WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION TIPS 2026

In this next section, I will try to provide you with some of the best SEO tips that I have been using to rank highly in search engines in 2026. These may be several years out of date, but they all still matter in 2026
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​​THE BEST SEO TECHNIQUES FOR 2026

In this section, I aim to provide a basic overview of what you need on your website to feature highly in search engines. It's the most comprehensive, helpful SEO advice you will find anywhere in the world. Most of these are Basic Optimization Tips, but they are still the "Best Optimization Tips for 2026" because they are all fundamental to creating a highly ranked website in the Google Search Engine and other search engines, including Bing and Yahoo.

​So if you have not got these key SEO areas or the SEO basics covered, you will struggle from the start. I shall list these SEO areas and add a weight or ranking to each SEO factor that Google seems to give each criterion or area I advise upon. But remember this is cumulative; just because you can't achieve everything in the list below, it does not mean you will not feature highly, as the other websites you are competing against in Google might not be able to achieve all these as well! And not forgetting, you have to have your keywords right in terms of density (which is not always 4%) but also links - internal links, inbound links, and outbound links.

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LIGHTHOUSE

I use lots of tools for checking my websites, and I have found Lighthouse by Google to be a good, quick, and easy way of checking this. To use Lighthouse, I open up an incognito window in Chrome by holding down "Ctrl + Shift + N". This will then open up a new window. Then go to your web page and right-click anywhere on the page and then select Inspect in the drop-down menu. Then in the menu that appears in the split screen, select Lighthouse and then the button Analyse page load on the right.

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Lighthouse will then provide you with a performance, accessibility best practice, SEO and PWA Score.

And will then also provide you further down a list of passed audits, failed elements, and diagnostics. You can then work through these and improve your score.

I also use https://www.webpagetest.org/lighthouse, which sometimes gives you a slightly different score but may provide further insights.

IS AN OLDER DOMAIN NAME BETTER?

How old?

1. Age of Domain and Longevity - SEO Impact Medium
Always register your domain for as long as possible, this shows Google that you are serious and the website will not be just a flash in the pan. Also if you have chosen a good domain name it is in your interest to keep this as long as possible. Google will always give websites that are older a little more weight as they will have hopefully built up a page ranking over time if they are good. 

Using or purchasing an older domain name is only a good idea if it has actually been used and therefore has had some form of a website on it in the past? Go for a shorter domain where possible and also your domain name does not need to contain your keywords. 

You can use these free tools to check pagerank and domain age.

Additionally you know need to be aware of any black hat techniques and bad linking practices that has possibly affected the the domain names usability in the future. 

Read More on: is an older domain name better  > 

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HOW DO I SPEED UP MY WEBSITE?

Website Speed

2. Speed of Website- SEO Impact: Medium to Low
Google prefers fast websites and websites that are mobile phone optimised. To get a fast website, it needs to be written in good code; the newer the better, and should certainly have very few coding errors, the content needs to be streamlined and you can do this by compressing or Gzipping your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code. Some things that will slow your website down are:

• Incorrect code errors or warnings
• Old code,
• Inline styles
• Large image files,​
• Too many large images,
• Too many CSS Files,
• Markup or Spaces in your HTML Code
• Don't use Flash - 
• Don't use Frames
• Do not use too many or try not to use any Nested Tables,
• Too many JavaScript files.

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How to Optimise Javascript Files

Java-Script files depending on your theme and the plugins you employ can really slow your website down.
There are several things we can do to improve this.
Remove unused JavaScript file
Some themes may run Javascript files that are actually not used. If they are not used you can remove these.
Combine JavasScript Files
Instead of your web page calling 3 or 4 different Javas-Script files you can merge these to decrease the number of times the page calls upon different resources.
Compress JavaScript Files
You can also compress the JavaScript so it contains no spaces and is shorter and therefore smaller in size.
Defer JavaScript Files or Move to Bottom of Page
Some JavaScript Files do not need to be loaded in the head of the page and you can therefore load these in the body or footer of the page. This will allow critical content in the above fold to be loaded quicker and improve loading times.
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WHAT IS A GOOD WEBSITE STRUCTURE?

