With Google seemingly sabotaging its own search results over the past few years, it can be easy to forget just how vital good SEO can really be for those who put in the effort. Whether you’re a one-man operation creating unique content about a hobby or topic you’re passionate about or a full-fledged business that wants to increase visibility in the hope of boosting revenue, the quality of your website will ultimately dictate how people use it, and if you get your intended results. Although the process of crafting the perfect site has changed pretty dramatically over the years thanks to technology improvements and, of course, the ever-present spectre of AI, there are still techniques that the average business owner can utilise to get to the point where their keywords are ranking, and they’re pulling more customers than they know what to do with.
Choose A Platform That Has Optimisation At Its Core
Let’s be honest: even if you aren’t particularly tech-savvy, it is very likely that you have heard the name WordPress at least in passing. You certainly will once you begin researching ways to set up a website; that much is for sure! However, if you dig a little deeper, you will quickly come to see that WordPress isn’t the only kid on the block, and by opting to select this singular CMS as the platform you will build your site, you risk losing out on some serious performance especially depending on the sort of website you are looking to develop (e-commerce, local business and so forth). One relatively new option is called Webflow, which is a kind of CMS that has taken the best parts of the most commonly used one in the world (WordPress) and blended it with some of the more popular font-end web builders like Elementor et al. But, while it can meet many of the more stringent tasks you can throw at it, it still requires a deft touch to get it running as desired. If you have already built your site on this platform, you might choose to hire professionals to come in and optimise your existing Webflow website in order to achieve a functionality and speed that can sometimes be elusive to the average user. Once things are set up just so, you will find that a well-optimised website using the Webflow CMS will run incredibly efficiently and enable you to create designs that perfectly match how you’d like to portray your business.
Consider Using A CDN If Your Business Has A Global Reach
A CDN (content delivery network) could be just what you’re looking for if you serve customers around the world and are finding that your site is a little too slow for your liking. It is a network of servers that stores cached versions of your site in different regions worldwide. The idea is that by having your site sitting on a server in the very places people are most likely to access it, you will reduce the amount of time it takes to load. While this might be a tad overkill for your average mom-and-pop store, it can be an incredible boon if your site is particularly image or video-heavy. They aren’t usually that costly to add on and can make a huge difference since a slow website has a reputation for being frustrating to customers to the point that you could actually lose sales.
Image source: https://unsplash.com/photos/black-flat-screen-computer-monitor-on-gray-table-kaP9EcVeEc8
Media Can Make The Site, But Can Also Kill It
Just because people have 5G and super fast Starlink broadband doesn’t mean that your website is going to load in an instant. In fact, it’s precisely because people have access to previously unheard-of speeds that they now believe everything should happen in an instant. While your website really ought not to be a singular block of text with a sprinkling of stock imagery, the more media you add, the more likely it is to slow down to a crawl. That is, of course, unless you compress and refine it to such a degree that it hardly hinders user interaction. You have a myriad of options in this regard, but if you are seeking higher Google rankings specifically, you could benefit from changing your images from the usual JPEG or PNG into something a little more web-friendly, such as WebP.
Ensure Your Site Adheres To Common UX Principles
Although not entirely related to speed optimisation, the user experience you create will have a significant impact on how search engines can crawl it and how your users interact with it (which is arguably the more vital of the two). Making your menus intuitive and the site easy to use will go a long way in keeping people on the site for longer and hopefully nudge them towards doing some kind of action (e.g., making a sale or signing up for a newsletter).
Creating a highly optimised website isn’t as easy as just sending your images through a free online compression site; it requires a little more finesse and understanding of how they work and what you want to achieve. These tips are but a few, and if you dig a bit deeper (or hire someone to fettle your site on your behalf), you can reach optimisation nirvana in no time.
