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Website optimization, what is SEO, why should you do an audit?

Website optimization, what is SEO, why should you do an audit?

Website optimization, what is SEO, why should you do an audit?

SEO optimization of a website


From this article you will learn what is seo optimization of a website, store and blog. What are the steps to follow and what is SEO optimization of texts and technical optimization.

SEO visibility of the website

SEO optimization of a website for a search engine is a must if the site is to actually generate revenue and gain customers. Whether it's a business card site, a store or a blog -each must be optimized. Otherwise, search engines will not display it in the top ten search results, and thus no one will find it.

Even a passionate and desirable topic will not find its readers if it is hidden in distant search results. That's why you need to undertake SEO optimization of your site. The more competition and more difficult key phrases we want to get, the more work awaits us in terms of topic exhaustion and keyword analysis.

Table of Contents :

  1. What is and what is seo optimization of a website?
  2. SEO optimization of the website
  3. Store optimization
  4. Blog optimization
  5. Where to get keyword ideas from?
  6. How to perform on-page SEO i.e. onsite?
  7. SEO copywriting - how to write content for SEO?
  8. Technical optimization or technical SEO
  9. Price list for website positioning

What does seo optimization consist of?


When optimizing websites, we also need to realize that Google is just an algorithm that, when entering our site, does not know who we are and what type of business we do. It is necessary to carry out when optimizing the site all the necessary recommendations of Google in this regard.

The idea behind the issue of SEO optimization is to help Google better understand our site, its main topic that we particularly care about. In other words, we need to show Google our business according to what the search engine guidelines are. We have a number of optimization techniques at our disposal - actions on the site so-called 'onsite' factors.

Website optimization - how to perform?


The entry is divided into two categories of factors: content / site content and technical aspects of optimization. We will first address the quality factors and content organization.

What is SEO optimization?


SEO (Search Engine Optimalisation) is a set of actions that make a website understandable to search engine robots and user-friendly. What does this mean ? Every website is systematically visited and crawled by search engine robots. If it is properly optimized, the robots know what it is about and when users type in certain keywords, they will display it high in the search results. The higher it is, the greater the chance that a user will click on a link that leads to it.

Page optimization should be implemented after a seo audit

What you can expect from a properly performed SEO audit. Check out the results of an SEO audit :

  1. evaluation of the condition of the site in terms of its visibility in google
  2. Provide weaknesses and strengths of the site with recommendations on what to improve,
  3. Evaluation of the site in terms of competition with TOP10 results for the main phrases on which it should rank

Depending on the results, only those elements that are not working are improved. In extreme cases, it is necessary to return to the UX design process and rebuild thematic silos for relevant key phrases, dividing them into main containers to which complementary key phrases are assigned: dependent phrases, questions, similar phrases, which should be taken into account to achieve the so-called top authority content, i.e. a site of high quality in terms of content.

Then how do you perform the optimization of the site?

Much depends on its specifics and purpose, so the main varieties of sites will be discussed separately. See how to speed up your site and wordpress optimization

Website optimization


Optimizing a website that acts as a business card for a person or company is very important. See also how to do website optimization for voice search

What is the first step in optimizing your site?

Determining the main key phrases for each sub-page, and the right reverse which is rarely done sub-pages should be created based on key phrase research to properly match their URL and content to the key phrase. Website development should be done in processes that take into account SEO analysis and research.

Names of main menu items and submenus

Offer planning - main menu item

Instead of one general item 'offer', you can build separate sub-pages for specific services offered and place them in the main menu if there are not many of them. This will result in better clickability of the offer item and the keyword placed in the menu, e.g. instead of an offer in which we include an offer for photovoltaic panels, changing to photovoltaic panels will already give internal power to the sub-page of the offer for photovoltaic panels.

Price list - breakdown into subpages

Instead of one general price list item, you can divide it into price lists for specific services and build a corresponding tree of pricing phrases for specific services based on that.

Store optimization


Optimization within the ecoomerce, or online store, is an activity that is undertaken in a similar way to any other website, but there are a few more issues to implement and implement here. Online store development Chicago implemented in the process of SEO analysis is the first step even before the design of UX mockups is undertaken.

In addition to basic optimization, product cards and categories should be taken care of.

