If SEO is priority of the website, a lot can be done with a good web design. With SEO, doing basic things matter a lot.
So you are thinking of redesigning your website. And SEO is on top of the list.
You might already be in touch with somebody to kick start your project. But here is the thing you may or may not know. A good SEO project starts right from the web design process. A good website design is really critical for success of your project.
When it comes to SEO, if you can make self-aware on how SEO works, it will help you a lot. Remember SEO is not short sprint instead its long marathon. My honest suggestion would be if it’s your own business and SEO matters a lot, try learning some basic stuff which is relatively easy and won’t take much of time. And it’s worth investing.
How does a web design matter in SEO?
A good SEO strategy focus on content visibility, how it’s written and how user friendly website is. Think of User First.
A long sustaining organic SEO for your website is dependent on how well the basics of SEO is implemented in your website.
You might want to have a quick look at Google’s Webmaster Guideline. Just in a nutshell, you need to make sure that your website is as readable as possible, i.e., if possible use text over images and also make sure your website’s information architecture is done properly.
If I have to say how important a good design is? I can tell it’s as important as the base of the house. If your house had a good solid base, you can customise and accommodate changes as you want else you have to stick with what you have got forever. Same goes with design and SEO.
Create a good hierarchy
A good web design focus on user experience and ease of access. You must make the user’s life easy and make sure finding the content within the website wouldn’t take much effort. This can avoided in few different ways such as creating good navigation, adding search functionalities etc.
So how does this matter in SEO? Good User experience in turns leads to
- More time spent on website.
- Conversion
- Lowered Bonce Rates
- Conversion
Engagement and bounce rate somehow affects SEO.
Think of HTML Mark Ups
How does mark-up help in SEO? Just imagine this case you are targeting keyword awesome product in your landing page and have all strategy and content written for that particular keyword. But within some context of the page you do have some segment written for awesome green product too. It is advised to shift focus on awesome green product too with a good html mark-up. Advised is using header tag [h2 to h6] if possible.
Overtime when google will put more emphasis on your site, good chance is your page might start to rank for awesome green product too.
With the context of design, things like header tags (from h1 to h6), relevant copies, using proper alt tags should be highlighted. Using proper style guides after web design does solve some significant issues.
Use Text Wherever Possible
This is where design and SEO conflicts. One of the most common case is where image and some propriety fonts are used. If you can afford to buy propriety fonts, no problems. Else you might end up using a single block of image that contains text too which is pretty bad case for SEO.
A web designer focuses on how to make site look better and appealing and an SEO wants more readability of the website. This is where you as the website owner need to decide whether design is priority or SEO is priority.
Otherwise you can use free font library like Google Fonts. Google Fonts provide hundreds of fonts and APIs that can be used in website.
Make Content Visible without waiting for it
So you got website with hundreds of page or even thousands. So how do you make sure that user won’t have any difficulties finding the content within your website?
Case like this can be avoided using:
- Good Navigations – using nice megamenus
- Adding Search Options
How does this impact SEO? Well if content are easily accessible within your website, it increase engagement and decrease bounce rate which in plain SEO terms is helpful in rankings.
In conclusion, if SEO is priority of the website, a lot can be done with a good web design. With SEO, doing basic things matter a lot.