1. Optimize your site for the core web vitals<\/h3>\n
Google\u2019s latest update revealed there are new on-site factors, called web vitals, that’ll influence how high your site ranks.<\/p>\n
You can optimize for these factors, which will improve user experience, along with growing your traffic.<\/p>\n The most important of these factors are:<\/p>\n Users and Google want websites that are fast, usable, and safe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n You can optimize for these by improving your loading speeds, creating relevant media-rich content, and designing a site that creates a stellar user experience.<\/p>\n A rock-solid website optimization strategy should include all of the tips in this post.<\/p>\n Resources to Learn More<\/strong><\/p>\n The chances are high that you have a few technical SEO<\/strong><\/a> errors that are holding your site back.<\/p>\n To uncover these errors you\u2019ll need the help of an SEO tool. The best tool for this job is SEMRush<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n All you have to do is enter your domain and you\u2019ll get a report that highlights technical SEO errors. This SEO audit report will give you a ton of actionable steps to fix any lingering technical errors.<\/p>\n However, there are some very important technical errors that are worth checking as well:<\/p>\n Is your site being indexed by the search engines? Here\u2019s a quick way to check. Head over to Google and type in \u201csite:yoursite.com\u201d.<\/p>\n This will show you what pages and posts are being indexed by Google. Ideally, you\u2019ll see every page and post you\u2019ve published.<\/p>\n Having your robots.txt file in the wrong place can ruin your organic traffic. Navigate to \u201cyoursite.com\/robots.txt\u201d.<\/p>\n If you see the following code:<\/p>\n Then this means your site is being blocked from the search engines. You could also have a more complex robots.txt file, which could be configured the wrong way.<\/p>\n Your home page should only have a single URL associated with it, for example, \u201cyourdomain.com\u201d. However, you might have multiple different URLs which refer to the same thing, for example:<\/p>\n Usually, Google will choose a version of your site to index, but it could also index multiple different versions, which can lead to confusion and duplicate content.<\/p>\n Broken links can create a poor user experience, along with crawling issues.<\/p>\n You can use a tool like Google Search Console<\/strong><\/a> to identify broken links and 404 pages across your site. Then, you can update these links, or add a 301 redirect if the page no longer exists.<\/p>\n If you built out your website without a long-term site plan, then there\u2019s a chance your site is a jumbled mess of pages. By refining and optimizing your website structure<\/strong><\/a> you can improve your search engine rankings, and elevate your user experience across the board.<\/p>\n After all, it doesn\u2019t matter how good your site looks if your users find it impossible to navigate.<\/p>\n Here are a few reasons to improve site structure:<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a process you can follow to improve your site structure:<\/p>\n Even more important than publishing quality content, is publishing content that matches the intent of a keyword<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Put simply, the intent<\/em> is what the user is looking for when they search for a given keyword.<\/p>\n There are three types of searches that people make:<\/p>\n An easy way to determine user intent is to see what\u2019s currently ranking for your chosen keyword. Just by skimming the highest-ranking content, you\u2019ll be able to determine what Google believes the intent of the keyword is.<\/p>\n When you\u2019re updating older content or writing a new post, make sure it\u2019s in alignment with what\u2019s currently ranking and aligns with the user\u2019s goals.<\/p>\n Pillar pages<\/strong><\/a> are the absolute best piece of content on any given topic or set of keywords. As a whole pillar pages will be much longer than traditional blog posts.<\/p>\n Pillar pages can either be long, informative articles that cover everything to know about a topic. Or, they can act as category pages that offer an overview and link out to other articles you\u2019ve written.<\/p>\n These can help your site in two ways:<\/p>\n Pillar pages help to show Google what your content is about. Your pillar page will help to unite different categories of content.<\/p>\n Here are some guidelines to follow when creating pillar pages:<\/p>\n Schema markup<\/strong><\/a> helps Google understand what your page is about and the type of content that\u2019s on the page.<\/p>\n Schema markup on its own won\u2019t help you rank higher in the search engines, but it can help you get more search results real estate, like showing up in the rich snippets<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Adding schema markup to your pages can also help to improve your search engine CTR. For example, if you run a recipe blog, schema markup can show additional useful information, which can encourage users to click your result, instead of another website.