5 ways to optimize your website

Website optimization is commonly known as on-site SEO. It refers to SEO activities conducted directly on the website, involving adjustments to its code, structure, performance, and content to meet search engine requirements. Properly executed optimization significantly increases a website's chances of ranking high in Google search results. We propose 5 fundamental ways to achieve this.

1. Choose the right keywords

Google's bots use keywords to determine a website's theme. It's important to select keywords carefully to ensure your website appears in search results for relevant queries. This requires conducting thorough research rather than relying on intuition.

The Google Keyword Planner is the most commonly used tool for keyword research. However, it's worth considering alternative solutions that can complement each other. These include:

• Keyword Generator - this tool suggests 100 keywords for any entered phrase, complete with parameters like search volume and competitiveness. It also provides question-based phrases and displays websites containing pages related to the entered word.
• Answer the Public - after entering a keyword, this tool displays a list of questions, prepositions, comparisons, and related searches. For example, it might show "best digital camera under $1000," "smartphone with a good camera," or "Samsung vs iPhone smartphone."
• Keyword Tool - for any given phrase, this tool generates a list of long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are less popular (and less competitive) and more specific than common keywords. Even though each of them may generate fewer visits than the most popular phrases, incorporating a variety of long-tail keywords into your website can lead to increased traffic. Your site will rank higher in search results for these less common queries.
• Google Trends - this tool provides historical data on keyword popularity and geographical distribution, making it easier to understand other markets. It also allows for comparisons and displays related queries.
• Keyword Surfer - this user-friendly Chrome browser extension displays monthly search volume for a keyword each time you enter a phrase in Google. It allows you to specify the country from which the search volume data originates. Keyword Surfer can speed up your SEO and content marketing efforts.

2. Improve Your Website's Structure

To have your website rank well on Google, its structure must be understandable to search engine bots. To achieve this, you should:

• Ensure code quality: - The more clear and well-structured your code is, the easier it will be for search engine bots to navigate your site and find the relevant keywords. For this reason, when using WordPress, it's often better to use dedicated themes rather than ready-made ones because they typically have higher-quality and more efficient code.
• Use titles and headers: - Google uses titles and headers to determine what's most important on your website. Make sure to include keywords in titles and headers.
• Utilize alt text for images: - Alt attributes are used to describe the content of an image. This increases the chances of your images appearing in Google's image search results.
• Implement robots.txt and XML sitemap: - Robots.txt allows you to instruct Google bots on which subpages of your site to index and which to exclude. This helps restrict access to less critical pages for SEO purposes, which can speed up the indexing process. WordPress generates an XML sitemap automatically from version 5.5 onwards.
• Incorporate internal links: - Internal links lead to other pages within your website. They should be used when, for example, a topic in an article is elaborated in another post, or when one of your services complements another.
• Address on-page issues: - This includes fixing broken links and eliminating duplicate title tags and meta descriptions.

3. Boost Your Website's Performance

Google's algorithm favors fast-loading websites. To achieve this, you should:

• Reduce and compress images Images significantly impact a website's size. In WordPress, you can optimize images automatically using plugins like Smush.
• Optimize caching Caching allows returning users to access your site without having to download all its files again. In WordPress, you can use plugins like W3 Total Cache or LiteSpeed Cache for automatic optimization.
• Combine and minify CSS and JavaScript files This reduces the size of your site's code. Useful plugins for this purpose include Yoast SEO (which has broader functionality) or JS & CSS Script Optimizer.
• Optionally, implement the AMP standard AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is a Google-created standard for building website code. It relies on HTML and JavaScript libraries, with strict documentation compliance. It can accelerate page loading but may require limitations on JavaScript and CSS elements. AMP is particularly useful for websites with many subpages, such as news sites or online stores.

4. Optimize the Mobile Version of Your Website

Website responsiveness, meaning that it displays correctly on mobile devices, is now the standard. This is not only because a larger number of users access websites via smartphones.

Dla SEO znaczenie ma algorytm Google Mobile First Index, który uzależnia indeksowanie strony od istnienia jej wersji mobilnej. Google oceniając wydajność strony, również opiera się na analizie szybkości działania tej wersji.

For SEO, the Google Mobile First Index algorithm is crucial, as it indexes the mobile version of your site and assesses its performance, including its loading speed. As a result, Google's mobile-first approach has made designing websites in a mobile first manner increasingly popular. This means building the mobile version of your site first, which should contain all the necessary features for users. Additional features can appear in the desktop version.

5. Create Valuable Content

Don't think of the text on your website as merely a vessel for keywords. The quantity of phrases should not hinder the readability of the content, allowing users to read it naturally and with enjoyment.

Ensure that your content is of high quality, meaning longer and more comprehensive texts that provide valuable information to users. A blog is an excellent tool for this purpose. Google's bots tend to revisit pages with regularly updated content, positively affecting your search engine ranking. Moreover, longer articles and more of them will provide more opportunities to include keywords, including long-tail keywords.

While creating content, use images and employ section labels as titles and headers. Titles and headers should include appropriately selected keywords and be of limited length, with an optimal length of 55-60 characters for titles.

Optimization is the Foundation of SEO

Successful optimization of a website significantly increases the chance that our site will achieve a higher ranking in Google. Complementing on-site SEO are actions that take place outside the website itself. This includes obtaining valuable external backlinks, for example, through activities on social media or seeking mentions of our content on other websites or blogs.

To learn how to properly optimize a website, it's advisable to conduct an SEO audit. Through this process, we can discover the value of our site to Google and what changes can be made to help the site rank higher in search results. The audit provider will identify any errors on the website, conduct keyword research, analyze competitors' strategies, and provide guidance on how to improve the website's performance.