Website design and SEO: What’s the correlation?
Website design refers to the visual aspect of your website, while SEO impacts ranking in search engine result pages (SERPs). Today, web design company Chicago will take the time to discuss the correlation between those two, explaining how web design is actually a key element to a productive SEO.
- Quality web design and SEO
Website design impacts SEO in many ways. One of those manners is that poorly designed sites will negatively impact SEO ranking. What we consider a poor design practice is bad site navigation. Even outdated websites with proficient navigation can get more traffic than modern ones with difficult navigation. However, sites with updated designs will appear unprofessional and unserious.
Well-designed websites are usually easy to navigate and with an impressive look. These characteristics are the winning combination for SEO ranking. Cluttered, confusing, and hard-to-navigate sites lower SERP ratings.
Additionally, great-designed websites are more attractive to users, attached users to stay longer on your website, nurture more leads, and gain more conversion.
- Design elements
As website design largely influences a site`s SEO ranking, the following design elements are required to optimize:
Page Title – this short name or phrase is the first thing Google considers in ranking your page. Therefore, the page title should be closely relevant to your page content and what you are offering. Opt for a catchy, and concrete name or phrase that clearly describes your page.
Meta description – this is a blurb displayed under the page title in SERP. The meta description should be attractive and persuasive as it is one of the deciding factors for users, whether they will or not proceed to your website.
Design and layout – as Google prefers websites with undemanding navigation and good organization, making your content easy to find and including effective keywords will have a positive impact on your SEO.
- Target Keywords
As keywords are phrases and specific words that people use when searching for information in search engines, identifying and choosing the right keywords has a direct effect on SEO. Besides popular, industry-related keywords, the website should impart long-term keywords with low competition in its content, titles, and descriptions.
- Content
Besides the optimized website, informative content is crucial for page ranking in Google searches. Google prioritizes relevant content that provides users with concrete, valuable and instant answers. Every content should help customers and inform them. Using blogs is a great way to expand content about relevant topics. All pages and posts should be comprehensive and include search engine markups.
Another important aspect of web design referring to content is its availability, that is, accessibility of the content to the users. Users should not wait, dig or encounter obstacles such as content hidden behind the tabs or boxes to perceive the answer.
- Linking
Google`s practice is to find the homepage, however, Google doesn`t crawl deep pages except they are evidently linked. Deep pages are those pages within your website that require more than four clicks to access them from your homepage. For this reason, link those pages and use descriptive text for search engines and users to comprehend where they go.
- Visual elements
Images are a great way to donate SEO, not to mention the Google Image Search. When implementing images, don’t forget to provide an ALT tag and a file name that describes the image. Providing Google with information about the image will increase ranking.
Relevant and informative video material on your web pages, Google validates and placed at the top of a search page. This prominent position can significantly increase your website traffic.
- Website Accessibility
When considering the impact of web design on SEO, we must emphasize the importance of website accessibility. This feature refers to users visually impaired or has other types of handicaps. Designing the website to be easily navigated by users with disadvantages, greatly improves SEO ranking.
- SEO and User friendly
Sometimes creating both SEO and user-friendly website can be quite challenging. However, both of these features have the same goal which is to provide a good user experience. Some aspects of good web design are favored by both SEO and users, such as easy navigation. Users also prefer clear and legible pages, with smooth colors and easy-to-read fonts. Opt for concise titles and remove redundant pages and design elements. Another important aspect is page loading speed. This factor is make-or-break in detaining visitors. Improve your website speed by compressing images, optimizing codes, and applying other steps for increasing leading speed.
Impart the right keywords. Infuze your content, meta description, and page titles with powerful keywords and keyword phrases.
Considering the user-friendly design, we must keep in mind that websites have to be responsive on various devices (mobile, smartphones, desktops, tablets, and laptops).
Final Thoughts
As all the above suggests, good web design is aesthetically pleasing, effortless to navigate, and easy to find in SERP. Combining excellent web design with a proficient SEO strategy to work together you will ensure the success of your website. Creating this potent combination can be very challenging, however, if you feel overwhelmed by the required work, the easiest way is to hire a web agency that can flawlessly integrate both.
