Remember the first days of the Internet, when it felt as though every single person had a Geocities page, full flashing graphics and crazy clip art-inspired interfaces? This was in an era when search engine technology was miniscule, which most of us now rely upon.
In this day and age, there are many more options for businesses to build impressive web pages. But all the features in the world won’t necessarily make for a better website: the key lies between optimized design and optimized content. The team at our Florida marketing agency is ready to break down ways for business owners to do both – here, BIGEYE brings you a few thoughts regarding web optimization, and how it can help grow your business:
Website optimization:
Designing a great website requires a calculated mix of graphic design and user experience design. Most companies that have great graphic teams may be lacking in the UX department, meaning that even if a website looks beautiful, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy to navigate.
One solution to this is to enact user testing on your website, both throughout the development process and periodically after the site launches.[quote]Google Analytics offers powerful tools to help track users’ behaviors once they reach a website.[/quote] A high bounce rate may mean that your Google AdWords strategies are misleading, or that your site takes too long to load. Business owners can also test website functionality by asking about user experience through survey data or even informal questioning. Collecting qualitative and quantitative data as to friction points can help business owners find ways to ease user concerns. Some small businesses note massive increases in conversion to sales after installing quick and easy fixes such as a call to action on the front page or seamless shopping cart functionality.
Business owners can also optimize their websites using tools like Optimizely, which helps facilitate A/B testing to see which website designs work best within a given user base. Additionally, data mined using Moz can help boost the SEO ranking of your website through design optimization in accordance with Google’s search algorithm.
Content Optimization:
Even the most beautifully designed website isn’t going to gain search engine traction if the content isn’t optimized. Website content optimization doesn’t just depend on the actual text on a website, but also is contingent on metadata, tags and a whole host of other facets that content writers can read about at Moz.
The number one rule of SEO website optimization is to avoid tactics that seem slimy, such as linkbaiting practices and poor-quality, keyword heavy content. These will seriously damage SEO rankings, and it may take a long time for a domain name to recover after losing rankings due to bad practices.
Companies can also improve SEO rankings by blogging. Focusing on a few keywords and posting about relevant topics pertaining to that field can give companies even more opportunities to appear in organic search.
Site content is just the start of search engine optimization; Moz and a host of other companies offer packages to help optimize the backend of your website using a variety of tools and facets, many of which are updated frequently to reflect constantly-evolving search engine ranking algorithms.
Our Florida ad agency hopes you can use these tools to help optimize your site to get more money for your dollar. While website optimization in some cases may be a large investment, it can have a major payoff when it comes to the bottom line. For more information as to how your business can optimize its website, please contact BIGEYE’s Florida advertising agency.
