Do you want your business to be on the first search page? You need to know about search engine optimization and web design, a crucial duo for SEO.
You can rank your business higher in the search engine results by creating a website that is optimized for SEO and has a great design. This will result in more traffic, leads and revenue.
This page will explore all things related to SEO website design. It’s our goal to help you create a site which drives traffic and leads.
What is SEO Web design?
SEO web design is the process of designing and developing SEO-friendly websites. A website that is SEO-friendly follows best practices. This includes mobile compatibility, quick load times, and descriptive URLs. Businesses can make their websites more SEO-friendly by using web and SEO services in Auckland. This will help search engines better understand the website and give it a higher ranking.
Why is SEO Web design important?
Why is SEO important for your website? What is the impact on your business?
The two together can have a huge impact on the bottom line of your business. If you are thinking of having a website designed or redone it is important to understand why SEO and web design are so important and what this means for your site.
SEO web design is important because:
Web design can erase or damage your SEO
Many companies launch a new site or change their domain name, only to see overnight that they have lost all SEO progress because they forgot to setup 301 redirects. A 301 redirect is a way to tell search engines how to locate redirected pages.
SEO can impact your website design
You’ll find that SEO best practices that are related to web design such as page optimization voice search and site structure have a direct impact on how your website is designed. You’ll have a hard time ranking where you want if you skip SEO.
You’ll lose money, time and ranking if you don’t pay attention to SEO website design. It is smarter to combine SEO and web design because your website can be used as a base for your SEO strategy.
Eight factors for optimizing web design and SEO
After you’ve understood the relationship between web design, and SEO, we will look at specific aspects of your website that are affected both by them and how to optimize them for SEO Website Design.
Consider these eight factors when building an SEO-optimized website.
- Code
- Mobile-friendliness
- Readability
- File Names
- File Size
- Alt Tags
- Navigation
- URL structure
1. Codes for a better understanding
There are a few choices for designers when it comes down to the code that they use to render your major design elements. The majority of designers stick with HTML and CSS for a good reason.
Flash sites are not as easy to optimize and, therefore, have a lower chance of ranking in search engine results. Your SEO will thank for telling ‘s designer not to use Flash.
2. Mobile-friendliness
Your site must be mobile-friendly. An increasing number of Internet users are using smartphones and other devices to browse websites. This will not only improve the user experience but also increase your ranking on Google, as mobile friendliness is now a ranking factor.
Responsive Design is the best solution to this problem. It makes your website accessible across all devices and web browsers. Responsive Design eliminates duplicate content that can occur if you create a separate mobile website.
3. Readability
It’s important to choose fonts that are easy to read for your visitors.
If the copy is not being taken from a pre-existing site or has already been written, then your designer will know to leave enough space. To rank well, you’ll need a lot of optimized, informative content. A design with only a few sentences will hinder your SEO.
4. File names
All of your images should have descriptive and logical filenames. It may take a bit more effort than just leaving them as “IMG_0035.jpg”, but this will help the search engines to “see” and “put into context” your images.
5. File size
Your designer should keep the file sizes small, even though large images of high quality are visually appealing. Large files can cause page loading times to be slower, which will not only provide a bad user experience but will also increase your bounce rate and damage your ranking.
6. Alt tags
Your images should have alt tags that are optimized in addition to the file name. These descriptions are used by search engines to determine the content of an image, and can be read by users when they hover over it.
Alt tags help visually impaired users and users with browsers that do not support the files to understand what’s being displayed, which is essential for accessibility.
7. Navigation
Navigation is a crucial component of a good user experience. You should therefore keep it simple. Your site visitors will convert more easily if they can find the information they are looking for.
Your bounce rate will also improve if you have a simple navigation system. This reduces the chance that visitors leave your website because they are confused.
8. URL structure
You should give each page a URL that describes its content. You can use hyphens to separate words (NOT underscores) and include relevant keywords.
Search engines will understand your pages better if you use descriptive words instead of random letters and numbers. Your site visitors will also find it easier to remember.
