These days, website owners know that a site that is not optimized for search is a site that is difficult to find. This is because search engine optimized sites are tweaked to make these rank well for specific search terms that site users often utilize when looking for these websites. Before we go into the many aspects that make search engine optimization what it is, let us first ask the question, when should you have your website optimized?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is something that website owners should never take lightly since this can easily mean the difference between making it and breaking it online. Websites that are not optimized the right way may find themselves falling behind the competition, and this is not what a company wants. If you want to make it big online, you need to ensure that your site shows up on the first page of search engine results pages (SERPs) for the keywords and phrases that your customers use to look for what they need.
If you are looking for an ideal scenario, your website should be optimized from the get-go. Your site should be designed and constructed with SEO practices already being implemented, and these should be continued as your site expands with new content over time. In short, you should always have optimization as part of your site’s development, with pages having title tags, URLs, and content optimized for search while these are being made.
Some website owners however, may not be aware of SEO and the need for this when they first put their sites together. If optimization is required from the very start, does this mean that websites that are not built with SEO integrated into them are doomed to fail when it comes to SERPs? The answer is no. Websites that were not optimized while being constructed are not necessarily doomed to fail when it comes to ranking on search engines. These sites can still rank well if these are restructured and revamped to become more search engine friendly, and for this you will need to change a few things.
Apart from needing to have specific topics using keywords that you want people to associate with you covered and written about, you also need to have your URLs constructed to show these very same keywords. Your URLs should have the kind of structure that shows what your site has to offer. Having a URL that says “/product-details.php?id=190&cat=1#products” in it is not conducive to having it rank favorably online since it does not show what these “products” are. If your site sells dog treats and you want your pages to show favorably on search engine results pages for your specific products, the term “dog treats” should be somewhere in your URL.
If you are revamping your site in order for this to show favorably on SERPs, you should always make sure that the pages that you redo have a 301 redirect to the new pages that you optimize for these. Regular site visitors may disappear if they cannot find bookmarked pages due to changes in URL and when you optimize. Optimizing is a good idea though, regardless of whether your site is new or is an old one looking to get better traffic. Just make sure that you go about your SEO in the right way so as to avoid loss of regular traffic and to gain more new site visitors.
