Many people believe that in order to be discovered on the web, you must have a good website. Yes, they are right, but not completely. Improving your visibility online and driving traffic requires more than just a beautiful website.
We are all involved in the creation of a website. Designers craft visually attractive and engaging UI. Content writers curate content that drives visitors to pay attention and take action. Development teams use code to tie everything together.
But there is one missing piece to the puzzle that cannot be commissioned to any one person. And this is SEO. When your website is well-designed as well as appropriately optimized, it will begin to appear on search engine results pages (SERPs) and generate more traffic.
This guide will go over the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in web design and the SEO principles you should follow when creating your site.
What is SEO in Web Designing?
The process of optimizing a website to make it rank higher in search engines is known as search engine optimization. The architecture and design of a website are known as website design.
When putting these together, SEO web design is the architecture of an optimized website for better ranking. Yes, a visually appealing website will be loved by users, but the crawlers who analyze the website to determine its ranking on the search engines do not see the visual part; all they see is the structure. It goes over the SEO best practices that web designers should use when creating websites.
Why Is SEO In Web Design Important?
Suppose your website has an amazing design, but its pages are not ranking on the search engines; then all your design efforts will be in vain. That’s where SEO comes in, it is important to optimize your website for search engines when designing it from very scratch. The tasks of SEOs and designers are completely different from one another, and one can not do the other’s job. But it does not mean that web design and SEO don’t affect each other.
Combined together, both have the power to make or break your website’s visibility on search engines. That’s why you should always keep in mind to do proper search engine optimization of your website when designing or redesigning it. If you skip SEO by mistake or on purpose when designing your website, then you will struggle to get ranked on search engines.
Is One Better Than the Other?
To simply put it, NO. Both are equally important. Let us tell you why:
A beautiful website design will not compensate for a lack of SEO because it will be long lost in Google’s search results. Alternatively, A website with proper SEO but a poor design will end up causing visitors to exit right away. As a result, for a comprehensive user experience, your website should have a beautiful design and powerful SEO.
Benefits of SEO Friendly Web Designs
While paid advertising is a great way to boost your traffic, we at Demandsage believe in harnessing the power of SEO. That’s what we specialize in. By implementing SEO in your web design; you can unlock these amazing benefits mentioned below.
1. Increase Website’s Traffic (Organic)
All the unpaid traffic to your blog/website via search engines is known as organic traffic. These people came to your webpage after entering a search term on search engines and viewing the top results.
The first search result on Google receives around 29% of all clicks, the second one receives 15%, the third one 11%, and it goes on. Because the tenth result receives just 2.5%, anything beyond the first page is likely to have poor organic traffic.
This is why you should implement SEO in your website design in order to improve your chances of ranking higher in the SERPs.
2. Increase traffic Which is Intent Centered
When users conduct a Web search, they are looking for answers to a particular question. And they’ll check your webpage when it appears on the first page of results. Provided you have answered their query.
Now, the user is aware that they can look at your website for any further queries in the same niche. This builds recognition and trust too. You can convert this user into a potential customer of your business in the future.
9+ SEO Components To Check While Website Designing
If you don’t have the time to go through the complete post, then check our list of this SEO In Web Design here.
1. Mobile Responsive
Earlier in 2015, Tech giant Google made mobile-friendliness an important ranking factor. Today, 55% of global internet traffic comes through smartphones.
Google crawls websites and indexes them using mobile-first indexing.
This means that every website must be mobile-friendly. There are many website builders available that can help you design mobile responsive websites and Elementor Cloud Website is one of them. With this, you can build your website from scratch and don’t even have to worry about getting a third-party hosting service. Because it also offers cloud hosting from the Google Cloud Platform.
A responsive website improves your SEO and guarantees that visitors have a consistent user experience whether they access your website via PC or smartphone.
2. Sitemap
A site map is nothing but a blueprint of your website. It contains all your website’s data, including the number of pages, the media on each page, etc.
A site map makes google’s crawling process easier. The probability of your website ranking high after submitting a sitemap is very high.
3. Website’s Speed
The design of your website can impact the speed of your website. Some design elements such as large IMG files, GIFS, etc., can cause your website to load slowly, resulting in a poor user experience and higher bounce rates.
All users prefer a quick-loading website. When users don’t have to wait for an extended period to see the content on your website, they stay. There is a high chance of conversion rates when this happens.
Ensure that your website is properly optimized with elements. No less, No more.
4. Metadata
The metadata is the “about” of your webpage, It shows the users what they can expect when they click a particular page. It is a summary that appears on Google under your Webpage link.
Around 36% of SEO professionals think metadata is an essential SEO element. Consider optimizing it.
5. Readability
Readability is yet another very crucial factor that affects your rankings. Remember, Content is the ultimate winner in SEO, but people won’t be interested in your content if it’s tough to read and comprehend.
Along with a good informative blog about a topic, you should also take care that the font size, style, color, and boldness are easy enough for people to understand.
Take care of the above-mentioned factors on all other pages as well, such as the home page, landing page, etc.
6. Website Navigation
The menus atop of your website are not the only aspect of navigation. It is how you direct your visitors to the most important parts of your website.
When you are in a mall, it becomes too convenient to find places where there are proper signboards right? Your website is no different, make sure your website is easy to navigate by incorporating clean designs and responsive structure.
Incorporate subcategories, especially if your website has a lot of products to offer. many leading eCommerce websites are good examples of good website navigation. They have millions of products, but you can find what you want is just a few clicks.
Other things to consider in site navigation are:
- Implement Content Hierarchy.
- Crosslink different webpages
7. Naming Images
Naming images that go on your website is an SEO thing that many people miss out on. Firstly because its too small to notice and other it is a lazy task for most of them. Don’t be them, if you want the most from your SEO campaign, start naming your images today.
As the craze for infographics keeps on growing, Google is most likely to verify your image’s metadata.
If you are selling a copper water bottle, and attach an image of it on your website, make sure it doesn’t have a name like “IMG_20200430_205612_719” and rename it to “copper-water-bottle-1000ml”
8. Alt Tags
An alt tag is a text that appears when users hover their cursor over an image. They prove the image’s short description.
Alt tags are just as important as naming images. They help search engines identify the purpose of the image.
They also make the site more accessible to visually impaired individuals.
9. URL Structure
Let me present two URLs in front of you
- mysite.com/1zW2n8JdatNuy1.com
- mysite.com/what-is-seo.com
Which one looks better? The second, right? It is an example of a descriptive URL. they not only describe each webpage but also contain keywords in it.
Having a descriptive URL will do a couple of things, firstly, your visitors will know what the URL is about, not only on the webpage but also on social media where it is shared.
Secondly, Google bots too will have a better understanding of the page hence helping you rank quicker.
Conclusion: SEO In Web Design
A website should never be crafted without SEO elements. Even if you have an existing site, make sure to edit it as per the SEO guidelines.
If you implement these above-mentioned principles, along with a good design, nobody can stop you from ranking.
A high-ranking website is equivalent to a high return on investments. I hope I was able to solve your query. Check my other SEO-related content on this blog to get more insights. Thank you for reading.
