Designing websites is g getting easier as time goes by. Nowadays anybody who knows their way around a computer can get a website up and running in a relatively short amount of time.
Sure, getting a website online is easy but having visitors go to your website is another matter. After all, what’s the purpose of having a very beautiful website if you have no visitors?
This is where SEO comes in. Search Engine Optimization brings traffic to your website and can increase your search engine results page (SERP) ranking so that more people can discover your website.
Here are elements where SEO and web design need to collaborate.
Mobile Friendliness
Nowadays, everybody is glued to their phone. All designers know that websites need to be mobile-friendly because browsing, communication and shopping are usually done using mobile phones.
Having a responsive website is very important not only for web design but for SEO as well. Since more and more people are using their phones to stay connected, search engine giants like Google have been ranking websites based on responsiveness since 2015.
According to research, more than half of traffic comes from mobile devices. This means that half of your audience is using their mobile phones or tablets to access your website. Without a mobile friendly website, you could be losing out on 50% of your audience – that’s massive!
Since mobile users can’t access your website properly, you will encounter a high bounce rate which sends bad signals to Google causing your ranking to plummet.
Reader-Friendly Design
We all know how important SEO is to a website. In fact, many website owners devote a lot of time making sure that their sites rank high.
However, some owners do not realize that the design of a website impacts its content. For example, poor design can make it hard for visitors to read what they came to your website for.
Some examples of poor content design include big blocks of texts, hyperlinks without a clear purpose or poor contrast between text and background.
You worked so hard to bring traffic to your website and all of this is wasted because if visitors can’t get information they need then what’s the point of going there?
Make sure that your text is readable. Plain black on white might be boring but it has worked well since the 1990’s. Choose a text and font that is also easy to read. Don’t forget about white space as well as making sure that paragraphs are short for easy reading.
Website Speed
Is your website loading speed slow? Chances are it’s a problem with your web design. Website speed is one of the components of SEO and is a big problem with many websites.
Ideally your website should load within 3 seconds. At the 4 second mark, guests will start abandoning it. This wait time is even shorter with mobile users.
If you’re not ranking well, it could be because of slow loading speed which leads to high bounce rates. Designers need to remember that website speed is a ranking signal so you need to devote time to learning how to make it load faster. Optimizing images, eliminating unnecessary plugins, and allowing browser caching are some good ways to speed up loading.
Loading speed is not only important to users but to Google as well. If your page speed causes Google to crawl fewer pages then only these pages will be indexed. When this happens, it will be impossible for these pages to rank at all.
Site Maps
Speaking of crawling, a sitemap is a crucial element to if you want Google to be smarter about how they crawl your website.
Your site map is like a guide of all the pages and content you have for search engines. It tells search engines what pages are important in your website.
This is very important especially if you have a large website with multiple pages as well as new websites with don’t have external links yet.
Aside from search engines, site maps are also very helpful to users in terms of navigation. A new user can refer to your site map in order to learn how to get around your website.
Sitemaps also contain important metadata and give them a better chance of ranking high.
Gain User’s Trust
Unlike other factors that impact SEO, trust is harder to measure. However, gaining trust is one of the best ways to make your website rank higher.
Over the years we have gotten used to visiting websites that are not only beautiful but also offer good experiences. We all want something that is clean, easy to navigate and is quick to give the information we want. We think that these websites are trustworthy.
When a website looks outdated or is hard to navigate, we are left with a bad impression and don’t want to come back.
A bad looking website will make visitors think that your business or organization does not put effort into their work.
Conclusion
Keeping these design and SEO elements together can make your website rank high in Google and other search engines. Improving design and SEO is not very difficult so putting in the effort will soon result in better rankings.