<\/p>\n Here are the most common forms of schema you can add to your site:<\/p>\n Not every type of schema will apply to your website. But, you should be able to find at least one type of schema that works.<\/p>\n Adding schema to your website is easy. If you\u2019re running a WordPress website, all you need to do is install a plugin and choose your schema type.<\/p>\n Google favors authority websites. These are sites with incredible content, high-quality backlinks while offering an incredible user experience. All of these fall under the umbrella of web optimization.<\/p>\n It\u2019ll be difficult for you to build a strong personal brand or business without getting all of these factors right.<\/p>\n Becoming an authority in your niche doesn\u2019t have to be that difficult either.<\/p>\n These are just a few methods covered in this post that will help you build an authoritative online business<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n One of the most important factors in ranking your website is link building. According to Google, it\u2019s one of the top 3 ranking factors.<\/p>\n There are a ton of different strategies you can employ to build quality backlinks:<\/p>\n Producing more content takes time, energy, and even money. But, you can improve your rankings without writing more posts, by updating your old content.<\/p>\n In time, your content becomes less fresh, by updating your content you improve your freshness score and can see a jump in traffic.<\/p>\n A lot of topics change with time, so by updating your old content you improve its relevance.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a handful of reasons\/methods for updating your old content:<\/p>\n When you\u2019re looking at your website traffic, email subscribers, and revenue, you want these numbers to be continuously going up.<\/p>\n But, the answer isn\u2019t always more traffic and more buyers. Often, the better approach is improving the conversions you\u2019ve already got.<\/p>\n Put simply, conversion optimization is the process of increasing the number of website visitors that turn into customers or take a specific action.<\/p>\n Here are a few ways you can improve your site\u2019s conversions:<\/p>\n Conversion optimization saves you from the fate of buying more ads, writing more content, or having to sell more products and services.<\/p>\n Instead, you optimize what you\u2019ve got and generate more profit from your current traffic and customers.<\/p>\n There are a handful of website optimization tools you can use to execute the website optimization strategy outlined above. Here are the 5 tools worth checking out:<\/p>\n SEMRush is a full-fledged SEO suite. It truly shines with its competitor research tools. You\u2019ll be able to see how much traffic they\u2019re getting, what backlinks they have, and which sources are sending them the most traffic.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll also find a solid keyword research tool. You\u2019ll be able to uncover keywords that\u2019ll send you relevant traffic, plus you can see which keywords are the most valuable to your competition.<\/p>\n Finally, you can use SEMRush to conduct an SEO audit. The report will give you a breakdown of any technical SEO issues you have, and what you can do to fix them.<\/p>\n Here are some of the core features of this tool:<\/p>\n There are a ton of additional digital marketing tools offered by SEMRush, but the SEO audit and competitor analysis will probably be of most value to you.<\/p>\n Google Search Console is a collection of tools offered by Google that helps to paint a picture of how the search engines view your website.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re serious about your search engine rankings, then this is a tool you\u2019ll need behind your site.<\/p>\n It\u2019ll give you useful information like if your site is infected with malware, what keywords you\u2019re ranking for, the backlinks pointing towards your site, and a lot more.<\/p>\n All you have to do is add your site and you\u2019ll start receiving data.<\/p>\n Here are a few unique features of Google Search Console:<\/p>\n You can start with Google Search Console by reading these guides:<\/p>\n Google Analytics is a free tool that gives you in-depth analytics on your website traffic. Once you\u2019ve synced up your website with Google Analytics you\u2019ll start to get in-depth data about your site.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll get access to a range of different data, for example:<\/p>\n Now, there\u2019s a lot of information to pour through, but it\u2019ll give you in-depth insights into how your visitors behave on your site. Which pages they find the most valuable, any pages that are causing visitors to leave your site, and give you on-page metrics that show how your site is performing.<\/p>\n Here are the two most important metrics to pay attention to:<\/p>\n You can get started with Google Analytics by reading these guides:<\/p>\n Your website needs to be fast<\/strong><\/a>. Your search engine rankings and user experience depend on it. The web pages that rank the highest in Google tend to have very fast loading speeds as well.