

Optimizing the Meta descriptions is a great way to improve the visibility of your website. To optimize the Meta description on a website, make sure to create an engaging description, brief but direct to the point, has used the keyword properly, and has a call-to-action word. By reading your website’s meta description, the target users can be enticed to click through to your site. Also, take note that your Meta description should be limited only to 155 characters. Any exceeded characters will be cut and not be shown on the entire page. 

Creating XML sitemaps

XML sitemaps is a file that contains the list of the important pages on a website. In order to optimize a website for search engines, XML sitemaps must be created. This helps search engines find and index all the pages on your site. Placement of these pages in one location for optimization can improve your site’s ranking in search results. In another way, sitemaps offer website owners a way to track the health and progress of their website’s indexing.

Using the keywords properly while observing the right word-count

Keywords play a vital role in search engines. If you have the right targeted keywords for your product or website, it will be easier for your website to rank. These keywords should be worked out, not only on off-page optimization but also on the on-page. But take note that keywords should be optimized the right way. This means that you should avoid creating keyword-rich content. Some may not know it, yet, but keyword-rich content can over-optimize the process. That’s why overoptimizing content with plenty of keywords should be avoided. 

Get your website optimized! 

The goal of optimizing your website is to make it friendly both to users and search engines. It can be difficult to optimize your website if you don’t know how Search Engine Optimization (SEO) works. But things can change by studying a few lessons from this article where you will learn more about SEO. You may also hire persons who are experts in the field of digital marketing. Hire Search Engine Marketers to make your website optimization an easy task for you. 

A blog by Chantelle Torres at VEED.IO