Website Basics - SEO Impact Medium to High
These are basic things your website needs in terms of structure and content. You really need to have all these bases covered:

• 404 Page - Is a page that, if links are broken or the page is moved, visitors will be redirected to; it also means you will not lose visitors. You can optimise this page to retain customers or provide them with content and links that they may have been looking for. I personally set my 404 pages up so people are not immediately aware that the page has not been found.
• Underscores - Do not use underscores in your URLs; use hyphens instead. This also applies to files and Links.
• Blog - Add a blog page. Google likes visitors to be able to interact with the website, and additional content always helps, plus this gives you the opportunity to blog your latest news items, new products, and events, etc
• Sitemap - A sitemap.xml that lists all of your pages within your website. These are generally automatically generated. I like to provide a link in my footer so Google can easily find it.
• Robot.txt file - This tells Google or other search engines how to treat pages within your website. You can tell Google not to search or index pages. This is not a good idea because it may look suspicious. So I generally avoid this practice.
• Title - Meta Title - No More than 70 characters. You really should try to use as many characters as possible, but choose fewer if you have a long URL or page title
• Website Description - Meta description should be about 155 characters. Again, use all of these and ensure this contains all of your keywords for your website or for that particular page. 
• Header Tags - H1 to H6. Have no more than 1 x H1 title tag per page; ideally just one but you can play around with this to see what works. I've seen websites rank highly with none and only utilising H2 Tags. Header tags should contain your most important keywords. And try not to repeat these within the page.
• Images - Always Alt Tag your images with what they are, bearing in mind your website's keywords, add, where possible, a description or alt tag too, and always add alt tags again using your website's keywords. I make sure my Title and Alt Tags are different, and my Alt Tag is always longer than my Title Tag.
• Content - Content is key; always use images with your text and write new and fresh content. I get approached by people who are having problems optimizing their website, and they have only about 50-60 words on each page. And quite often they forget to use the keywords that people will use to find their website. Also, make sure you do not have spelling mistakes, as this will put some people off. Each Page needs to contain at least 200 words. See text-to-HTML ratio below, but the more the better. 
• Other Content - Make the website useful, add a forum, blog, poll, use Videos, add files like PDFs that people can open and read for further information or content.
• Text to HTML Ratio - Should be about 20%; the higher the better, but you can get away with less. Be careful this does not dilute or increase your keyword ratio. SEE HOW TO SPEED UP MY WEBSITE FOR USEFUL ADVICE ON TRIMMING DOWN HTML
• Keyword to Content Ratio - some say this does not matter anymore, but I think it does - basically if the text in your page does not contain your keywords, then you will find it very difficult, if not impossible, to rank for those particular keywords. Remember this is not only keywords individually but also how often the keywords appear together. I have been playing around with a group of 3 keywords showing at a ratio of between 4-7%, and it seems to be working, but it is very difficult as you have to lessen the number of times you use these words individually and then you still have to make it readable and engaging.
• Internal Link Structure - a well optimised website will have a good internal linking structure. By this, the home page and subpages have relevant links within the page directing visitors onto further topic pages and information. Don't rely on your footer to do all this. 
• External Links -Be sure to add links to other websites and resources that you feel will enhance the visitor's user experience. Make sure these websites are high-ranking and good websites. But only a 2 or 3 as you do not want to be directing your visitors elsewhere, and too many outbound links can have the opposite effect. Also, if you are linking within your site, make sure you use titles within your links to describe the link. If you are linking externally, make sure you are using rel="noopener noreferrer" to target="_blank".
• HTTPS AND SSL

As a rule, if your website has an SSL certificate and is therefore HTTPS, you should not be linking to non-secure sites. By that I mean sites that don't rely on HTTPS. You may find some code, HTML markup or meta tags that link to HTTP. I would check that the HTTPS version is available and change it if it is.

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WILL SOCIAL MEDIA HELP MY WEBSITE

5. Use of Social Media with web Pages - SEO Impact Medium
Make use of Social Media links with your website, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Blogger, etc and get all your friends and family to "link in", "like," "share," and "tweet" your website among their social groups. Use Social Media like Google+ and Twitter to promote your website, services, and products. Be sure to write some stuff and post on your different social media forums. Make sure you always include a link to your website in whatever you write about, but make sure it is relevant. If you are writing about a new product or service link the text to your page that contains that info.

Read More

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What are good inbound external Web Links

Good Linking

6. Good Website Links - High SEO Impact
Yes you need inbound and outbound links. It used to be all about getting hundreds and thousands of backlinks but not anymore. Google is constantly trying to make searches better, and the old BLACK HAT Technique of just spamming hundreds and thousands of links into your website with your URL and Keywords no longer works. Well, actually it may work initially, but if Google thinks these are spam links, from link farms, from websites that are blacklisted, blocked, or known to have malware, then these will not work. Also, if the links are from other countries such as India, America, Russia, and Poland, and your website is not based there, they will see these as bad links. So now a few good quality links to your website seem to help far more. Good link checklist:

• Inbound Web Links - Get good quality links from highly ranked websites (use Pagerank to check these for their PR Rank), use a variation or your keywords, and your URLs in those links. Vary using www., https//www. and /index in the URLs you specify to be linked with; also use nofollow links. Again, link from websites that have similar content, about the same thing in the same country or area.
• Internal Web Links - As above link to all your pages, content, and keywords internally; this shows Google that you are trying to help visitors navigate within your website to find the content that they want.
• Outbound Web Links - Link to useful resources and things that will help visitors or things they may find interesting. Don't be put of with linking to similar websites, but don't link exchange this does not work.
• Use Follow Links -  I now use nofollow links in many of my web pages. Some SEO's may disagree.

