How to optimize a website.

Start with Domain name- If you have a domain and a site and are looking to improve their rankings but don't want to change your domain name now you can keep this tip for the future when you will buy a new domain.

Having a keyword in your domain name can be very helpful and will boost your ranking.

For example: Suppose your website is about "photography"  and you want your website to show up first when someone

searches for "photography". 

You can take domains like "photogenic, picsart, picasso,etc". This is your primary keyword.

So if you have a domain like "photogenic" which is probably taken you can always do some variations and spend time to find one that is available.

Because search engines use the domain name and having your primary keyword in there tells the search engine that this website is totally related to this keyword.

Although such domains are not Branded. If you have "photography.com" you are restricted to one type only photography but the plus side is that it will rank easily and quickly.

URL Structure-

It's highly recommended to put your keywords in your URL structure.

For example: There are two URLs-

website1.com/items/mobile and website2.com/items/iphone

When someone searches Google for an iPhone it's hard for search engines to rank website1.com/items/mobile with this because Google doesn't know what exactly you are searching for.

Now when someone searches for an iPhone with website2.com/items/iphone search engine will inspect this link and note that this link has the keyword iPhone. So that's a plus point.

The other important thing about the URL structure is the placement of keywords.

For example:

URL1: website2.com/items/iphone and

URL2: website2.com/product/items/list/mobile/iphone

The second URL example is somewhat correct since it has the keyword itself and the first URL is the best because the closer your keyword is to the domain name the more impact it creates. Deep directories are less important.