<\/p>\n Luckily there\u2019s a free tool called Google Pagespeed Insights<\/strong><\/a> that will analyze your website speed on mobile and desktop and give you ways to improve it.<\/p>\n All you have to do is run your website through the tool and you\u2019ll get a score out of 100. The higher the number the better optimized your website is.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll get a breakdown of what you\u2019re doing good, what needs to improve, along how you can make those improvements.<\/p>\n There are also benchmark data that\u2019ll show you how well your site performs compared to the rest of your industry.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re running a WordPress site, then you need the Yoast SEO plugin<\/strong><\/a>. Yoast SEO is one of the top SEO plugins today.<\/p>\n If you want to optimize your site, then this plugin will help you do just that, and educate you on the reasons behind it as well.<\/p>\n With Yoast, you can optimize your entire website on a sitewide level, while also optimizing every single page and post for specific keywords.<\/p>\n Here are some of the core features of this tool:<\/p>\n The ultimate goal of website optimization is to create a website<\/strong><\/a> that better serves your visitors. In turn, this can lead to improved search engine rankings, higher conversions, more sales, and a more profitable business overall.<\/p>\n Without doing any web page optimization you\u2019re doing your business a disservice. Instead of your website acting as an asset for your business, it can become a liability.<\/p>\n Here are some of the biggest benefits to optimizing your website:<\/p>\n One of the main reasons to go through the process of SEO optimization is to improve site visibility<\/strong><\/a> in Google and other search engines and get more traffic to your website.<\/p>\n For example, as you create high-quality relevant content you\u2019ll attract backlinks, or create linkable assets you can use to build links. This will grow your authority and help you rank higher in the search engines<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Overall, the better your site meets the needs of your users, and the better the user experience you provide, the higher your website will rank.<\/p>\n Another big advantage is that you\u2019ll have to pay less for advertising. When your website is ranking organically and optimized to convert at a higher rate, you can scale back on paid ads.<\/p>\n With PPC advertising you\u2019re paying every time a visitor comes to your site. When you stop paying this traffic source completely dries up.<\/p>\n![\"Core](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/core-web-vitals.jpg\")
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2. Fix technical SEO errors<\/h3>\n
![\"Technical](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/technical-seo-audit.png\")
Check indexation<\/h4>\n
Check robots.txt location<\/h4>\n
User-agent: *<\/code>
\nDisallow: \/<\/code><\/p>\nCheck URL canonicalization<\/h4>\n
![\"what](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/canonical-url.jpg\")
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Fix broken links<\/h4>\n
3. Review your site structure<\/h3>\n
![\"Ideal](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/idea-structure-blog.jpg\")
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4. Publish content that matches the user intent<\/h3>\n
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5. Build content authority with pillar pages<\/h3>\n
![\"Pillar](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/pillar-pages.png\")
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6. Optimize for rich snippets using schemas<\/h3>\n
![\"structured-date-in-google-search\"](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/rich-snippets.jpg\")
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7. Build a business and personal brand<\/h3>\n
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8. Get links from related websites<\/h3>\n
![\"Link](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/off-page-seo-links.png\")
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9. Update your old content<\/h3>\n
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10. Optimize for conversions<\/h3>\n
![\"A\/B](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/a-b-testing-principles.png\")
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Web Page Optimization Tools<\/h2>\n
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SEMRush<\/h3>\n
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Google Search Console<\/h3>\n
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Google Analytics<\/h3>\n
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Google Pagespeed Insights<\/h3>\n
![\"Website](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/mobile-page-speed-studies-google.png\")
Yoast SEO<\/h3>\n
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Why is Website Optimization Important?<\/h2>\n
Get more search engine traffic<\/h3>\n
Save on advertising costs<\/h3>\n