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TOP KEYWORD BASIC OPTIMIZATION TIP

Search

The Key to achieving a Google ranking with your Keywords are to make sure that all of your Keywords feature in your web site and web pages across al the different elements, Do not try to cram in too many keywords in one web page and start trying to go off topic. The use of additional landing pages may be required to keep the keyword focus:

• URL
• Page URL
• Page Name
• Page Title
• Page Title
• Header Tags (H1-H6)
• Page Content
• Image Description
• Image Alt Tags
• Internal Page Links
• Inbound Links
• Outbound Links
• Social Media Platforms
• Contact Forms
• Email Addresses
• Website template
• CSS Files

The more you spread your keywords out across all elements the less you need to add in the text, and therefore you can be more creative and less repetitive with keywords within your site

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WHAT IS THE BEST KEYWORD DENSITY

Keyword Density

Keyword density depends on a lot of things, between 3-4% is good. 

And make sure your first sentence contains your main keywords. 

And don't forget to mess around with keyword density sometimes less is more! See what your competitors are doing and try more or less..........!

Never repeat strings or keywords in titles or image title or alt tags. It can appear across all three but having 10 pictures all called the same thing won't work! Will look like keyword stuffing.

Google likes a good mix of these, not too many too little and not all the same.

As I said above: These are the best basic website tips and if you do not have most of these in your website then you will make your job far more difficult. These are just a few of the many things you need to build a good and great website but this should get you started off on the right track.

Please feel free to comment on the Best Website Optimization Tips and Advice ever or please feel free to add your own great tip below. And I always save some to keep me in work.........................!
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USE GOOGLE TOOLS FOR OPTIMIZATION

Use Google Website Tools to help with SEO
Yep to feature highly in Google you need to be using Google tools! Some of the Google tools you should be using and that will help your website, in no particular order are:

• Google Search Console: Allows you to monitor your website's performance, identify issues, and submit sitemaps to Google.
• Google Analytics: Enables you to track website traffic, user behavior, conversion rates, and other key metrics.
• Google PageSpeed Insights: Analyzes the loading performance of your web pages on both mobile and desktop.
• Google Trends: Allows you to research trending topics, keywords, and search patterns.
• Google Tag Manager: Simplifies the process of adding and managing marketing and analytics tags on your website.
• Google Translate: Helps you make your website accessible to users who speak different languages.

These Google tools provide valuable data, insights, and optimization capabilities that can help improve your website's visibility, performance, and user experience. Implementing these tools should be a priority for any website owner or marketer.

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The Best SEO Tips

SEO TIPS

SOCIAL MEDIA

WEB DESIGN

INTERNET MARKETING

SEO CONSULTANT

DRIVE MORE TRAFFIC

PPC CAMPAIGNS

EXAMPLES

SEO PRICES

SEO BLOG

Basic SEO Tips 2026

More Useful Website Hints, Techniques and Top SEO Tips for 2026

Do Not Use Hyphens in Your Domain Name

Underscores in URL
Don't use underscores in urls, use a hyphen "-" not one of these "_" or "t" these!
In fact, it's best not to use underscores in anything.

Website Canonical URL
Make sure your website appears as both www. and without, if you have not set this up properly your website will appear to Google as two separate websites and therefore you'll have duplicate content plus this used to be a black hat optimization technique, so Google basically doesn't like it, but saying that, I have still seen someone existing websites rank highly in search engines that are still doing this.

Sitemap

Make sure your website has a sitemap; this helps Google to see all the pages in your website. You can do this in both XML and HTML format

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RSS Feeds

RSS Feeds are a good way of getting like or similar content from elsewhere, that is constantly updated and adds interest to your website. Provide a link to your RSS Feed in the footer and add a feed reader to your page. You can either use your own blog or someone elses.

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HTML

Make sure you specify your website HTML language and coding type in your meta tags. You can also trim and or compress your html to make load faster. 

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More Metatags

There are a whole host of meta tags you can use to specify other basic information about your websites such as:

• OG Meta Tags
• Veiweport Meta tags​

​Opinion on which one's Google likes appear to be varied, but i'd suggest get the basics in there as a starter.

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Open Graph

​Kind of like Meta tags, anyway Open Graph tags tell Facebook and other social networks how best to share content that's on your website.  As a minimum put in a title, description, image, type and site name for each page. And when your website is shared socially it will look great too.
You can even specify which image it should use!

