Benefits of website optimization: Why you should do it now

Creating a website is easy. The hard part is optimizing it properly. But this is necessary in order to rank well, beat the competition and get more traffic, conversions and sales.

Did you know that search engine marketing is among the most cost-effective ways of reaching your audience? SEO (search engine optimization), which is part of it, is essential for any successful marketing strategy. Nowadays, every online business has to take advantage of it to reach its target audience.

Here we’ll discuss all the benefits of website optimization as well as some useful tips. You’ll find out just how important SEO is to the success of a website (hint: extremely important).

What is website optimization?

First, to understand it better, we have to define website optimization. This is the process of improving a website’s ability to drive business goals by the use of controlled experimentation. The best example is A/B testing, which many website owners use to try out different versions of their pages and determine which changes are the most beneficial in terms of conversions.

Specifically SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, plays a key role in the process. It is all about improving a website in ways that help it rank well in search results when users search for specific words and phrases, for example “how to learn French,” “Italian restaurants near me” or “best smartphone in 2020.” If your website is not optimized well, it won’t be easily discoverable by your target audience. And that’s not all.

Benefits of website optimization

Why is website optimization important?, you might ask. Just take a look at what you’ll gain out of it.

Increased exposure and brand awareness

It is important that your website is easily accessible online so that more people see it. Even if they don’t convert the first time, they will notice it again and again until they’ve remembered your name. The more visible your website is, the more potential clients you’ll reach.

Increased website traffic

Many online businesses rely on the website traffic they get. With the right SEO, you’ll see increased traffic, which means you’ll reach more Internet users and leads who you can turn into subscribers and customers.

A position on the first page of search engines

The easiest and most efficient way to optimize your website is with the help of an SEO professional. They will optimize it so that it will be more visible in search engines. This is of key value because when people search for something, only 25% go to the second page of results.

Nowadays, most people tend to turn to search engines when looking for different products and services. If you can pop up among the first several results for the keywords they have searched for, it’s very likely that they’ll click on your website and engage with it, turning into customers. The more visitors you get, the higher your revenue.

Cost-effective marketing

Compared to other forms of marketing, search engine optimization is a cost-effective way to promote your brand locally and globally. It brings greater ROI (return of investment) than traditional marketing methods such as TV commercials, newspaper advertisements, and even digital marketing such as Facebook and Instagram ads.

Easy to measure success

You need to know how you’re doing to be able to assess and improve your methods. Luckily, SEO measures your success with real numbers. With Google Analytics or other similar tools, you can access your digital marketing analytics in real-time. The main metrics and ranking factors to monitor are website traffic, bounce rate, conversions, and time on site.

Lower bounce rate

The key to lower bounce rate is good website optimization. One of the first steps is to test your site speed.

Did you know that 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less? Even more daunting is the fact that 40% of users will abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. The truth is, if your web page is slow, even if it’s perfect otherwise, most people won’t get to see and appreciate it. And you’ll end up with a heart-breaking bounce rate.

What’s more, don’t forget that your website has to be mobile friendly too. Right now, most users access content online when on their mobile devices. So if your website isn’t properly optimized for mobile, you won’t stand a chance against your competition.

Improved user experience

Many aspects play a crucial role when it comes to what the user experience will be. Here are the main three:

1. Page load times;
2. Mobile optimization;
3. Content optimization.

First, the user will expect a good loading speed or they’ll get impatient and leave your website.

Then, if they’re on a mobile device, but your website is difficult to navigate on mobile, it’s likely that this will also drive them away.

Finally, the visitor will start reading your content. If it’s not relevant to their search intent, guess what – they’ll leave. Often, a high bounce rate is a result of inappropriate keyword optimization.

However, if you’ve done everything correctly, you’ll be able to provide an excellent user experience, which will lead to higher conversion rates and sales.

Benefits of website optimization for small business

Of course, the benefits of SEO for small businesses are valid for medium and large businesses as well, but they are especially valuable for those who might be just entering the market and wondering where to start.

High quality traffic

One of the biggest advantages of SEO is that it’s an inbound marketing strategy. This means that the focus is on making it easy for your target audience to find you when they want information.

While traditional outbound marketing methods rely on ads and cold emails, which is done only with the advertiser’s goal in mind and can annoy consumers, inbound marketing is customer-centric. It helps them by creating useful resources and facilitating access to information.

The result is that consumers find you when they are ready, which means more qualified leads for your business.

In short, for better effectiveness, focus on attracting users who are actively looking for information related to your industry, products and services. This is also a great opportunity to reach your audience when they’re already in the right mindset for making a purchase, which increases your chances of making a sale.

No expenses for advertisement

Once you’ve optimized your page so that it appears in a good position in Google’s organic rankings, it will continue to attract traffic for months and even years after that.

Naturally, you need to invest in some quality content for your website initially, but then all you need to do is update it a bit every several months or as necessary.

The point here is that you won’t have to pay anything for your precious spot in the search results, unlike with PPC ads.

More clicks

Interestingly, although PPC (pay per click) ads appear above organic rankings, most users prefer to click on an organic result. It’s difficult to say why that is, but that certainly proves that people trust Google’s algorithm.

The fact is that organic results get more clicks than PPC – so no need to waste money on ads there.

Better reputation and credibility

An essential part of every SEO strategy is link building. By earning links from reputable websites, your reputation grows not only in front of your potential customers, but also in front of Google. This leads to a better ranking on Google search and more traffic.

Besides, when you use link building research to find new ways to get your brand known to consumers, you’ll be much more effective in distributing content to potential customers.

Beating the competition

Moving ahead of your competitors is absolutely possible with SEO. No wonder 61% of marketers say improving their SEO and online presence is their number 1 priority.

You need to at least keep up with the competition to stay competitive within your industry.

How often should you optimize your website?

In order to see the benefits of website optimization, you need to do it regularly. Always strive to improve. Analyze your metrics, keep up with your competitors, experiment if possible. Optimization is an ongoing process.

Ideally, updating your old posts every three months should be your goal. However, if that’s not possible, then once every six months should also be fine.

Take time to review your headlines, font, text length, forms, call to action buttons or links, visual media, etc. Your web page needs to be mobile friendly, fast loading, well organized, visually pleasing, easy to navigate and optimized by the right keywords or phrases.

Just remember that overstuffing your texts with keywords isn’t the best approach to SEO. Always strive to provide quality content that is helpful and user friendly.

To sum up

Now you know what all the benefits of website optimization are. Every business owner is aware that investing in it will bring them long-term success.

Together with strong content marketing, website optimization is crucial for keeping up with the competition and growing your business.

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