Maximizing Website Performance: A Comprehensive Guide to SEO Strategy and Technical Services
In order for a search engine to direct consumer traffic to your website, your website must be among the highest ranking results for a relevant search. Essentially, the difference between having a successful website and having a website that brings in no business is the implementation of a successful SEO strategy. This paper will explain the importance of SEO strategy and technical services in maximizing a website’s performance and outline a method to achieve high-level search engine ranking using a case study to show the effectiveness of this method.
Today, the use of search engines to find products and services is virtually universal. According to Forrester Research, the National Retail Foundation, and Shop.org, 93% of all internet traffic stems from consumers who use search engines. According to the NPD Group, those consumers spend nearly the same amount of money online and off. This being the case, it is obvious that high search engine ranking is crucial to the success of any online business in today’s consumer-driven e-commerce market.
Importance of SEO Strategy and Technical Services
SEO strategies and the technical services are a very cost-effective method to ensure traffic increase for the website. Organic search and the ads serve a large majority of the engines that the populace use. Optimizing the site for the engine can only take you a certain distance. The majority of the search engine traffic goes to the organic search. The next step up is the local search where the majority of the search for places or information is done. It is highly relevant to the present day as local search is one of the most popular methods in finding services today. An industry research company, the Kelsey group released a survey that said local search was growing at a rapid pace and would reach over 25 billion annually over the next few years. Given the economic conditions faced at that present time, the statistics say an incredible amount. A price comparison is easy to do. The money spent on SEO strategies and technical services need only be compared to the amount of business it attracts. Even local businesses these days spend money on ads in the local newspapers. This is no longer so effective as many people go online for their information. SEO strategies would also take it a step further. The statistics in the same survey said that 54% of local searches had a desire for more results. In comparison to spending on a limited ad that may not give effective results, SEO strategies and technical services would pull the business to the website at an equal or even less cost. Maximizing website performance through effective SEO strategy services and technical services.
The importance of the SEO strategy and the technical service in maximizing the performance of the website and also adding to the advantages is indeed a tried and tested method to ensuring increased traffic to the concerned website. When a host of activities are initiated with the objective of improving the website so that it accommodates itself in the higher rankings of the search engine, it is known as search engine optimization. This would involve the undertaking of keywords or Meta tags, to make the search more relevant and therefore so that the engine can search the website with the utmost relevance. SEO strategy also involves a change in the design and the content of the website which would indeed make the website more attractive to the search engine. This in turn increases the chance of the site actually being found and bettered when the content of the website matches the criteria of the search.
Benefits of Maximizing Website Performance
For businesses, improved usability means getting the user to the information they want more effectively. This can also lead to call-to-action conversions or increasing ad revenue on content sites. High-performance web pages will have better conversion rates. A website optimized for performance will have high user retention and engagement. This may include the performance of web applications like online forms, shopping carts, or GUIs that require clicks and drags. This could also include a decrease in bounce rate, seeing as users will be more likely to continue using a high-performance website.
Another reason to maximize website performance is to improve usability. This actually includes different things for users and businesses. For users, it’s to make the experience more enjoyable. This could mean improving load times for a more efficient web page or increasing the responsiveness of a UI. A quote from Google Web Search states, “0.5 seconds is an average time that a user will wait for a page to load. If a page hasn’t loaded in 3 seconds, there’s a 40% chance the user will abandon the site.”
The main reason for maximizing the performance of a website is to increase the potential benefit. Faster performance through web optimization has been shown to increase sales and decrease operating costs. When Amazon increased performance by 100ms, they saw a 1% increase in revenue. This represents an annual revenue increase of 100 million.
SEO Strategy Essentials
After you have chosen which keywords that you will use, it is a good idea to perform an analysis of the keyword effectiveness. This can be done through various software or simply by checking the search accuracy of the word in different search engines. You will want to find out which words are more likely to bring people to your page, and this can generally be accomplished by choosing the keywords with a higher search count.
