Website Optimization Intro for Non-Techies
In this website optimization intro we will look at the basic concepts that are involved in this process. Website Optimization is sometimes known as Search Engine Optimization.
Properly implementing website optimization strategies on your website will improve the visibility of your website on the web at large. For individual pages it increases their visibility in natural, organic, unpaid or algorithmic search results. All these terms mean the same thing.
Why do I need Website optimization?
Someone new to the world of websites may think…
“Why would you need website optimization if you designed it right the first time?”
I have a website and It looks great. It’s well-organized. It has good information that people really are interested in.
Isn’t it time to sit back
and drink smoothies
(or whatever your drink of choice is)?
Well, in our analogy of business startups (on our Web Design Services page), this would only be the beginning. You’d have to market. In other words you have to have some way to get people to your store/website. In website speak this is called traffic. In many other industries these are referred to as leads or potential customers.
While at first glance it seems that website optimization might be redundant or excessive. The fact is that website optimization is a dynamic, evolving process. Just as your competition creates new ways to get more of your market share, the same is true online. Then you add the ever-changing technology landscape and this exponentially increases this issue.
Unless every page on your website is optimized, your website isn’t optimized.
Search engines look at individual pages first when ranking websites, then the website as a whole. Technically, website optimization is a wrong term. Web pages get optimized individually. If they are all optimized on a website, then the website is optimized.
There are basically three categories of website page optimization
Basic Web Page Optimization
This is the least amount you can do on any page which could be considered to be optimized. This involves on-page and off-page optimization techniques. In our Basic Web Page Optimization article, we go into more depth about what this involves.
Advanced Web Page Optimization
Just as the title suggests, these are more advanced web page optimization techniques. These involve things like looking at keyword density, readability levels, image optimization, etc.
Professional Search Engine Optimization
This is definitely a more time consuming activity as you take a very detailed approach of the various keywords or phrases and their competition across the web. These professional search engine optimization techniques require either special software that targets search engine information. In some cases, if you have a lot of time to kill, various websites have most of this information where you can manually gather this information.
Read more about the history of website and search engine optimization from Wikipedia.