Where SEO Fits Into Web Design

All website designers should incorporate SEO capabilities into the process of design from the very outset. SEO is not something you can easily add at a later date or just build in at the end of the design phase. It’s all very well having a brand new website that looks stunning, but if you want it to deliver in terms of organic search rankings and generating leads, then you need to consider SEO at every stage of the design process.

Here, we look at a few methods that any good web design agency should use to help improve your site’s visibility to users and to the all-important search engines. 

Visually Attractive, But Logically Structured

While SEO is important, that can’t be wholly at the expense of your website’s visual design. Your prospective customers have the whole internet at their fingertips; they are not likely to linger over a site that doesn’t immediately catch their eye or that looks like a lot of other sites out there. But that doesn’t just cover the fonts, graphics, and photos you present on your page.

Browsers, especially those with a specific end purpose in mind like finding information or buying a product, are looking for sites that are user-friendly, intuitive, and easy to navigate. They need to be able to find what they are looking for as quickly and logically as possible, or they’ll switch off and go elsewhere. So a website can’t just look stunning, it also has to perform well. SEO can help here. 

One of the fundamental principles of SEO is to have a site that is well structured.  Cheap website design often sacrifices the basics like this to deliver something that looks great but is confusing when an individual tries to navigate through it to find the information they need. One of Google’s measures used to calculate a site’s ranking is the length of time and how many pages viewers click through and stay on it. So if your website is logically organized so the browser can work through it intuitively to find what they need, then they will stay longer. 

Choose A Website Design Company That Understands Usability

Developing this theme further, it’s not just your website as a whole that will benefit from a clean, logical ordering. Each individual page counts too, and a good website design company will pay meticulous attention to this as well. Here, we’re looking at a number of factors. One of the key things is to understand why visitors are looking at your site and what they are hoping to achieve. Usually, that’s to find a certain piece of information or to complete a particular action. Your web designer should use your knowledge of this to remove all extraneous information and slick design features. They won’t dazzle consumers with a riot of color and different typefaces, or a host of graphics that will distract them from the task in hand. In other words, they’ll keep it simple! 

Another factor is familiarity. Of course, you want your website to stand out from your competitors, but visitors will quickly get frustrated if they have to search around for elements that they’d normally find easily. So there’s no harm in sticking to conventions such as having a navigation bar with a link to the homepage, links to your different product categories, and a site search option at the top, for instance. 

Thirdly, if you’re including a contact form or similar, don’t ask for information you don’t really need. Keep it as easy to complete as possible, or users will quickly depart. We usually only ask for the email address from visitors so we can get in touch with them.

You also need to make sure you are easy to contact, as this is vital in building consumer trust. Deepak Agarwal has discussed consumer trust in further depth, and it’s definitely worth reading up on more.

Good SEO Should Be Incorporated Into Ecommerce Website Design Too

To stand a chance of competing with online giants like Amazon and other large retailers such as Zappos, good SEO is a must. Ensuring the SEO is right will push your website up the search engine rankings, making it more likely that local, prospective customers looking for your product lines will find them online. There are a huge number of areas within any website design where SEO can be used to optimize both on-screen and behind-the-scenes elements.

A professional agency or SEO consultant will carry out effective keyword research and advise on how best to use them throughout your site. For instance, this might include ensuring that the meta tags for each page are properly formatted and aptly optimized to assist both website users and the search engines. It will also offer countless other ways in which your website can compete effectively with others when it comes to Google’s ranking signals. These might include ensuring your hosting platform has a valid SSL certificate – so users can safely enter sensitive data like credit card details and passwords. 

Another area in which a web design company can assist is in making certain your site works as fast as it possibly can. Not only is page speed a consideration for Google when ranking your website, but a slow site is also a definite turn-off for prospective buyers, who will typically look elsewhere if they can’t get to the page they want fast enough. In short, good SEO incorporated into your web design is not an option – it’s a must.