Probably the most important piece of the puzzle, the keywords and phrases that you use within your text can mean the difference between success and failure. The keywords you use should be relevant to your topic, and they should be words that a typical person interested in your service would be likely to use. While common words and phrases might make your page get lost in the sea of other webpages (virtual suicide), overly specific words might isolate you from your audience. The best idea is to find a commonly used keyword or phrase that is not too general and not too specific. There are many tools designed to help you with this process such as Wordtracker and the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. With these tools at your service, it would be ridiculous to not have well-researched keywords for your page.
Keyword Research and Analysis
How do you have proper keyword research? You can start by analyzing your own products or articles. Try to choose keywords that best describe your goods or articles. Think about what words will be input by the user when they need to find what you offer. After you get a viable keyword, try to compare it with search results by inputting the keywords into a search query. Are the search results relevant to your goods or articles? How many search results are worth your competition? Then, you can also analyze the keywords that are being used by your competitors. Do these keywords have a good impression on their site? How effective are they? Or you can use the Google Suggest feature when you input a keyword into a search query, and look at other suggestions based on the keywords you input.
When trying to build a successful website, all the way down to a specific page, the idea of key terms is the most important single thing to experiment with on your website. Not only a few, but many developers have stated that keyword research is the most important part of an SEO strategy. This is because some search engines, especially Google, give the largest positive effect towards the relevance of an article with the keywords that are being input into the search query. Keywords will be the main connector between your articles and the search results as a whole. The better relevance and quality of the keywords that you use, the more likely your website will be visited by many people. But if you use keywords that have no relation to the relevance, or use general keywords that have been used by many other websites without having specific quality, it is possible that your website will be hard to find. This is why you need to start with proper keyword research.
On-Page Optimization Techniques
The changes made to the webpage can be few or many. It depends on the current standing of the website. If the website is already in the top 10 results, a few changes will do as it is easier to bring about the change. If the website is new, you will have to apply more changes as it is easier to optimize a new webpage.
The prime aim of any search engine optimization technique is to apply a few changes to the webpage in order to optimize it for higher ranking. This not only increases the page rank of the website but also increases the visibility to related searches. This method is an art and a craft as it requires the user to keep themselves updated with search engine changes and also apply some logical and analytical skills.
On-page optimization is an important aspect of SEO. It’s a first and important step to achieve the top spot in search engine results.
Off-Page Optimization Strategies
- Effect of Off-Page Optimization Depending on the competitiveness of the keywords used, this strategic process can yield quite a dramatic increase in search engine page ranking. Creating links for very competitive keywords may be the determining factor in achieving a high search engine ranking. In fact, it is not uncommon to see this as the only differing factor despite many websites having similar on-page optimization. On the other hand, building links for keywords with low levels of competition may only see a small improvement in search engine ranking. This highlights the importance of higher levels of Off-Page Optimization for the more competitive keywords that often bring in higher earnings.
- Strategic Importance of Off-Page Optimization Off-Page optimization is an ongoing process and if applied correctly can yield long-term results. The very first thing that must be acknowledged is that it is directly related to establishing and increasing link popularity of your website. This is done by creating as many incoming links as possible. A link from another website is similar to a vote for your website. The key thing about this vote is not the quantity of links but the quality. This can be assessed by where the link comes from, who the link is from, what the anchor text says on the link, and how many other links are on the webpage. A link from websites with a high page rank that is relevant to your website will be the most effective link to obtain. Each link takes time and effort to acquire, so quality should always be the primary focus. With a monthly goal, links can be built over time, simultaneously providing a sense of steady improvement to the search engine ranking of your website.
- Advantage of On-Page Understanding A website which is already optimized has received a piece of the battle, primarily because On-Page Optimization lays the foundation work for any sort of SEO Campaign. Off-Page Optimization can be thought of as that part of SEO that is conducted to maximize the effectiveness of On-Page Optimization. In other words, it’s attempting to get your website or pages to rank higher in the search engine results pages by increasing the visibility of the site it is aiming to rank.
Technical SEO Services
There are various tools available to measure the speed of your website, such as Google Page Speed and YSlow. These tools will offer a letter grade result along with suggestions on how to improve the speed. It is also a good idea to record the speed of the website before and after changes have been made. This will ensure that the changes are having a positive effect. Technical SEO services include optimizing page load times, improving server response time, and reducing image sizes.
