Website optimization is not everyone’s forte. That is especially true for many startup companies. So, they focus instead on other aspects of their business. Unfortunately, if you want to bring more traffic to your website and generate more business leads, you need well-written, quality content. Not having great content on your website can definitely hold you back from reaching more potential clients and customers.

Here are some tips to help you optimize your website and increase traffic.

Tips for Content Optimization

Create a Content Plan

Having a content plan makes it easier to create great content for your website. Having poor quality content on your website could be a major turnoff to visitors. So, you need high-quality content or none!

Create a content calendar; outline the dates and topics you want. You want to offer your audience valuable, evergreen content, so take it from there.

Create Original Content

This should be a given; however, too many businesses will take an article from a competitor and spin it. In some instances, an inexperienced business owner will hire a content creator who will spin other people’s articles and publish them. If you want to optimize your website and establish your business and brand as an authority, you need original content. You also want to make sure you protect your content from being spun and reused with a free tool like Copyscape.

Don’t Use Too Many Keywords

Businesses new to creating content tend to think stuffing their web content with keywords is all they need for good SEO. Keyword stuffing will have the opposite effect. It could even get your website penalized by Google. You want to use keywords that fit your content and are grammatically sound. Remember, we’re going for high-quality and that includes grammar, spelling, and sentence structure.

Conduct an SEO Audit

An SEO audit can show you what your website needs to do to improve. It checks for errors, broken links, duplicate content, where your website needs to be optimized. Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest is a great, free tool that could help you better understand, not only the metrics behind your website but how to improve them. Another great SEO audit tool is SEMRush which has a free version available.

Check for Broken Links

One of the most annoying things is to visit a business website looking for information or a product, only to see the dreaded 404 Error page. Use a tool like BrokenLinkCheck to ensure your visitors get to the information they need.

Engage with Your Audience

Interacting with your audience is a major piece to the optimization puzzle that too many people neglect. Respond to your customers and thank your customers across all your channels.

Tips to Optimize Website Performance

Website performance is one of the most important, if not, THE most important aspect of creating a pleasant user experience. A website that takes, what seems to be forever to load, can drive customers away and onto your competitors.

Here are some steps to help you improve your website’s performance. These tips include lots of free website optimization service tools as well!

Perform a Speed Diagnostic on Your Pages with the Highest Traffic

By testing your web pages’ speed, you will be able to find which pages load quickly, which pages load too slow and the issues causing slow loading speeds. You can use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom or Web Page Test to test your site and find website speed optimization solutions that will help you correct your issues quickly.

Check Your Page Size

Websites that are heavy result in long loading times. You want your visitors to be able to load quickly so they can interact with your content. A web page that is larger than 2 MB or 2,000 KB is considered heavy, and the heavier your page, the longer your visitors have to wait for your content. Everything on your site is part of your total page size.

Optimize the Images on Your Website

Unoptimized images are the number one cause for low performing web pages. Of course, you want to add beautiful visuals to compliment your content, but if your images are slowing your website down, you need to fix it, ASAP.

Make sure your images aren’t too large and understand the different file types for images and use the right ones. Your photos should be in JPG format unless you need a transparent background for a logo or another reason. In which case, your image will need to be in PNG format. Reducing the file size of your image by saving at a lower quality or compressing it can help increase your website’s upload time. If you need, Tinypng has a great tool for decreasing the file size of images.

Check Your Host Server’s TTFB

There isn’t much you can do if your host server is too slow or unresponsive. Use a website performance service tool like Web Page Test or Pingdom to see if your TTFB is over 1 second. A decent server should be just under 200 milliseconds. If your host server is 1 second or more, you need to consider switching host services.

Manage Your Plugins Properly

Plugins are a great way to add new functions and abilities to your website, increasing value to your customers. If they aren’t being used; however, there is no need to keep them. Having unused plugins adds to the weight of your website. Also, make sure you are using plugins that are actually beneficial to the needs of your visitors. You don’t want to clutter your website with unnecessary plugins just because the plugins are available.

You never want to stop optimizing your website for better performance. You want to make sure your website is always up to speed, literally, on the best optimization practices. Fast, responsive websites lead to visitors and more customers. While there are lots more ways in which you can optimize your website for optimal performance, these tips are the most vital in ensuring your website does not lag behind your competitors. The last thing any business needs is for visitors to become impatient with a website’s loading speed and then move on to a competitor’s website. All it takes is mere seconds for a visitor to be turned off by a low performing website.

The takeaway here is keeping your website healthy with regular checkups and high-quality content. There are lots of free tools to help businesses monitor their website’s performance health—like the tools mentioned throughout this article. If these tips seem to be too much for you, consider talking to website optimization experts who will be able to apply the best website optimization techniques to keep your website in tip-top shape.