Millions of websites exist on the internet today, but not all of them get the desired traffic and views. There can be many reasons why a website performs poorly. Fortunately, there are many free website optimization tools available online to help them.
You can use these tools to optimize every element of your site. Moreover, it will also benefit your SEO and paid advertisement campaigns.
Let’s start!
Here’s Why You Need A Website Audit
Website optimization is a means of improving a site’s performance by using tools, sophisticated strategies, and trials to generate more traffic, increase sales, and expand income. Search engine optimization (SEO) is an essential element of website optimization.
The method helps get various sections of your website to place high in the SERPs for particular keywords and makes it easy for prospects to discover your brand. On-page SEO is also important in this case. This method guarantees that your website’s visitors have the best user experience possible, enticing them to perform the desired action and turn into a lead.
However, SEO isn’t the end-all-be-all of web optimization. A more holistic web optimization service understands that a successful site optimization combines various disciplines, including:
- Site Speed
- Accessibility and User Experience
- Conversion rate optimization (CRO) tools
- Traffic / SEO Improvement Tools
- Analytics
The Benefits of Website Optimization Done Right
The primary purpose is to optimize these elements to increase traffic and conversion rates. Especially since 53.3% of all web traffic comes from organic search. However, many businesses and website owners directly jump to marketing campaigns before optimizing their sites. As a result, their efforts go in vain.
Additionally, you can have the following benefits by optimizing your website:
Increased Traffic
If your website stays at the top of search engine result pages, it’s easier to get impressions and clicks. As a result, your high-ranking on-search engines will help the site receive many visitors.
But that requires you to work on creating keyword-relevant title tags and meta descriptions that can entice the visitors viewing these in search results. Ultimately, these descriptions and tags boost website views, so your website receives approved web traffic.
Cost Efficient Marketing
Optimizing a website is an efficient technique for increasing the number of visits to your website. Your website will receive the most views and interactions if it remains at the top of search engine result pages. Consequently, your high search engine ranking helps the site get many visitors.
During website optimization, one should develop helpful and keyword-relevant meta descriptions and title tags and then try to show these in search results sites. These descriptions and keywords also increase website views, ensuring your website gets legitimate online traffic.
Create Brand Awareness
Your website is your identity, and optimizing it is a surefire way to boost your website’s brand value and recognition online. By achieving a top ranking on search engines, your site will not only receive a large number of visitors and traffic, but it will also acquire confidence from people.
Because a website with a better search engine ranking is considered more trustworthy, and people become more familiar with its goods and services. Push your website and its content to search engines, allowing users to see your website and content and connect with your business.
Boost Conversion Rates
The method of raising the proportion of conversions from a mobile app or website is known as conversion rate optimization (CRO). CRO entails developing ideas for components in your website or app that can be improved and then verifying those theories through multivariate testing and A/B testing.
11 Website Optimization Tools To Help You Enhance Your Site
Our top website optimization tools are available freely online. These include:
1. GT Metrix For Site Speed
GTMetrix is a web page speed tool that allows users to optimize page load speed. All you need to do is enter any URL and click “Test your site” to launch a basic site speed test. You’re also presented with a drop-down on each recommendation to learn how to make your page load faster.
Features
- Quickly Analyze any URL
- Dashboard, Filters, and Tags to organize reports
- Access to seven global testing locations
- Monitoring of trends analysis and historical tracking
- Alerts for performance issues
Pros
- Comprehensive recommendations and analysis
- Reliable information on website speed, load time, and performance
- User-friendly interface
Cons
- The score can be overly optimistic
- Need a pro account to unlock mobile devices, browsers, and test servers
2. Google Search Console for Traffic and SEO Improvement
The Google Search Console is a free search optimization tool geared towards improving traffic and SEO, among other aspects. You can measure SEO performance and view backlinks, keyword impressions, and clicks. You can also check speed and crawling errors.
Features
- In-depth Keyword analysis
- Remove URLs you don’t want to be tracked from Google search results
- Monitor your website’s traffic
- Optimize your ranking
- Site audit and diagnostics
Pros
- Detailed and accurate reports
- Samples out SEO issues to improve the ranking
- Consistently tracks search results
Cons
- Data can be inconsistent with Google Trends and Analytics
3. PageSpeed Insights for Traffic and SEO Improvement
PageSpeed Insights (PSI) analyzes a page’s performance on mobile and desktop platforms and recommends how to enhance it. It tests website page speed on desktop and mobile.