CHOOSING THE RIGHT CMS

Is my content management system (CMS) holding me back with optimization and do I really need to use a website CMS / WCMS.
Read More >

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Duplicate COntent

Is duplicate content also holding your website back, what is duplicate content and how much duplication is deemed acceptable? Many wordpress themes accidentally create duplicate content.
Read More >

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SSL CERTIFICATE

What is a SSL Certificate and will my website benefit from having one. in Short the answer is yes and you can add this to my list of website optimisation tips.  Read More about SSL Certificates here >

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More SEO TIPS

GOOD FRESH WEB CONTENT WILL ALWAYS SHINE THROUGH

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WEEBLY OPTIMISATION TIPS


GODADDY WEBSITE BUILDER SEO TIPS

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TOP SEO TIPS 2026

Top SEO Tips 2026

DO I NEED A WEBSITE OPTIMISATION EXPERT?

​As a SEO consultant in London I carry out consultancy work for individuals, sole traders, small companies and large businesses.  Providing specialist SEO advice on several different levels in and around London. We help start up businesses, new businesses and established companies.

So what can an SEO Consultant do for you or your company?

• Provide unbiased behind the scene technical advice on new, old and exisiting websites,
• Advise on best practices, web page structure, content, accessibilty and performance, 
• Provide support and advice with Social Media, Online Marketing campaigns, PPC (Pay Per Click Marketing), Keywords,
• Design and build a new website and provide ongoing SEO Support and website management,
• Fix problems with existing websites, correct errors and improve site structure and on and off-page SEO,
• Provide SEO training and SEO workshops to help improve the knowledge of you and your web design team, article writers, content managers, bloggers, writers and SEO's.

Image Optimisation TIPS

One of the easiest ways to improve website speed and SEO is to optimise your images properly before you upload them. Images that are too large, too heavy or exported at the wrong dimensions can slow the whole page down and make the site feel less responsive.
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The best approach is to resize images to the exact display size you need before uploading them. If you upload a huge image and then force the site to scale it down, the browser still has to load the larger file first, which wastes time and can hurt performance. In other words, resize first, then compress.

Use WebP Files where possible

WebP is a modern image format that is usually much smaller than PNG or JPG while keeping good visual quality. For most website photos and graphics, WebP gives you a better balance of image quality and file size, which helps pages load faster.
If your website allows you to upload WebP files on your plan or through your workflow, it is generally the better choice for most images on the site.

​PNG should usually be reserved for cases where you really need transparency or a specific graphic look, and JPG is best kept for compatibility or when WebP is not practical.

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Pick the right dimensions

It is important to use the correct pixel dimensions for each image rather than relying on the browser to do all the work. For example, a blog image might only need to be around 800 to 1200 pixels wide, while a full-width hero image may need to be larger.
As a simple rule:

• Small images and thumbnails: around 400 to 600 px wide.
• Content images: around 800 to 1200 px wide.
• Larger full-width images: around 1200 to 1600 px wide.
• Very large hero or background images: only go bigger if the design really needs it.

If you upload an image larger than the area where it will appear, you are forcing the browser to process more data than necessary. That slows rendering and can increase page load time, especially on mobile devices.

Keep file sizes under control

As a general guide, keep most website images as small as possible without making them look poor. Many SEO and performance guides now recommend keeping content images well under 250KB where you can, with larger hero images only used when needed.
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If you can get your images looking good at a lower file size, your Website will usually load faster and feel lighter. That can improve both user experience and SEO performance.

Extra image tips

• Rename image files before upload so they are descriptive and relevant.
• Add alt text where possible to help accessibility and search engines.
• Remove unused images from your site files.
• Use the smallest practical version of each image.
• Test the page speed after uploading new graphics so you can see the impact.

Final note on image speed

The main thing to remember is simple: a well-sized, compressed WebP image will usually outperform a large PNG or JPG file every time. The browser cannot make a huge file small before loading it, so the smarter choice is to prepare the image properly first.

CODING FUNDAMENTALS

Websites are coded using these 4 main programming languages and are essential in building a website and can have significant effects on SEO including website page load speeds and functionality.

HTML

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language and is the standard markup language for creating Web pages. HTML describes the structure of a Web page, including content and elements within a page.
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CSS

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and can help save 
a lot of work and time when it comes to building a website. CSS controls the layout and style of multiple web pages all at once.

PHP

PHP Hypertext Markup Language is a server-side scripting language and a powerful tool for making dynamic and interactive Web pages. PHP is a widely used, free, and alternative to Microsoft's ASP.
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JS

JS stands for JavaScript  and enables you to create dynamically updating content, control multimedia, animate and images. It's very useful at making website fun, user responsive and interactive.

WE SEO FROM THE CODING UPWARDS