Product card

Google likes content, we usually come across empty product sub-pages on online stores equipped only with price, photo and headline, and of course shopping functionality. This is a mistake. If we describe the product, write down its features, parameters, dimensions, we increase the probability that the product will be visible for these phrases, such as: product X dimension Y color Z. Of course, such phrases have lower searchability, but higher conversion rate because users typing them are already decided to buy a specific model, it is worth taking care of such phrases and an interested customer at the end of the sales funnel.

Similar products section

This is a very important section to improve the UX of the store. It allows the user to quickly navigate to similar products, so we build appropriate thematic silos, for example, for products of the color black or size 45 men's shoes.

Category

It is a good idea to use dedicated descriptions and an individual H1 header next to the category. This is because often the H1 or H2 header includes the very text Category which causes duplication within all product categories. Therefore, instead of using generic descriptions, e.g. Category, it is worth personalizing them, e.g. Category Men's shoes color black.

Blog optimization

The optimization recommendations for the blog are primarily to take care of individual category descriptions and posts.

Individually go to the meta title and description and descriptions on the page.

Basic problems on the blog

Often SEO optimization and header placement comes out badly, so before we undertake optimization, we should check how the site architecture and UX are built. Well-designed UX and thoughtful architecture will solve SEO issues on its own. The two domains intertwine having an impact of one on the other. With a proper breakdown of entries and good categorization, we will already get answers on how to approach SEO - it will already be a formality of naming silos.

Start by researching phrases for the post

If we have a topic we want to write about, it is a good idea to do research on competitive posts from the TOP10 beforehand and see how they are done in terms of SEO. Such an analysis will give us knowledge of what to pay attention to what competitive posts are about and how to do it better to exhaust the topic

It's also a good idea to use Google's hints at the bottom of the search results list, as well as the hints that appear when a key phrase is typed in. These are phrases that users type in to learn more about a topic, and it's a good idea to include them as well to increase the visibility of the post you create.

Google Keyword Planner is also helpful here, which will show the competitiveness of the word, the number of searches and the degree of difficulty. We will also get a suggestion of phrases, questions to include in the content.

Categories of entries

We should use unique names to avoid duplication within the site for H1 and H2 headings. Instead of Travel category, let's break it into dedicated travel to Italy, travel to Asia, etc.

Related Posts

In order not to leave the user without a suggestion of what to do next after reading the post, it is worth introducing a section of similar posts to increase the chance of staying on the site longer and moving on to a similar topic. Such a procedure improves conversion and traffic to the site, as well as the value of the site for the search engine, which will consider that the user has found what he was looking for and it is worth promoting such a post and, consequently, the blog higher in the results.

Internal linking

It is also worthwhile to link in the content to posts discussing the issue, if a particular keyword attracts the user's attention he will move on to the next post, and this means profit for us in the form of more visited pages per session.

From where to take keywords to build the visibility of a website, blog, store ?

The SEO industry uses specific tools to analyze and build keyword sets. It is not an art to write an interesting article that will be invisible in search results. Often, when writing content, we don't realize what phrases we can use to exploit the potential of keywords by which a user will arrive at our post from a search engine. Often the way a user may try to search for information looks just like this. By analyzing keywords with the following programs, we will get a full insight into various queries that will help us understand how users use the search engine to find interesting issues and answers.

Popular programs for performing key phrase research are :

Keywordfinder

Ubersuggest

Ahrefs

Semstorm

Senuto

A paid program that gives you tremendous phrase search capabilities thanks to its built-in keyword database. You can search by domain and keywords for further phrases and complementary phrases.

Answer the public

A very good program that offers keyword phrase analysis in terms of queries. From the entered phrase, the program creates all possible combinations of possible phrases.

Google Keyword Planner

A free and popular tool from Google. With it we will determine the volume of queries per month, the difficulty of the phrase. We will also get a list of phrases similar to the entered one. You can check a maximum of 10 phrases.

Each of these programs will give similar results, however, it is worth checking at least a few to build a maximum database of keywords that are worth including in the content or H2-H4 headings.


Seo optimization - actions

Now that we know how optimization differs between different types of sites, it's time to get down to specifics. See also how to increase traffic to a website from a search engine.

