What is website optimization?
Website optimization is the process of using tools, advanced strategies, and experiments to improve the performance of your website, further drive more traffic, increase conversions, and grow revenue.
One of the most critical aspects of website optimization is search engine optimization (SEO). The technique not only focuses on getting various pages of your website to rank high in the SERPs for specific keywords but enables prospects to find your brand in the easiest possible manner. The other critical aspect here is on-page optimization. This technique ensures that prospects that land on your website has the best user experience compelling them to take the desired action and convert into a lead.
So, by optimizing your website, you can not only tap into an untapped market in the most effective and efficient manner (without paying for advertising) but open doors to more conversions and revenue gains.
But, while SEO is an essential part of website optimization, it’s not the end-all-be-all of optimization.
Optimizing your website for real people helps you gain your visitors’ trust, starts building a relationship, and lets you sell products without having to jump on a sales call.
A holistic website optimization approach combines a variety of disciplines to make sure your website performs ideally in all areas:
- SEO
- Copywriting
- Analytics
- UX Design (Frontend)
- Web Development (Backend)
- CRO/Landing Page Optimization.
If you specifically want to maximize sales and leads from existing traffic, you should read our comprehensive guide on Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) instead.
Why is website optimization important?
In the past decade, the internet has become a place where consumers make their buying decisions and purchase products.
Global eCommerce sales grew to over $3.46 trillion, making up 16.4% of total retail revenue worldwide
The internet has also become the go-to destination to find information on local businesses (46% of total Google searches have local intent, and 78% of local mobile searches result in offline purchases) as well as software companies, B2B enterprises, and more.
The internet is taking over the role of “asking a friend” in all industries. So by positioning your business correctly, you can consistently win turn people who had previously never heard of your company into customers.
If you don’t optimize your website and your content, it doesn’t matter how many people search for terms relevant to your business. Your site won’t show up in the results. Your website and your business won’t get noticed by anyone.
But when you do optimize for search, you put yourself on the map. Consumers will search for relevant terms, and your website and business will always show up.
By mastering Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you will generate targeted traffic from interested buyers.
But it’s not enough to just optimize for search alone. If you only grow your traffic, and your site’s content doesn’t appeal to potential customers, nobody will convert. Visitors will bounce from your website without making a single purchase.
To make use of the traffic, you also need to optimize the user experience and efficiency of your conversion funnels.
By mastering Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), you maximize the number of leads and sales you generate from paid and organic traffic.
Another often overlooked benefit is that website optimization can lead to helping the environment. So when you do optimization, you can help reduce the carbon footprint of your website.
How does website optimization work?
The goal of website optimization is to make your site as appealing to search engines and real people as possible. But how do you do that?
The first step to making anything better is to identify issues. You need to find out what’s wrong with your current site before you can improve it.
That’s the foundation of any great optimization process.
It’s not enough to just brainstorm potential issues with your team. You don’t have the bandwidth or experience to cover all areas. Instead, you should use available software tools to search for potential issues with SEO, page speed, mobile usability, and more.
Below we’ve created a table overview of all major optimization areas, relevant tools, and benchmarks you should meet or exceed to get results.
| Area | Optimization Tool | Benchmarks |
| Page Loading Speed | Page Speed Insights | 90+ score and subsecond first meaningful paint. |
| Mobile Usability | Mobile-Friendly Test | No issues and a “page is mobile-friendly” message. |
| SEO (Backlinks & DR) | Ahrefs, SEMRush, Moz | Higher domain rating and more backlinks than top competitors. |
| SEO (Technical On-Page SEO) | Ahrefs, SEMRush, Moz | Ahrefs: Health Score of 80%+SEMRush: SEO Audit Score of 80%+Moz: Page Optimization Score of 80+ |
| SEO (Content) | SEMRush (SEO Writing Assistant), MarketMuse | Benchmarks depend on each keyword’s competitiveness. |
| CRO (A/B Testing) | VWO Testing | Conversion rate benchmarks depend on the industry, but 5.5% is the average for all industries. |
Finally, you should test the usability of your site with unaffiliated test users. The results will give you a roadmap where you can coordinate optimization efforts with different teams.
Content writers can improve the content, website managers can improve site structure and other on-page SEO issues, and designers can improve user experience as well as the look and feel of your site.
6 essential website optimization strategies
There are a lot of different approaches and strategies you can use to improve your website. Just a single search for “improve your website” brings back over three billion search results:
It can be challenging to get started when there’s so much info out there.
Instead of overwhelming you with information, this guide will focus on the basics and help you get maximum ROI on your website optimization efforts.
Below, we’ve highlighted six vital strategies that will help you optimize your website in all areas.
1. Optimizing the mobile experience
It’s no longer enough to have a website that looks and works great on laptops and desktop computers. To succeed in the online marketplace, you need to focus on your site’s mobile experience as well.
The majority of all traffic (52.2%) in 2018 was mobile. Not to mention, most Google searches now happen on smartphones. In Q3 2019, 64% of Google searches were made on mobile.
Because of this, Google has already switched to mobile-first indexing, where they primarily index and rank your mobile pages. So any issues can cost you not just potential mobile conversions, but the opportunity to rank highly for relevant search terms.