High speed is essential for search engine ranking and for a positive user experience. Aiming for a load time of 5 seconds or less is the ideal scenario to aim for, as it has been said that users will navigate away from a website if the load time is more than 5 seconds.
Website speed optimization involves far more than the simple technicalities of increasing download speed. Speed depends on the hosting service, the design of the website, the presence of external media, and the use of website speed optimization tools. In order to significantly increase the speed of your website, it is necessary to look at all of these factors and work on a long-term strategy, rather than a quick short-term fix.
Website Speed Optimization
It’s not unusual for SEO to have to play the role of the web psychologist. When a website is slow, it’s usually because someone at some point made a poor decision about the site’s design or site structure. And that person is going to be very defensive about being told that his design is causing problems. If you are the one who made these poor decisions, then you should be the first to admit this to yourself, so you can work on reversing the damage. If this is a design that you think is worth fighting for, you need to be prepared to test alternative designs using a high level of controlled experimentation. With server-based technologies like mod_gzip and scripts/tools which enable you to profile different pieces of your site’s code, there’s often a way to trim the fat from a page without having to give up the design vision for the page. But not every page load problem can be solved in a cost-effective way. When client-centered therapy fails, it may be necessary to give the bad news that the visitors to the slow-loading page just aren’t worth the server resources it takes to keep them, and that it’s best to just redirect them elsewhere.
Website speed is a critical piece of a website’s backend infrastructure. It’s a topic that’s moved to the forefront for SEOs. In the past, it seemed that only those who were web designers or who had a dial-up connection to the Internet were overly concerned with the load times of web pages. But with things like broadband Internet access and Google considering a move to using speed as a ranking factor, it’s become increasingly important.
Mobile-Friendly Design and Responsiveness
We do realize that not all mobile users are pleased with the mobile responsive change and for some websites, creating a mobile-friendly version may be the best option. Whichever option is chosen, it is important to ensure that the same SEO elements are present on the mobile version of the site. This includes everything from meta data to the structured data markup. Failure to do this may result in a drop in mobile search traffic.
A mobile version can complicate things and present duplicate content issues if not implemented correctly. If your site is built on a popular content management system such as WordPress, there are many mobile-friendly themes that can easily be installed. Regardless of the method used, it is important to ensure that the website is still accessible to desktop users. With the responsive design method, users will be presented with the same content in a different layout.
Google’s mobile-friendly update showed how the search engine is prioritizing mobile-friendly websites in the search results. Failing to update your site may result in a significant loss in traffic from mobile users. We offer various options for making your website mobile-friendly. This may include a responsive design change, or a mobile version of your site. In most cases, we find that a responsive design works best for all devices and is the easiest to maintain. This allows us to keep the same URL structure, making it easier to manage your site in the long run.
With the rise in mobile technology, the need for mobile-friendly websites and intuitive site responsiveness is critical. With many websites now generating up to 50% of their traffic from mobile users, it is very important that the site is accessible to these viewers. Mobile users also tend to navigate through various pages on the website, since they are looking for information on-the-go and may not have time to thoroughly read long articles. It is important to ensure that these viewers are able to digest your content and find what they are looking for.
URL Structure and Site Architecture
The URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) resembles a URL and the naming structure for a document or location mirrors that of a URL. The contrast between the two is that a URL distinguishes where to discover a document and how to bring it. An emotional URI tells a browser to inspire a specific application to do the bringing. One of the primary objectives of URL naming strategies and document location is to help incorporate site maintenance and development with little effect on SEO positioning and demand. Measures to enhance site operations and non-SEO reasons give off an impression of being the main engine behind in-depth information on this issue. Although some concern yourself with revamping URLs for strong SEO alone, the chance of implementation frequently leads to extensive site changes that might be hard to return. Therefore, it is essential to understand approaches to grow an archive and naming structure that is both optimized for SEO and significant to a site’s long-term success.