Content optimization for seo

What is content optimization for seo? You can do it yourself, but it is a time-consuming process. In the case of inexperienced people, it may also turn out that this time has been wasted, because the texts are seemingly improved, and the effects, in the form of higher positions, are not visible. Therefore, it is better to use the help of a professional - seo copywriter. His knowledge, experience and ability to select and apply keywords will make the site begin to record higher positions after just a few weeks, followed by clicks, and in the case of sales pages, also purchases.


Linking in content - internal

When writing about your offer on the homepage, it is worthwhile in the introductory content to provide a link to the specific point you want to draw attention to, using as a linking word the subject of the offer, activities, so that it presents the topic to which it links, for example, wooden houses, fresh coffee, potted plants, etc....

Emphasize, use html tags

No one likes to read excessively long content 'crammed together', content prepared for a website should be divided into short blocks of content with appropriate headings (more on this later in the technical section) improving the overall graphic value of the entry as well as its readability.

Modernity of the site - new content and technology

Think about what you can do to make your site different (better?) than your competitors, what you can positively surprise visitors with, let them know that your site is not another copy of what 90% of the industry has.

Write about news, update the site and blog

Use social media to share what you're up to, paste posts from the site, images, news. Gather an audience. Google likes how you provide it with content. Try to maintain a pace, e.g. two or three posts a month, new products, news, blog. However, remember that all published posts should be of good quality, interesting, carrying some value and designed for seo. Texts have great power, so it is worth using seo copywriting to prepare them.

Monitor how Google indexes your site

It's also a good idea to monitor your activities in a free tool from Google. See our Google Search Console tutorial where we will check how Google 'sees our site', its potential indexation problems, effectiveness visibility parameters. See also what a website should contain


SEO copywriting

Seo copywriting is guided by clear rules, but their implementation already requires creativity, ingenuity and experience. A text in which, in every second sentence, there is a selected keyword is not enough. These words must be carefully selected, properly woven in and placed in the right places. This is what seo copywriting does. And an additional point. A seo copywriter not only knows how to deploy keyword phrases - he also knows how to find and select them, so that their variety leads to a given page.

Principles of seo copywriting

When creating seo-optimized text, a copywriter must follow several rules. First of all, he should know what is the name of the word or phrase that you type into a search engine to find something online. This is the keyword or key phrase.


Title under seo

The title of an article that is optimized should contain the main keyword, preferably at the very beginning. This way it clearly lets the robots know what the text will be about and what word it should display for.

Lead

The same main keyword should be in the first sentence of the lead, the introductory text of the article. This confirms to the robots that this is what the content is about.

Headlines

Headings should be graded from H1 through H2 and H3. The H1 heading is the title. H2 is the main mid-headings, and H3 and smaller to the sub-headings of the mid-headings. The main keyword should appear in at least one headline from each level. The others should include variations, related words and near words.

Content optimization for seo

In the content, the main keyword, its synonyms and related, similar words should be repeated several times in a natural way. In this way, robots learn that for all words the text should display and interpret its main idea. Article optimization for seo applies to all publications on the site.

How to write texts for seo

By applying the above rules, the text will automatically begin to climb up in search results. However, it is important to know that just using them rigidly will not have the desired effect. Text under seo must make sense and have merit. Robots are learning more and more and thus have higher and higher requirements. It is not enough to saturate the text with phrases. Such actions are considered aggressive optimization and penalized. You still need to convey value to readers. However, texts alone will not ensure high positions.

Technical optimization is still needed.

Technical optimization

Technical optimization often neglected by website contractors is a very important aspect that completes the work of making a website. It includes such elements:

  1. URL analysis, creating simple addresses and url structure
  2. analysis of duplication within the site
  3. cannibalization analysis within the site
  4. Analysis of the site's code and its execution time.
  5. checking js scripts and whether they block content for robots
  6. setting correct 301 and https:// redirects
  7. setting up one version of the home page, addresses without / and with / are already physically two addresses under which is the same content which affects negatively
  8. Analysis of site data on Google Search Console substrate
  9. checking the site with programs gtmetrix.com , Google Lighthouse, Google Page Speed
  10. setting the htaccess file accordingly
  11. Ensure that subpages are not displayed when additional characters such as #, or numbers are entered,
  12. Taking care of the site map and its version in XML,
  13. setting hreflang in the source code,
  14. SSL implementation,
  15. check 302 temporary redirects,
  16. In the case of wordpress caching setting and its security,
  17. implementing rich snippets,
  18. GTM / Google Tag Manager / implementation,
  19. setting no-index means no indexing of less important subpages such as terms of service, privacy policy so that they do not lower the quality of the site and do not waste the crawl budget of the google robot,
  20. Checking the optimization of images and their size on the page,

Optimization of technical elements

Optimization of technical elements belongs to the group of on-site activities, i.e. on the website, and includes several diverse elements.

