From research and content creation to website edits and link building, taking the time to optimize your website for search engines can be a tedious process, just as getting your web pages to the top of the search results can be somewhat challenging.
That being said, you’re probably tempted—like most site owners—to optimize only a handful of your site’s main pages and call it good.
But that would be a mistake.
Why?
Webpage FX offers 4 good reasons why you should optimize EVERY page on your website:
1. Helps Search Engines Understand Your Web Pages
Unlike human visitors to your website, search engines don’t have the capability to use visual information and context to determine what a page is about. Therefore, they must rely on text and HTML components to discern the topic of each page.
This information is indexed by search engines so that when users search specific words or phrases, they can serve up the most relevant pages in their database.
“If You’re Going to Post Content on Your Site Anyway, You Might as Well Take the Time to Make Sure Google Takes Notice of Your Effort.”
Source: Improve & Grow
If your web pages don’t provide all of the necessary information required for the search engines to understand them, they’re probably not going to rank well in search results.
So, in order to reach potential customers, you have to make it easy for the search engines to comprehend each page on your site. And the more pages you optimize, the better chance they’ll have of accomplishing that.
2. Allows You to Take Advantage of Different Keywords
While your website’s domain authority typically influences how well your pages will compete against other sites, each page can actually rank for different keywords and phrases. If your site has 100 different pages, for example, you have an opportunity to rank for 100 different searches.
To accomplish that, though, you’ll need to update each page for unique keywords. Why? Because search engines only show one page from any given site in its results for most searches. So if you have six or seven pages optimized for the same keyword, they’ll all be competing with each other.
When you choose different keywords for each page, they’ll be able to compete with other sites in your industry to attract attention and entice searchers to click on your listing in the search results.
3. Helps Visitors Find What They Want
According to Inbound Now, getting attention online is very different than putting a piece of real estate up for sale with a great sign. People aren’t just going to stumble upon your online site. Plus, you have far more competition online than you’ll ever have in your local area.
The main way people are going to find your website is by looking for related keywords on a search engine like Google. If you haven’t chosen the right keywords, however, your site won’t rank well for the desired subjects and people won’t find you.
“If You Don’t Know the User Intent Behind the Keywords You’re Optimizing for Then You’re Doing It Wrong. Also, If You Are Optimizing for Keywords vs the Needs of the User Then You’re Doing It Wrong.”
Source: Improve & Grow
The right Keywords will determine whether your blog articles get read or your website gets discovered by people searching for particular business information. On the other hand, if you don’t optimize your website with the appropriate keywords, consumers might click on or type in a different company’s name in the search engines and go with the information that’s easier to find—and you can’t afford to take that risk!
4. Improves Click-through Rates
“Two of the easiest elements to optimize on any page are the title tag and meta description,” says Webpage FX. Although they’re relatively short (about 55 characters for the title and 155 for the description), they inform search engines and visitors what the web page is about.
Placing relevant keywords in your title tags helps your pages rank higher for those words. Meta descriptions, on the other hand, don’t directly affect rankings, but they can improve your web pages’ click-through rate (CTR) when they are already ranking in search engine results.
“Today It’s Not About ‘Get the Traffic’ — It’s About ‘Get the Targeted and Relevant Traffic.”
Source: Improve & Grow
Ultimately, the purpose of achieving high rankings is to attract potential customers to your site. If you can make that happen by simply optimizing your web pages’ title tags and meta descriptions so that they’re more informative and interesting, it’s a task worth doing.
Keep in mind, too, that a high CTR may be a favorable signal for search engine algorithms, meaning that the more clicks you get, the higher you could potentially rank. While it may not influence SEO directly, taking the time optimize your website with strong meta descriptions is still a smart SEO move.
Learning to Optimize Your Website
Whether you’re an offline or online store, putting in the effort to optimize your website should be an essential part of your online marketing strategy.
“If You’re Not Meeting Your Visitors’ Needs, It Doesn’t Matter How ‘Optimized’ Your Site Is.”
Source: Improve & Grow
While individual page optimization can seem like a tiresome task, Webpage FX points out that the potential returns are worth the investment of time.
Putting in the time to optimize your website is a cost-effective way to increase brand awareness and website traffic, as well as generate more leads and potential sales.
Optimize your website with e-commerce tools from Rain Retail Software.