SEO Learning Center >> Website Optimization
Free Website Optimization - the DIY Approach
Do you need free website optimization services to increase your website's performance in major search engines? If so, you've come to the right place. I'm going to tell you how to optimize your own website to save hundreds or thousands of dollars. I'll also dispel some of the common myths and misconceptions associated with website optimization / SEO.
Let me kick things off with the following statement. You don't need to pay an SEO company for website optimization services, because it's a fairly straightforward process. On top of that, optimization of your existing web pages (in their current form) is only the first of many steps toward SEO success. So you shouldn't spend a lot of time or money on your initial website optimization.
In fact, optimizing your existing website is what I refer to as a "baseline" task. It's something you want to do for starters, just to make sure you have a good baseline for search engine visibility. But after that, you focus on more forward-looking techniques of networking, link building, content development, etc.
What is Website Optimization Anyway?
This is a bit of a semantic conundrum, because people use this phrase in many different ways. But when most SEO companies use the phrase "website optimization," they are referring to improvements made to the existing website in order to make it more visible to search engines. In other words, it's one technique that falls under the broader umbrella of search engine optimization / SEO.
Optimizing a website includes (but is not limited to) the following actions:
- Keyword research to ensure you are building content around the right phrases
- Changes to the page's HTML title element, if necessary, to include keywords
- Changes and/or additions to the current page content, as needed
- The addition or improvement of META tags for better optimization
- Changes to the internal hyperlinking system to increase visibility
- Structural changes to the page and/or website to make it more visible
The last item on this list (structural changes) is only necessary in extreme cases, when the website is simply not built in a search-engine-friendly way. In my experience, it's only necessary in about 10% of scenarios. The other items on the list, however, are always beneficial for website optimization and search engine visibility.
The Start of Your SEO Process
I'd like to reiterate that website optimization is a baseline task. Sure, it's an important part of the process, but it's only the first step to SEO success. I usually tell my consulting clients to get their onsite optimization wrapped up in a week or so, and then going forward to spend most of their energy on networking, link building, and developing new content. This is another reason you should handle optimization yourself. You can do it for free by following the steps I've recommended below. There is no need to pay for website optimization services, unless you really want to.
Here's a step-by-step guide to help you optimize your web pages for better search engine visibility. I've also provided some links to additional information on each of the steps.
Step 1 - Conduct Some Keyword Research
There's no point in optimizing your website until you have a list of important keywords and phrases. You should use a keyword research tool to build a list (in spreadsheet format) of the phrases your key audience is researching online. This eliminates the need for guesswork, and it also helps you create a plan for optimizing current content and developing new content.
Step 2 - Optimizing Your HTML Title Tags
This is a key ingredient for onsite optimization, and for several reasons. For one thing, search engines use the HTML title of each web page to determine what the page is about. Secondly, these titles show up on the actual search results page, so the way you write them will directly influence the number of clicks they earn.
Step 3 - Adjustments to Existing Content
You should make sure the content that's currently on your website is optimized for the right phrases. For this process, you'll need the list of keywords you created in step 1 above. This will help you boost the search engine visibility of your current pages. In other words, it's a way to get the most out of your current pages before shifting your focus to new pages.
Step 4 - Linking to Your Web Pages
Now we are getting into some of the "off-site" techniques for search engine optimization. But it's a logical next step in the overall SEO process, so I want to at least mention it here. You can dramatically improve the search engine visibility of your current web pages by increasing the number of inbound links to those pages (from other websites).
If you have other questions about search engine optimization, be sure to check out our SEO Learning Center before you leave. You might want to bookmark it for future reference too.