Page loading speed

If a site takes longer than three seconds to load robots will consider it technically weak and will not suggest it to users. Instead, they will suggest such a site that loads faster. It's also worth checking the site's crawl budget

Site indexing

When search engine robots visit a site, they jump from one page of it to another thanks to the internal links in the text. The more time they spend in one domain, the more subpages they will index, and this will affect the position of the entire site. However, it is worth remembering that linking alone will not solve the issue. A big help is to add a robots.txt file that guides robots through the entire structure.

The site does not exist

Deleted pages return a 404 error code. If robots hit such a site with an error they negatively rank it. Because of this, the page "drops" in the results. However, if a 301 redirect is made from the address of the deleted page to some other place, the robots will not notice the 404 and will not lower their rating.

Security

It is very important to implement SSL on a website. Websites with an address starting with http are considered potentially dangerous. Those with an address on https have a much better record. See what an SSL certificate is.

Structural data

This is additional information that allows you to better understand the content of the page. Their proper implementation distinguishes the page in the results by publishing stars, average rating, publication date, etc. What is structured data

META TAGI – description, title

Meta tags are visible in search results as a description of our site. It should be composed simply and have a clear message for a user looking for a particular service. Thus, at our disposal we have as many as 60 characters to show Google what our site is about, 'personalizing' it to a large extent thanks to this its thematicity.  The homepage can contain the main keyword (used naturally - variant in the case), and since each page of your site is different content, the issue it addresses, you should ensure that this tag is unique to each page, describing its content in brief.

The second visible tag just below the title of the page in the search results is the meta description which should be used for a two or three sentence description of our business. Here we can include a (naturally used) keyword, an interesting description that will interest the Internet user browsing the results. It should be remembered, however, that Google does not take this tag into account when calculating the ranking, there remains the aspect of an interesting composition that encourages a click.

H1, H6 header tags

Another tool for achieving topicality for the site are H1-H6 tags, in practice H1-H4. They are also responsible for the personalization of a given sub-page, so in the H1 tag (the most important, main ) we place a title for our sub-page describing briefly what it contains. In the next headings H2-H6 we supply larger blocks of our content, e.g. placing in them the name of the company, product, described service. These are lower-level headings, but equally important because they help to distinguish the subsequent content of the sub-page. If we additionally supply the whole thing with an appropriately sized font, style and color, we can also get an interesting visual impression that increases readability.

Friendly url addresses

Simple URLs, easy for the robot and the user.

If you use a CMS system, it is worthwhile that it generates nice addresses - user and robot friendly in the form of, for example, domain.pl/o-nas, domain.pl/offer, instead of a long string of characters and numbers after index.php....

Return path - breadcrumbs

This little line placed under the main menu, banner allows us to find our way around any sub-page - no matter how confusing the structure (which we don't recommend) we can always quickly go back a level or two higher without having to figure out how to get back or clicking the back arrow.

Tag strong, bold - emphasize important things.

Warto aby zamiast popularnego znacznika bold <b></b> stosować <strong> pozwalający Google odnaleźć w treści interesujące nas słowa na które chcemy aby użytkownik również zwrócił uwagę.

Alt graphics optimization

- describe your graphic.

It is good to use a description for the tag that inserts the graphic into the page <img>. This additionally allows us to show Google what our page is about even though it doesn't know if our image is there, e.g. <img alt="company logo xxx">.

Site map - sitemap

For larger sites, it is good to have all the sub-pages of the site collected in the form of a link map. It helps in indexing the sub-pages to get them into the search engine index.

Correctness of frontend coding

- Does your website display in every browser ?

