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If you’re new to the wonderful world of online (or even if you aren’t!), you might be making a common phrasing mistake. If you use the words webpage and website interchangeably, then you’re falling into one of the most frequently misunderstood word games in the modern English language. While they might seem like the same thing to a newbie, the two words have a world of a difference between them, and once you know what that is, you’ll understand why it’s so important to differentiate the two. Take my hand, and we’ll walk through this short but vital vocabulary lesson together.
So, What’s the Confusion?
Because webpage and website refer to related functionalities — or maybe because they both just start with “web” — it’s understandable why you might confuse the two terms sometimes. But by now you must know there’s a difference between the two. So, what is it? Actually, it’s simpler than you may think…Webpage
Remember books? Before the internet took off, books were the most popular way of reading content. Each time you turned a page, you ingested new material from that page. Each page was its own entity. So a book page is like a webpage: a page that contains information. More directly, a webpage is a single document that can be viewed online. This can be a page full of text, images, or videos. A webpage can be a simple form, and it can even be blank to the naked eye, housing code that you aren’t even aware of. Each webpage has a specific URL that leads viewers to that page.Website
In the same book analogy, a webpage represents a page from a book, whereas a website embodies the entire book itself. A collection of pages sharing a common thread constitutes a website. For instance, by assembling pages 1-585 of Moby Dick, you create the unified entity known as Moby Dick, a complete book. Similarly, your website takes shape as all its webpages converge. Notably, webpages from a different website wouldn’t be integrated into yours, mirroring the way pages from Jane Eyre would remain separate from a copy of Moby Dick. To make things even simpler, webpages that are linked together into a single website generally have the same domain name (the URL, or the address on the WWW that will get you to the website or webpage). So, the domain name www.Websitesareawesome.com can have several webpages that start with the same domain name but end with different endings to lead you to different webpages on the same website. For example:- www.Websitesareawesome.com/about
- www.Websitesareawesome.com/products
- www.Websitesareawesome.com/library
- www.Websitesareawesome.com/FAQs
- www.Websitesareawesome.com/contactus
Why Does it Matter?
Am I simply being picky by insisting that you know the difference between these two terms, or is there more to it than a mere quirk of usage? As a matter of fact, knowing the difference between these two terms can make or break your marketing campaign entirely for one very simple reason. Search engines don’t index websites; they index only webpages. That means when the crawlers crawl over your website, they’re looking at each webpage and indexing them individually based on the content of the individual webpage rather than the collective whole. Now, realize that every webpage isn’t getting indexed by the search engine, and here’s why all of this matters. If you’re trying to optimize your website for a specific keyword phrase, you need to optimize each webpage you want specifically to rank for that keyword phrase. It’s not enough for just one webpage on your entire website to rank for that phrase. You must optimize your website at the level of each of its individual webpages. In the following example, I searched for dog collars:
Google didn’t send me to Petco, or Chewy.com. Instead, it sent me to specific webpages within those websites. Why? Because Google’s main goal is to get me as close as possible to the thing I’m searching for. So, it won’t send me to a generic website that might sell what I’m looking for. It will take me straight to the webpage of the product I want. Now that’s service.
How to Optimize a Webpage
Now that you understand why it’s so important to optimize each webpage, it’s time to learn how. Here are several of the most important strategies to focus on:- Optimize URLs by adding relevant keywords and keeping them readable, too.
- Have clear, intuitive, and direct categories, and a clear website structure.
- Maximize your webpage titles (they’re prime real estate), but limit them to 69 characters.
- Write inviting webpage descriptions that will encourage people to click through.
- Write compelling webpage headings.
- Showcase high-quality, informative, and interesting content on your webpages.
- Use keywords frequently and naturally within your content.
- A picture is worth a thousand words, so use images when you can — preferably high-resolution.
- Use inbound and outbound links wisely, and connect only to quality websites.
- Design your webpage layout to be Google-friendly (i.e., don’t make it ad-heavy, and have important content above the fold).
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How to Optimize a Website
Of course, you want to optimize your website to be the best it can be, too. To do that, do the following:- Make webpages load faster.
- Maximize user experience.
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Have high-quality images, content, and keywords for each of your webpages.