The URL after separates as:
A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is an address used to identify a particular archive on the internet. It looks like this: The URL to distinguish a particular file resembles this:
Advanced SEO Techniques
Here we’re going to focus on the first of these tactics for exposing a maximum amount of information in the search results. Schema markup is code that you put on your website to help the search engines return more informative results for users. If you’ve ever used rich snippets, you’ll know that they can really make your search result stand out. In the context of SEO, schema markup is the code that helps the search engines return more informative results for users. There are many different types of markup that can be added, however the most commonly used across the industry is JSON-LD. Google has an entire library of markup types that it uses to enhance search results, but the most important for SEOs are articles, local businesses, reviews and ratings, and events. Any site that is providing any sort of information should be marking up that content with schema, it’s an opportunity to enhance every search result that your site can potentially appear in. Note that schema markup does not have any impact on keyword rankings; it simply adds a more compelling face to your search result.
When it comes to leveraging advanced SEO techniques, it’s important to first define your goals. There are many different approaches and tactics, and often the best way to do something is context dependent. If your goal is to expose the largest possible footprint of information in the search results, then implementing schema and schema markup for rich snippets is going to be the best tactic to achieve that. If you have a content marketing goal, then creating a knowledge graph is likely the best strategy.
Schema Markup and Rich Snippets
In a recent study, Searchmetrics discovered that utilizing Schema markup can double your likelihood of your rich snippets showing up in search results. Rich snippets are the bits of information that appear under the search result link. They are designed to give searchers an idea of what’s contained on the webpage. Although rich snippets can be influenced by on-page optimization, having a high-ranking page with markup will make it more likely for the rich snippets to appear. Visitors will be more inclined to click on a search result with a rich snippet, so having a higher click-through rate will improve a page’s overall organic ranking.
Structured data was not considered vital in the realm of SEO until recently. Ever since Google announced its preference for Schema, it has been an increasingly important topic. It is recommended that a website uses Schema markup on its HTML, improving the search engine result and making the post stand out. This all helps to increase the probability that a user will click on your post compared to an organic result or the result of a competitor. Make sure to check out a step-by-step guide on Schema implementation for a WordPress site.
Voice Search Optimization
The majority of voice search answers are taken from a featured snippet. Having a featured snippet isn’t a guaranteed way to get your content used as a voice search answer, but a large number of answers come from featured snippets. In the last phase, we discussed the importance of structured data. Using schema or another form of markup for a featured snippet gives a better chance of your content being selected as a voice search answer.
Make your content easy to understand. Google tends to source voice search answers from content that is very readable, and the average Google voice search result is written at a 9th-grade level. We are not suggesting you dumb down your content, but try to make your content and your web pages as easy and clear as possible. Readable content benefits SEO anyway, so this is something worth investing time in.
Voice search is popular in different kinds of searches. It appears that voice search users are looking for quick answers and like to have a direct conversation with the search engine.
The mobile search on a browser or using voice search is increasing day by day, and around 50% of global searches are done using mobile. There are several ways to ensure your website is optimized for voice search.
Local SEO Strategies
A proactive way to get your content in front of the right audience is by means of outreach to local influencers and other businesses. Building relationships for this type of activity may require a significant amount of time and effort. However, it can be mutually beneficial for both parties involved.
Regularly publishing content to your blog to keep the Google bot coming back to your site is also a key factor in content marketing. This shows that the site is active, and by using internal linking as we discussed in phase 2, you can funnel link equity to your important service pages.
When writing content for targeting local keywords, any service area pages or articles written with the specific intent of targeting a local keyword should have a clear marketing message with an actionable outcome for the reader. It says it here, always make sure that any keyword targeted with your on-page content has a well-thought-out intent that correlates with an action you’d like the reader to take. This will make the page more effective, as well as provide opportunities for users to share the page or link to it.
So far, we have provided our best practices and strategies that are part of a solid foundation for optimizing your website for SEO. It’s time to move forward and begin achieving those top rankings for localized keywords. The first step is a well-executed content marketing strategy. This should be something that is in your SEO strategy anyway, but making use of it for local SEO can be a very powerful tool.