Our website should display correctly under all leading browsers - sometimes there will be minimal differences, but we don't want an Opera user to see the page cut off or with bad centering, and yet another using IE 7, 8 not seeing the menu, having the content obscured by graphics, etc....

Ads

- if you use ads place them in a minimally invasive way on the site.

Hiding content on the page

- is one of the 'black techniques.

There is one important rule : the user should get the same content as the google robot.

Before any redesign, update of the site, e.g. when we make it from scratch, it is a good idea to apply an SEO audit or UX audit to find out what are the strengths and weaknesses of the current website. It's also a good idea to plug into a hotjar.com or mouseflow.com heatmap site to find out what problems users encounter or what content they are looking for and what they are overlooking.

Now that everything is clear, it remains to move on to the last part. How much do such works cost?

Positioning price list

That is, how much does it cost to position a website ?

SEO optimization and positioning of a website requires work on several levels. The work performed is within:

  1. Optimization of site content,
  2. research new key phrases or improve current ones - expand the set of phrases within existing ones
  3. technical optimization
  4. Checking the indexation status in Google Search Console,
  5. Building new visibility for the site, which involves building new content for the site based on analysis of the competition and new key phrases,

View Service :


Is it worth it to position your current site - condition assessment

If the website is relatively in good condition ie: properly built topic silos with key phrases and tailored content, the process of guiding the user through the site is well thought out ie UX design and information architecture is done correctly you can build on what you have and work on improving starting from where the website is now.

However, if the site does not bring conversions, its visibility is negligible and there are problems in Google Search Console, it is worthwhile to perform an audit and analysis of the site in terms of SEO and technical aspects before undertaking further work. It is often a good idea to perform a UX analysis as well, since SEO these days is largely about well-thought-out site architecture. The two terms and areas of SEO and UX intersect and have a lot of influence on each other.

Therefore, without proper analysis, it is difficult to give amounts for SEO.

What does the price of positioning depend on ?

The price of positioning depends largely on the degree of competitiveness of key phrases. In other words, how much work should be done to catch up with the competition in the TOP10 or to do all the work better. This involves time spent on analyzing the state of the site, doing research on the competition and building subpages for relevant key phrases. The final stage is to obtain good quality links from blogs, forums, directories or portals that allow you to place a sponsored article, which will not only give a link but also real traffic to the site.

What shapes the price of positioning ?

First of all, it is necessary to analyze the factors that shape the price of positioning. As we mentioned, it is certainly the scope of tasks to be performed. Whether it is only on-site activities or also off-site (linkbuilding), whether only a delicate editing of texts or writing them from scratch is needed, what the site's link structure looks like and whether all issues related to its code are in order.

The price of positioning is mainly influenced by :

  1. Number of phrases and their degree of difficulty
  2. The scope of work that needs to be undertaken to compete in TOP10,
  3. The amount of time investment to improve the current site

Page optimization - price list depends on the scope

When should you consider updating the seo plan for your site to increase its effectiveness? When it records very low results in terms of positions after typing in phrases important to its owner. So if you need seo optimization have an audit prepared first to show what needs to be improved. On the other hand, once you get a quote, ask what is included, what services are offered and what work will be done. You can also ask for a price list for optimizing the site in different price versions, depending on the scope of the work to be undertaken. Then you will find out exactly what the cost of seo is in your case.



optymalizacja seo strony internetowej
SEO infographic website optimization

Community comments on the post How to optimize a website :

You have already practically exhausted the topic, but I will add from myself to add to our entry also one external link, there may be even two or more, but it depends on the amount of content. On average, one per 600 characters

DOMINIK

Whoa, all beautifully in one place without that horrible seo techno gibberish

Greetings!
7RANO


It's also a good idea to create a friendly 404 page and remember redirects to avoid duplicate content problems.
DOMINIK BARTOSIK


Meta tag description does not affect SEO, moreover, there is no guarantee that it will be in the search results at all, more often there is a piece of content of our website. So I wouldn't push so much on the "relevance" of this meta element.
Infographic cool
SEBASTIAN JAKUBIEC


"Meta tag description does not affect positioning".
Sebastian, you write nonsense....
Keywords do not influence, but description 100% has an impact.
FOXEN