Features
- Multi-domain support
- Integration with web analytics tools
- Optimizes your website for local SEO
- Optimized for Social SEO
- Performance alerts
Pros
- Desktop and mobile analysis
- Easy-to-read-results
- Helpful tips to improve performance
Cons
- Unable to test statistics from different locations
- The interface is mostly designed for technical users
4. Pingdom for Site Speed
Pingdom by SolarWinds is a SaaS-based web app performance tracking tool. It monitors your website’s speed and user experience, and also alerts you of issues that could affect your site. This tool for web optimization boosts your website’s speed via its page speed monitoring service.
Features
- Real User Monitoring (RUM)
- Dashboards and reporting
- Developer-friendly API
- Alerts and notifications
- Uptime monitoring
Pros
- Quick alerting of outages
- Easy-to-use dashboard
- Good summaries of monthly uptime
Cons
- iOS app lacks functionality
- The dashboard can be a little slow
5. HotJar for Accessibility and UX
Hotjar is one of the simplest applications you can use to track how people actually use your site. Features include heat mapping, graphic session recording, convert funnel analytics, form analytics, feedback questionnaires and surveys, and usability testing.
Features
- Web analytics
- Heatmap and session recording
- Customer journey analytics
- Digital experience intelligence
- Surveys and forms building
Pros
- Free trial
- Free version
- No set-up fee
Cons
- 30 days of limited data on the heatmap
- Difficult to troubleshoot the exact cause of potential issues
- Incomplete tracking
6. VWO for CRO
VWO is a premium A/B testing and optimization tool for businesses that want a trusty partner in scaling their campaigns. It allows them to perform qualitative and quantitative visitor research, create an experimentation roadmap, and execute continuous tests on their digital domains. While pricing can get expensive for businesses with complex needs, you can start with the free version and scale from there!
Features
- Complex A/B testing
- Audience Segmentation and targeting
- Results and analysis
- Goal tracking
- Test reporting
Pros
- Complex Landing page customizations
- Runs multivariate tests
- Accessible Design & Interface
Cons
- Potential Bugs on PDP pages
- Could benefit from more flexible contracts
7. Ahrefs For Traffic/ SEO Improvement
Ahrefs is a scalable and flexible traffic and performance marketing software designed for SMEs. The Ahrefs Site Explorer provides a suite of tools including on-page SEO and backlink analysis, domain comparision tools and online brand mentions tracking. Some of these are available for free!
Features
- Free Keyword Generator
- SERP ranking tracking
- Backlink & Authority Tracking
- Page grader
Pros
- Their Free Tools can still be very useful to businesses starting SEO
- Find where you’re ranking for critical keywords compared to competitors
- Find potential issues with your SEO.
Cons
- No free trial for the main tool.
- Limited results unless you subscribe to a paid version
9. Cloudflare Zaraz for Analytics
If you’re relying on third-party solutions for your website, Cloudflare Zaraz can significantly boost your website’s speed by not running the tag code in the browser. Zaraz loads third-party tools in the cloud, away from browsers, improving speed, security, and privacy.
Features
- Cloud Hosting for your site’s 3rd party tools
- Privacy and security
Pros
- Improves your site’s speed, privacy, and security.
- Ease of use
Cons
- Its potential downtime can leave you without access to critical tools.
- You don’t have complete control over your own infrastructure
10. Optinly for CRO & Forms
Optinly is a goal-based window application designed to make the lead-generation process as simple as possible. Moreover, Optinly may also decrease cart abandonment, gather consumer input, boost cart worth, and do various other things.
Features
- Fullscreen overlays
- Countdown pop-ups
- Dashboard
- Lead capture
- Email marketing
Pros
- Good customer support
- Ease of use
- Value for money
Cons
- Doesn’t have direct integrations with several commonly used softwares
11. Matamo for Analytics
Matomo is an open-source website analysis tool that allows customers to track online, mobile, and intranet sites. It’s basically a Google Analytics alternative that safeguards users’ privacy with advanced privacy features and a data ownership strategy.
Features
- Form Analytics
- Heatmaps
- Acquisitions
- Real-time data updates
- Privacy complaint analytics
Pros
- Straightforward to use
- Simple to install
- Basic analytics and dashboard functions
Cons
- Only 3 free custom parameters
- No cloud hosting is available
Conclusion
You can’t just focus on one thing when working on improving your website. It’s essential to work on all factors, including site speed, accessibility, and user experience, conversion rate optimization, traffic / SEO improvement, and analytics. Taking all of these things into account, you will be able to draw and engage the right people to your site!