So the first thing you want to do is run a basic mobile usability test, for example, Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.
Correct any glaring issues that the test turns up.
You should also test all pages on the most popular phone models, to make sure it adapts appropriately to each screen size.
You can do this with the device toolbar in Chrome Developer Tools. It lets you display your website in different-sized screen windows.
Again, take the necessary steps to fix any potential issues. You want mobile users to have an easy time on your site.
You should make sure that:
You don’t have popups or interstitials showing on mobile.
The site loads quickly/correctly.
The text is easy to read.
All content is visible.
Scaled-down images and graphics are still legible.
The site is easy to navigate.
If you cover these basics, both search engines and users will reward you.
2. Improving page speed
People don’t like to sit around and wait while a site loads up. A 5 second load time leads to a 38% bounce rate, and the longer it takes, the higher it becomes. Having a website that loads fast is the first part of a good user experience.
Page speed is also an official Google ranking factor, and can directly impact your SEO.
To find out how fast your site is, and any potential bottlenecks and issues, you can use a free online tool like Pingdom Website Speed Test, or Google’s Pagespeed Insights.
It will grade your website, count and categorize all HTTP requests, and highlight what you can fix.
Some common issues are uncompressed JS and CSS files, no CDN, no page caching for CMS-powered sites, and large, unoptimized image files.
The compression and caching problems, and a lack of CDN, can be easily fixed with plugins or extensions for your CMS. Images can be optimized with available image compression software, like Smush, kraken.io, Cloudinary, or ImageKit. If you have videos on your site, then use video compressors like Clideo or Clipchamp to reduce the video file size.
It might take a significant investment of time or money, but every millisecond you shave off is worth it.
A cheap, low-quality shared hosting plan can also lead to slow page loading times. So if your page still loads slowly after you’ve reached a 90+ score on page speed tools, you need to upgrade to a better plan.
3. Search engine optimization
Optimizing for search engines is one of the most powerful marketing tools on the internet. 70% of marketers see SEO as more effective than PPC.
It’s not just a way to get traffic. People prefer and trust organic search results more than advertisements. You get co-signed by Google for having quality content relevant to what the user is searching for.
The first step towards improving your SEO is to make sure that Google is correctly indexing all your pages, and that you don’t have any glaring SEO errors.
Signing up for Google Search Console, and registering your site is a great first step here. It will highlight fundamental issues, list your indexed pages, and keep track of which keywords they rank for.
Once you’ve covered your basics, it’s time to move on to more technical third-party tools, and advanced tactics and strategies.
We’ll cover advanced SEO strategies in a dedicated section below.
4. Tailoring website copy to drive conversions
The words you use on your website matter more than you think. Design, images, usability, and page speed are all crucial factors, but words control your message.
And, while words are the easiest thing to change, they can also be the most powerful.
Case studies show the power of web copy all the time. In one instance, adding a single word to a headline increased conversions by 89.97%.
So don’t rush through your content. You want the copy on each page to provide a logical roadmap towards the conversion action you want them to take.
To do this, you not only need to understand basic website copywriting techniques but also your customer base.
If you don’t understand the problems, desires, and doubts of your visitors, you can’t create a journey in words that will guide them to the destination you want.
Analyze in-depth user data like heatmaps to get to know the customer journey, and talk to existing customers about their doubts and what convinced them to purchase.
Once you’ve identified an area with a weak copy on your website, you can ideate and test different copy variations based on what you know about your customers.
5. A/B & multivariate testing
Once you’ve identified a problem with your site, whether it’s copy-related or not, A/B testing is the best way to put your potential solutions to the test in the real world.
For example, let’s say the conversion rate for a landing page is quite low, and your team thinks the copy might be the problem. You can formulate new, stronger headlines and features, and quickly test them head-to-head.
If the new version gets a statistically significant increase in conversions, you know that your theory was right and that you’ve solved the problem.
But even if your new version loses, that doesn’t mean you haven’t identified the right problem. You might just not have found the right solution.
That’s why multivariate testing — testing multiple potential solutions at the same time — can be a good idea.
By putting the original up against multiple variations at the same time, you’re more likely to find a significant improvement.
You can use what you learn from single-page tests to improve the rest of your website as well.
6. Optimizing user experience
eCommerce and small business owners often overlook the user experience of their website at large. They tend to obsess over SEO and CRO but don’t try to improve how easy their site is to use.
But a better, smoother experience can make all the difference.
Every $1 invested in UX results in an ROI of between $2 and $100.
Think about it: by creating a more intuitive, better experience for all users, you retain a higher percentage of your visitors. They come back multiple times, and more of them naturally follow your funnel and become customers.
Not to mention, dwell time (how long a Google searcher spends on your site before returning) is a significant SEO ranking factor.
So you want to implement UX reviews and analyze user reports like user flow, session recordings, exit pages, and heatmaps.
This will help you identify UX problems and brainstorm potential solutions. Once you’ve developed a new version of a page, you can either benchmark it against the original with an A/B test or do a benchmark usability test with a group of test users.