Everything very clear and well described.
@Foxen rightly pointed out that description has an impact on positioning. It may not be a direct influence but, for example, thanks to a well-written description we attract the user, traffic to the site increases, and this affects the positions. Optimizing the site for search engine and positioning is one thing, but let's not forget about the user. In addition, the site is supposed to be profitable, that is, the user who enters it is supposed to convert. It is also worth analyzing and optimizing the site in this regard. You may be tempted to test to see which version of the site attracts the user more and converts better. This already requires more knowledge needed to analyze the data received from analytical tools such as Google Analytics, time or resources. Such services are offered by Internet marketing companies.
BARTEK - MEMTOR


Hi, it looks very cool. Will there be further parts? In my opinion, a lot of factors that make up optimization can still be added.
MICHAŁ BĄK


Thanks for the entry.
As we're already having a discussion, I'll ask about semantics in HTML5, elements such as nav, article, mark, etc. does it have a direct bearing on position?
GRZEGORZ WOJNAR


Great collection of interesting and valuable tips. I see that there is still a lot of learning ahead of me....
ANDRZUK


Good content, admittedly familiar, but condensed into one place.
MARIUSZ


Regarding the meta tag description I have a different opinion, but otherwise - great article!
MARCIN


Thank you, a lot of interesting content. Now it is necessary to go deeper into each point and here the stairs begin ... Greetings !!!
ALEKSANDRA


Very valuable tips, great and accurately described:) Above all, decent and neat.
At my stage, I have to read it several times to consolidate and understand it, but reading it is a pleasure.
Greetings,

ALEKSANDRA


Nice condensed, basic information about optimization. Thanks!
BAMBOLO


Very valuable comments I will try to improve my blog according to the tips to achieve even better positions.
BLOGOWICZKA


Very interesting graphics possibly minify css, html....tak in general what about today's nice "graphical sites", they are something like flash for google?they look nice, but content like not enough...for example my www, little has arranged meta, graphics, loading, h1 titles, and has page rank 3 :), probably google contentc
ROBERT


beautiful clean code yet
NIEPELNOSPRAWNY.ORG


just what I was looking for, thanks a lot
I did this and more on my site, hope it helps
MAREK


interesting that majestic of all the links showed the one from this site first as I would have known, I would have put more thought into the commentary [edit] too many keywords in the link profile can hurt hence the change to a web address[/edit].

MIDDLERS.PL


The basis for effective positioning of a website is its proper search engine optimization. In the case of not very competitive keywords, often the optimization of the site itself contributes to a significant improvement in the position on many keywords. See what elements on your website you should pay attention to in order to make your website as SEO optimized as possible.
ISABEL


Super helpful text, I'm going to get started right away on the fixes I'll be able to figure out on my own, descriptions, maybe a site map. Thanks
KARA M

Good article, although it lacks examples of optimization tools. Images can be optimized by e.g. Tinyjpg, etc.
MATEUSZ


Helpful text
Could the placement of a second menu with the same articles as the main menu have a negative impact on the site's SEO? Thanks in advance for the hint
Greetings
GOSIA


I would also add a point about keyword cannibalization on the site. This is a common problem and, contrary to appearances, not so easy to eliminate. It mainly affects online stores, but also sites where the subject matter is based on one or two things/services.
SKYNETIC


Super summary as far as infographics are concerned, I was looking for something like this some time ago 🙂 Thanks, it will come in handy with the template 🙂
DOMINIK


There's always a problem with the loading speed of pages built on WordPress using extensive design themes. The site is visually appealing, but Page Speed Insights tests show poor results, especially for mobile. Even the use of plugins that compress css, graphics, html, js files often does not give satisfactory results, and even causes the page to display incorrectly. PS. Do you know any recommendable tool for monitoring mentions of a company on the Web?
FOTOGUZIK.PL


Is 404 for the main page good enough?
Sometimes the image in the search engine is higher than the post itself on which the image is. What's the best way to avoid this?
DAMIAN


A handful of valuable information. Used, corrections on the site, implemented. I look forward to the results, thank you for the tips and nicely provided.
MULINEK


I have a question.
I have an unupdated site map, but google indexes anyway those pages I would like it to index.
Does the lack of sitemap in such a case lower the positions?
PIOTR