Would you like your business to rank at the top of a search engine result page? To succeed in SEO, you need to know about web design and search engine optimization (SEO), two key components. The design and development of websites using the best practices for search engine optimization is known as web design and SEO. Your business will rank higher on search engines when you design and implement a site that is optimized for SEO and website design. Search engines in turn will drive more traffic, leads, and revenue to your business.
Check out the rest of the article to learn how to build a site that is SEO-friendly!
What is SEO web design?
SEO web design refers to the design and development of search engine-friendly websites. Websites that are SEO-friendly follow SEO best practices, such as making their experience mobile-friendly, providing quick loading times, and ensuring their URLs are descriptive. Through SEO website design, companies can easily make their website more search engine-friendly, which may lead to higher ranking and more traffic.
SEO web design: how does it work?
It may seem that SEO and web design are different subjects since design has to do with the visual aspects, and SEO has to do with how a site is found. You’re right – to a point. It is impossible to expect one job to be done by the other. Designers and SEOs perform different tasks.
This does not mean that SEO and web design cannot work together.
When these two factors come together, they can greatly affect your business’ bottom line. In other words, if you are considering having a website designed or redesigned, you need to know why website design and search engine optimization are important – and what this means to you.
SEO web design is important because:
1. It is common for companies to launch a new site or rebrand to a new domain name and have their SEO progress disappear overnight as a result of failing to set up 301 redirects when they launch their new site. The 301 redirect points search engines to a redirected page.
2. In many cases, SEO best practices that impact website design have direct bearing on how you design your site. Examples include page speed optimization and site architecture. Without SEO, your website will struggle to rank well.
SEO website design is often the key to your business’s success and will cost your business time, money, and rankings if you overlook it. A good SEO strategy is built around the design of your website, since it is a foundation for your SEO strategy.
The top 8 factors that affect the design and SEO of a website
In order to become better acquainted with how SEO is linked to web design, let’s look at the specific parts of your site that are impacted by both and how to optimize them for SEO.
Design
Your designer will, of course, be responsible for constructing the basic design of your site. For SEO purposes, here are a few tips to keep in mind:
1. Code
Your site’s code can be rendered in a few different ways, depending on how your designer chooses to code it. For good reason, most developers stick with HTML and CSS.
Despite their cool looks, Flash-based sites are extremely difficult to optimize for search engine optimization, so they are unlikely to rank very well. Avoid Flash with your designer, and your search engine optimization will thank you.
2. Mobile Responsiveness
Smartphones and mobile devices are becoming increasingly popular among Internet users, so you need to make sure your site is accessible on all types of devices. Providing better user experience will not only improve your rankings but will also help you retain visitors now that Google incorporates mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor.
Fortunately, responsive design can address this, since it makes your site accessible from various devices and browsers. By using a responsive design, you also eliminate the possibility of duplicating content, which might otherwise occur if you publish a separate mobile site.
3. Readability
The designers may spend most of their time on non-text elements of your site, but the font and size they choose should be appropriate for your visitors.
Your designer should also be aware of how much layout space is needed for copy, unless it is being pulled from another site (or has been prewritten) and included with your design specifications. To rank well on search engines, you’ll need a large amount of informative, optimized content to create a nice-looking website, and to accomplish this efficiently, you shouldn’t have a design that only shows a few sentences of text.
Images
While you might think the copy on your site is the only element that can be optimized, that’s far from the truth. In addition to being aware of best practices, your designers should also be mindful of them when uploading images to your site.
4. File Names
File names should be descriptive and logical. The tag process may take a little more time than simply leaving your images with a name like “IMG_0035.jpg,” but it will help you to generate a more accurate search engine result.
5. File Size
Although it is important that your designer makes the files as small as possible, large, high-quality images are visually appealing. It can take a long time for a large file to load, and poor user experience boosts your bounce rate, which damages your rankings.
6. Alternative Tags
You should give your images optimized alt tags in addition to their file names. Descriptions of images are helpful to search engines as well as to users so that they know what the photograph portrays.
Also with alt tags, users with visual disabilities (or users with browsers with inaccessible files) can better comprehend what is being presented, which is of importance for accessibility reasons.
Site Architecture
A site’s architecture can have a lot of influence on its ability to rank, depending on how much involvement you (or your SEO) have in the process. What you should keep in mind is:
7. Website Navigation
It is crucial to keep navigation simple to ensure a stellar user experience and this is why navigation is one of the most important parts of that experience. You’ll have more conversions if you make it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for on your site.
By making your navigation easy, you can also reduce the chances that your visitors will get confused and leave your website, which can improve your rankings.
8. URL structure
Ensure that each of your pages has a descriptive URL that explains what the page is about. There are a few relevant keywords that can be included in the body of the article. Separate words by hyphens (NOT underscores).
If your URL contains descriptive words (rather than random numbers and letters), search engines will be able to figure out what your pages are about, and your visitors will find them easier to remember.
Designing a website and optimizing it: Frequently Asked Questions
How do SEO and web design relate?
At the end of the day, both web design and SEO aim to provide users with a great experience. In other words, while designers focus more on the aesthetics of a site, and SEOs focus more on the things that make the site rank well, the end result should be the same: A successful site that offers visitors what they want and supports your business.
Providing visitors with both the information and the aesthetic appeal that they need to become customers is the goal of all websites – two characteristics that every good design should possess. A search engine optimization specialist is also responsible for making your site easily accessible to your potential customers.
What’s more important, website design or SEO?
Owners of websites are sometimes confused about which is more important, thinking great design will trump poor SEO or vice versa. This is not the case, however. An outstanding SEO strategy is what attracts users to your site, and a terrific design is what keeps them there.
Beautiful sites are useless if no one looks at them, and site rankings that allow you to rank at the top of search engines are worthless if your design causes your visitors to leave (which, in turn, hurts your rankings).
What does SEO web design entail in your business
Due to the close relationship between web design and SEO, you need to make sure that they work together effectively. Thus, hiring a designer to build a site, then hiring a search engine optimization company as an afterthought is a mistake you should avoid at all costs.
Early on in your project, a designer and a search engine optimizer should both be involved. The designer can then build the site architecture in a way that is SEO-friendly, and your SEO can also view the intricate design.
If you’re hiring someone to do both web design and SEO, and you believe that’s the best way to ensure that your designs and optimizations work well together, you need to be cautious. Two distinct fields call for different types of professionals, and it’s better to hire a separate employee that excels in one and a mediocre performer in the other.
To find a more effective solution, you should hire an Internet marketing agency that offers a wide range of services. You can be confident that each aspect of your website will be handled by a professional by allowing an established team of designers, developers, and SEOs to collaborate on the project.
Make your website successful through SEO and web design
Our hope is that this page gives you a better understanding of the relationship between web design and SEO. You can contact Infodrafts for help with any questions you may have about how well your site combines the two concepts, or if you are considering starting a design or redesign project.
Count on our experienced designers, developers, and SEO specialists to craft a visually appealing and functional site for you. Our teams have produced over 50 websites, and over 2 million dollars in revenue have been generated by our clients in the last two years!
We can help you with SEO plans and website design! Reach out to us online or give us a call at (737) 206-5665!