Best Practices for Website Optimization for Search Engines

To stay at the top of the search results, you need to do a lot of research and experimentation. Google’s algorithms are constantly updated, so it’s important to keep up with the latest news.

As soon as your site starts appearing on the first pages of Google search results, you will become more visible. This means more traffic, more conversions and, as a result, more revenue. Getting a website to the first page of search results is vital. 75% of users don’t even look past the first page of results.

The first three positions in organic results receive 60% of all search traffic. With leads coming from SERPs, the deal closing rate is 14.6%. Compare this to 1.7% through channels such as print or mailing list advertising.

Technical requirements for optimizing pages for search engines

Increase download speed. Both users and crawlers like fast websites. It is impossible to allow pages to load too long, otherwise the visitor will run away to competitors, and the robot will punish with a bad rating when ranking pages.

For this, it is necessary that the site be hosted on a reliable and high-quality VPS hosting.

Adaptive layout. Search robots pay attention even to the page layout, so mobile layout is important for high-quality SEO promotion. In addition, it improves behavioral factors. Visitors like resources adapted for mobile devices. They are easier to read, easier to enter, easier to navigate through the menu.

Social media buttons. The presence of links to social networks tells search bots about the value of your content for site visitors. And they also increase the number of external links for each page of the resource.

Requirements for text and keywords

To achieve good optimization, you can not write randomly. The text must match a number of parameters.

Keywords. These are search queries entered by users in Yandex or Google, through which they get to your site. The keyword (or just the key) is included in the search query in its entirety unchanged.  With the help of them, robots determine the theme of the site. The resource becomes more relevant to the target audience.

The main key should be placed in the first 150 characters of text on the page. It is also worth making them natural. To make them look and sound like human phrases.

Uniqueness. An important feature. It needs to be balanced so that the texts remain readable for ordinary people. No amount of uniqueness will save material that is impossible to read or contains no useful information.

Volume. The length of the article depends on the topic. You need to have time to tell everything you need and open it to the fullest. There are no fixed values. But you can focus on competitors. See how many characters are in related articles and work within the same limits.

Water. The materials on the site should contain useful information. It is not worth increasing the volume with the help of useless text and repetitive thoughts. Readers will not appreciate, robots too.

This also includes introductory words, the word “which” and any language units that do not carry a clear semantic load.

Media content

Pictures and other media content capture the attention of readers. It is easier for them to absorb information. They linger on the site, and because of this, behavioral factors improve, which positively affects the site’s ranking in search results.

Choose beautiful and high-quality images. Take screenshots for instructions. Add themed pictures or something funny on the topic. Embed videos where appropriate. Or gifs where you want to show more than a static image can convey. Diversify the text with media and complete it.

Linking

It is about creating a system of links leading to your site. There are two types of linking: internal and external.

Internal linking. Inside the site, you can make a structure of links that lead to different parts of the resource. Internal linking has a positive effect on the authority of pages, increases the speed of indexing, improves the convenience for visitors and recirculation.

You can place links manually in different parts of the text. For example, supplement information with content from other articles or insert them into the sidebar of the site. There are also automatic linking tools (for example, recommendation systems).

External linking. The principle is almost the same. You or someone for you leaves links to the pages of your site on other resources. The more prestigious the site that links to the page, the higher its position in the search results.

Main page optimization features

The following elements are usually expected from the main page:

  • the presence of contact information in a conspicuous place
  • a map of the road, if we are talking about an organization
  • availability of information about the resource in online directories
  • basic goods, promotions and unique offers (when it comes to a store or the provision of services)
  • convenient menu for quick navigation

At the same time, it is worth placing only useful information on the main page, without overloading it with details, scripts and bright graphic elements.

Conclusion

Website optimization consists of a large number of steps for which not only the marketer should be responsible. The selection of key phrases and work with meta tags is only a small part of the process. To promote a resource in search engines, you need to monitor its technical condition, create appropriate content, analyze user behavior and interact with partners. If you correctly optimize the site, it will get into the tops of search results, and the client will see you among the first.

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