How to Optimize Your Website

Co-authored by Richard Casamento and Jack Lloyd

Last Updated: February 16, 2022 References Approved

This wikiHow teaches you how to optimize your website for search engines, accessibility, and performance. Having a website which ranks highly in search engine results, is easy to use, and loads quickly will increase your traffic, prevent user frustration, and add to the overall quality of your site.

Method 1

Method 1 of 3:

Optimizing Your Website for Search Engines

1
Analyze and study your website. Your first and most important step for SEO is to analyze your website to determine what changes, if necessary, should be made. This process includes assessing the site navigation, context, and overall cosmetics of the website. Once you've determined common issues (e.g., lack of site traffic on a specific page), you can proceed.^{[1]
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Expert Source

Richard Casamento
Digital Business Development Specialist
Expert Interview. 30 March 2021.}
- It is a good practice to develop a task sheet to better proceed with the optimization of the website.
- Remember that search engines look at domain names, title tags, and header tags to assist them in ranking the website according to relevance. Thus, it is important to maintain consistency in text with the subject of your site.
2
Review your competition's website(s). By knowing your competition in the industry, you will gain a better understanding of what exactly needs to be accomplished. It is helpful to find the top 5 to 10 competitors in your industry and find out what methods they are employing, including their chosen keywords and site structure.^{[2]
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Expert Source

Richard Casamento
Digital Business Development Specialist
Expert Interview. 30 March 2021.}
- While you don't want to copy competitor websites outright, knowing their strategies will help you identify weak points in your own.
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3
Research keywords. Identify keywords related to your site's content. These can be popular search terms that lead people to your site, words related to your overall topic, and the topic of a specific page or blog post. If you're not sure which keywords are popular search terms, there are services online that can help you evaluate keywords, many of them with free trials.
4
Place keywords strategically throughout your content. Having keyword-rich content is the key to performing well with search engines. Some search engine bots may penalize you for keyword spamming, however, so learn where to focus your efforts:
- Use the keywords liberally on your home page.
- Include keywords in header tags, title tags, and meta tags.
- Include keywords in the anchor text used to describe links.
- Use keywords in the URL of new pages.
5
Include meta and title tags. HTML's meta tag does not alter the content visible on the website; meta tags exist only for search engines and other bots.^{[3]
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Expert Source

Imran Alavi
Marketing Expert
Expert Interview. 31 March 2021.} Some ways in which you might use meta tags to boost your website's search ratings include the following:
- Place a meta title tag at the top of each page to identify the document's overall content to search engines.
- Write an accurate meta description tag, since it is often used by search engines to describe a site in search results.
- Add a meta keyword tag as well to reveal the most important keywords for each page to search engine bots.
- Keep in mind that Google's search bots do not look at meta keywords, but other search engines often do.
6
Develop some base traffic reports. These reports are used to determine the current traffic to your website to see what kind of activity is taking place, where your traffic is coming from, and what pages are the most popular on your website as well as how they currently rank. If you are not already monitoring your web traffic, you will want to do this for at least a month to get a feel for your current volume.
- Statcounter is good for monitoring.
- This step is crucial in the SEO process because the reports will also be used to gauge activity prior to your optimized performance.
7
Keep providing new content. New content is a critical factor in keeping site visitors interested and coming back for more. This in turn will lead to higher search engine rankings. When writing new content, keep in mind that each page should have at least 350 words.
- Update your content at least once per week for optimal results.
- Site optimization is an ongoing effort. It's all about matching and exceeding your competitors.
8
Get other websites to link to you. Building good incoming or back links can also increase your search engine ranking and website traffic. List your website in relevant directories and forums, and ask websites on similar topics to link to content on your website.
- Most major search engines rank web pages based partially on the number and the quality of links that point to the site.
- Finding a journalist or website owner who will cover your website and link to it will create an organic piece of content which may boost your search results listing.
9
Create a site map. Site maps are XML files that list every URL in your website. Your web host may provide this file, or you may have to make it yourself: find an example site map file and replace the example URLs with URLs of pages on your website. Once every page is listed, upload the site map file to the root folder of your web server.
- Search online for "submit a sitemap" to find sites where you can submit your link.
- Having a site map will also help you keep track of your current links, allowing you to update or remove non-working links as part of your optimization efforts.
- Remember to update your site map as you replace or update links. Nothing turns people off to your site more than hosting broken links.
10
Avoid using frames whenever possible. Frames, which are being used less and less, enable you to split a page into pieces and section off static content to decrease download times. However, using frames can prevent search engine bots from accessing your entire website.
- Providing a site map may fix this problem.
11
Validate your HTML code. While search engines don't care whether your HTML code is error-free, they rely on the basic correctness of the code to find out which portions of your web page to index. If your HTML code contains errors, it is possible that only portions of your web page are included in the search engine's database.
- You can use W3C or another site to validate your HTML by checking it for errors.
12
Tweak your website as needed. You'll need to re-optimize and re-assess your website at least once every three months, though performing optimization assessments once per month won't hurt your website.^{[4]
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Expert Source

Ross Taylor
Marketing Expert
Expert Interview. 4 May 2021.}
- Generating a new report each month will give you an idea of which keywords are most successful (and which ones are falling flat), allowing you to increase usage of the proper ones and remove the inefficient ones.
- Keywords change alongside their respective trends, so monitor and update your keywords as your website's audience changes. Or you can Chose a keyword which have more density.
13
Use CTAs in your content. A CTA (Call to Action) consists of a short paragraph (e.g., three or fewer short sentences) which encourages a reader to take action by clicking a link, calling a number, or enrolling in your services. In most cases, you'll want to provide a link for the reader to select.^{[5]
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- When effective, CTAs improve the amount of time for which readers stay on your site.
- Providing internal links in your CTA will keep the reader engaged with your content. Avoid linking to external (e.g., other website) resources in your CTAs.

