“Websites promote you 24/7: no employee would do that.” -Paul Cookson

The website is the first point of interaction between you and the potential buyers. Many people believe that all it takes for their business to make profits is getting online with a good website.

However, a good-looking website is not enough if it's not visible to the potential audience and doesn't drive traffic. Thus, it is essential to optimize your website so that it can be displayed on top of SERP.

Many factors contribute to your website’s rankings and so much goes into making it lead the SERP. You need a catchy, unique website with an easy-to-use interface where visitors can quickly get information about your brand and the USP.

Consumers don't spend more than 10 minutes reading content, and more than 50% of the online audience prefer to buy from a beautiful, clean and straightforward website over a complicated one.

Visitors should be able to navigate your website quickly and be hooked to the information on it so that the organic traffic coming to your page will end up buying from you. That means the look of your website is essential in determining how successful digital marketing efforts can be. 

An SEO-optimized website designed by professional website designers gets more visitors. Since businesses need to generate revenue by driving organic traffic to their websites, it has become increasingly important to be educated about the importance of SEO and Web Designing for your business.

Remember, you don't need to build websites; you need to sell them too. In this article, you will get to know how SEO and web design can work together for higher SERP ranking.

What is SEO Web Design?

Your business may have an incredible-looking website with exciting graphics and exclusive content. Such websites have the potential to attract visitors, but even these websites can fail terribly if search engine users are unable to find them. 

SEO web designing is the process of planning and creating a great website and incorporating SEO elements into it from the get-go. Businesses can possess a solid digital asset by successfully integrating SEO elements into the website design. This is how the best websites attract more organic traffic and rank higher in SERPs. 

The Importance of SEO

Search engine optimization includes various things that make a website rank top on search engines. These include-

Focusing on the needs of people and understanding where your product/service fits in.

  • Content (Title, Keywords, metatags) that engages visitors and gives them exactly what they have been looking for online.
  • Digital marketing of the website using various SEO techniques that help people see your website on top of search engines.

The Importance of Web Design

Your website is the first interface where potential customers interact with your brand. Paul Cookson has rightly said: “Websites promote you 24/7: no employee would do that.” This is the glory of a great website.

A leading SEO agency in Melbourne, which has worked on hundreds of SEO website designs, says that attractive and easy-to-understand websites create an everlasting impression, appeal to customers, and help them recall your brand.

Responsive websites bring the most visitors as they are designed by keeping the user's behavior in mind and enhancing their experience. 

Union

Simply put, your overall website design matters, but it cannot give your business genuine leads without tightly linking SEO with it.

Your website needs several SEO elements, such as smooth navigation, videos, images, color, search-engine friendliness, and readability, to drive the most relevant traffic to your website. The union of SEO & website design leads to several benefits, including-

  • The rise in organic traffic
  • Better User experience 
  • Budget Friendly Website

SEO Tips to Improve your Website Design

Understanding of Design

A website's design can have a significant influence on your content. Users may be unable to see what they intend to read on your site due to poor web design. A web design agency will help you creates visually stunning and user-friendly websites that captivate audiences and drive online success for businesses. 

Any audience you may have drawn to your site will leave it if your website has oddly placed content, excessive hyperlinks, and messy information. For example, black or light gray text on white background causes excessive strain on the eyes and is not considered very readable. 

Keep in mind these few tips.

  • Use headings, subheadings, and proper bullet points.
  • Use visuals and short sentences explaining them.
  • Break your text into paragraphs.
  • Keep the font of your text large and increase the line height.
  • The contrast between the background color and the text color should be balanced. 

Use of Sitemap

The sitemap contains your site's URL. A sitemap serves as a road map for search engines to crawl and index your website’s pages and content. It is a guide to all the URL pages on your website.

Sitemaps is a wonderful opportunity to let the search engines know which pages are most important to your site. Sitemaps also support user navigation and provide necessary metadata about your web pages so they can be ranked higher.

Mobile-Friendliness

In 2015, Google added the website's mobile-friendliness as an important criterion for its search engine. Then, in 2017, the search engine giant implemented mobile-first indexing. It's clear that Google values mobile-friendliness as an important element of SEO and web design. 

Additionally, recent years have seen a surge in people using mobile devices. That means if your website isn't optimized for mobile, you risk losing half of your visitors, leading to a high bounce rate and giving a negative signal to Google.

Correct use of Slugs

Web designing is evolving with the evolution of Google and SEO. Keywords in your content URL structure (slug) help Google understand what your content is about. For example, suppose someone searches for “How to rank on Google better?”.

If the slug accurately describes these search keywords, Google will quickly suggest your website to the person searching for it. Your website URLs should not contain a long string of characters, letters, or numbers, as these slugs can be confusing.

A strong URL slug also validates information on your site and helps Google crawlers understand how to get there. Remember, Google will take into account the URL of your page to determine its score.

Website Speed

With millions of websites and too much content on the Internet, users prefer websites that don’t make them wait despite their slow Internet connection.

This is why an essential aspect of creating a search engine-friendly website these days is ensuring your pages are light and to the point. After all, no one will stick to a website that takes ages to load. Several factors that decide a page speed include:

  • Number of HTTP requests
  • Web hosting
  • Absence of Content Distribution Network
  • Efficient coding
  • Large files

User's Trust

Even though you can measure how much the online community trusts your website, it is a significant factor in ranking your website. Most people form an opinion quickly.

If they visited your website once and searched for what they need but didn't get it or understand your website, they won't visit your website anytime soon again. Keep in mind these three ways to improve your connection with users.

  • Have a website that is clutter-free, easy to use, and explains what users naturally want to see.
  • Keep your website up to date. 
  • Make your website more reliable, directly land users to the product/service they need, and offer polished content that gives users outstanding experiences.

Conclusion

Web designing has evolved, and today's web designers have access to more technologies and resources than ever. Since SEO ranking directly affects traffic, the priority when designing a website should always be the users.

SEO web designing is beneficial for businesses that want to get genuine traffic, people who are using search engines to find suitable products/services, and search engines that can understand the language & content of the website. It's a Win-Win for everyone!

If you need any assistance with SEO and web designing, feel free to Contact Us!

Frequently Asked Questions

Web design plays a crucial role in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) by ensuring the website is structured and coded in a way that search engines can easily crawl, index, and understand its content. Elements like well-organized content, proper headings, image optimization, and mobile responsiveness all contribute to better SEO ranking.

While web designers don't need to be SEO experts, having a basic understanding of SEO principles can be beneficial. Design choices, such as site structure, navigation, and image optimization, directly impact SEO. Collaboration between web designers and SEO specialists ensures a well-optimized and visually appealing website.

Responsive web design positively affects SEO. Google and other search engines favor mobile-friendly websites, and responsive design ensures that a site adapts well to different screen sizes and devices. This results in a better user experience, which in turn can lead to improved SEO rankings.

Changing website design can affect SEO. Major design overhauls may impact elements such as URL structures, page titles, and content organization, which can lead to fluctuations in SEO rankings. To minimize disruptions, it's essential to plan and execute design changes carefully, perform SEO audits, and implement proper redirects and optimization techniques during the redesign process.