How a great website design can help improve your SEO
Web Design is more than making a website look good. Effective web design is grounded by a comprehensive digital strategy, in particular with emphasis on SEO.
The design and appearance of a website is more times than not only regarded as an aesthetic and user interface feature. This is often the case with basic website builders where generic themes are chosen and implemented to provide a visually pleasing website. What you might now know though is the fact that there is so much more to the design of a website that can greatly impact the success of your google rank and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) practices.
SEO And the Role of Web Design
Web design should be viewed as the foundation for SEO practice. In order to remain competitive, a website must have various features integrated within its design that will improve your search engine rankings.
Keywords are the crux of any successful SEO implementation. Keywords identify what the business is all about, so web designers need to make sure that they are used tactically on a given website. Keyword research needs to be conducted in order to ensure that they will perform efficiently whilst technical aspects of website design needs to be undertaken so to avoid any interference with content.
Keep It Simples
Keeping the design simple yet effective is an important attribute to consider as some designers can become tunnel visioned with overworking the aesthetic side of design whilst neglecting the important website SEO aspects that work to rank websites higher. Search engines tend to prioritise websites that put the user first. By creating a visually pleasing page that is well structured and formatted, not only will it enhance the user experience but provide a strong technical SEO foundation to help boost the website ranking.
Think About the Crawlers!
Web design should facilitate the ease at which search engines can crawl through a website thereby avoiding unnecessary errors which could result in essential information being missed resulting in poor rankings. Web developer best practice necessitates that URL’s are formatted correctly with content and images placed in such a way that a website is navigated easily, ultimately resulting in a boost in rankings.
Readability and Responsiveness
Websites should be easy and legible to read so don’t make the fatal mistake of using tiny fonts or multiple text/page colours that get blended and lost amongst each other. A responsive design should also be a top priority as users now use multiple technology implements for their daily searching whilst search engines like Google highly favour websites that are mobile and tablet friendly.
Web design will always be the first thing visitors to a website notice which is why user experience is so important. But don’t forget, most visitors first had to find your website through search engines. Without properly focusing on SEO practices and ranking initiatives, websites run the risk of poor rankings resulting in lower user volumes.
If you’re unsure of your website’s web design fundamentals and would like an expert web developer assessment then reach out to us!