Method 2

Method 2 of 3:

Optimizing Your Website's Accessibility

1
Use a readable URL. By default, most websites list different pages as "url/number" (e.g., "www.yoursite.com/12345"), making specific pages difficult to remember for human readers. Enabling a "permalinks" option for your website's pages will allow you to create a memorable name for each page (e.g., "www.yoursite.com/how-to-eat-salad").^{[6]
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- Using recognizable words instead of strings of numbers will be especially helpful when encouraging others to view a specific page on your site by sending them a link, as they'll be able to see at a glance what the page is about.
- Most website hosting services have an option to use title-based links rather than procedurally generated (numerical) links in the Settings section.
2
Create a 404 page. The infamous 404 page is encountered when a person misspells or incorrectly types a section of your website's URL into the address bar (e.g., "www.yoursite.com/handburgers" instead of "www.yoursite.com/hamburgers"). By default, the 404 page results in an error, but you can create your own 404 page to address common issues.
- A great 404 page should include a link to the main site, a table of contents for popular links, and a concise but light-hearted message informing the user that they've entered a broken link.
- As with most accessibility features, you can usually create a 404 page from within your website hosting service's Settings page.
3
Make sure you have a site navigation section. This section can take many forms, but it usually appears as a hamburger menu (☰) in one of the upper corners of the site page. Users can click the menu icon to view a list of common pages (e.g., Help, Downloads, etc.).
- If possible, implementing an in-site "Search" function will also help users search your site for more specific content or features.
- Even if your "navigation" section is just a row of title tabs across the top of the website's home page, having the option to jump between pages is valuable.
4
Keep your content concise. It can be difficult not to get wrapped up in the process of implementing keywords to the point that your content ends up being lengthy, but shorter sentences are preferred by the bulk of readers.^{[7]
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- This doesn't mean that your overall content needs to be short; your content should be at least 350 words, and in some cases may perform better in the 800 to 2000 word range.
5
Ensure that mobile phone optimization is enabled. Virtually every website hosting service offers a mobile view preview when designing your site; make sure that you use this feature to ensure that mobile users aren't seeing a confusing, cluttered, or inefficient layout. Since most of your site traffic most likely comes from mobile users, this is a crucial step.
- Try visiting your site from a mobile browser and looking for issues or irritating features. This will help you determine which parts of the design require your attention.

Method 3

Method 3 of 3:

Optimizing Your Website's Performance

1
Reduce your use of intensive applications. Website that use lots of Flash or Java can take much longer to load. Try not to rely on these for your basic web page, and don't make Flash videos play automatically.
- This is an issue with sites which automatically play embedded (e.g., YouTube) videos as well.
2
Optimize your images. Large, high-quality images can slow down your website considerably, and may burn through your server hosting space as well. Many photo editors and website hosts alike offer an option to optimize your photos for web publishing, so take advantage of this option.^{[8]
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- Most website hosting services also offer an option to load images as viewers scroll down rather than loading a whole page's worth of images at once.
- While images are important when attempting to make your site more attractive, they can considerably slow down traffic from slower browsers and platforms. Don't overuse images.
3
Minify CSS and Javascript code. Minification removes all unnecessary characters from code, typically white space, new lines, and comments, which will both help your site load faster and boost your website's search engine optimization.
- Closure Compiler by Google can minify Javascript for free, while other free minimizers can be applied to different types of code (e.g., HTML).
- You will still be able to edit your code with the human-readable organization. The code is minified only when it is uploaded to the server.
4
Use the latest version of PHP. Make sure you are using the latest version of PHP so you can benefit from the latest improvements. While the PHP developers try to keep the language backwards-compatible, you will probably need to spend some time updating your code in accordance with the latest changes.
- If you're using a website hosting service such as WordPress or Weebly, you shouldn't have to worry about manually updating your website's PHP.
5
Make sure your website caches files locally. Enabling this option for your webpages' files, photos, and other content will ensure that users who allow cached content won't have to retrieve the content every single time they revisit your site.
- Any users who clear their browser's cache and cookies before revisiting your site won't benefit from this, but the bulk of people who come across your site will be positively impacted.

Expert Q&A

Question

How long does it take to optimize your website?

Ross Taylor
Marketing Expert
Ross Taylor is a Marketing Expert and the Founder of Alameda Internet Marketing. With over 10 years of experience, Ross specializes in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Ross’ boutique SEO agency is a Google Partner agency, which has been recognized for its dedication to honest communication and quality service with awards from UpCity, ThreeBestRated.com, and Clutch. Ross holds an Associate of Arts degree from Chabot College and certifications in Google AdWords and CompTIA A+.

Ross Taylor

Marketing Expert

Expert Answer

Optimizing your website is not a task that's ever really finished. No website exists in a vacuum; instead, you're up against the others. Everything you do on your site is going to depend on when you match and exceed the optimization of your competitors.
Question

Does the site have to be device adaptable, i.e., for desktop or mobile device?

Community Answer

You should always try to make your website adaptable to many different screen sizes and input methods. This helps increase your available traffic and availability to users.

Warnings

Do not over-stuff your pages with keywords. "Keyword spamming" can be punished with a low ranking by many search engines.

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