If there is one thing you are looking for when making a web design is to make it user-friendly.
But there is no point in making an awesome design that people will love if err….nobody is loving it.
This is where SEO comes into place. Now, some might think that awesome design and SEO are usually mutually excluding — nothing farther from the truth.
Check out these awesome SEO tips to help improve your web design.
1. Optimize images
Web design is all about images and the type of feelings they convey in an audience. For images to help rank, they must be optimized for search engines.
Without sacrificing quality, keep your image resolution at 72 dpi and a size of 30 to 100 KB.
If a photo takes forever to load, it will quickly send your visitor somewhere else. If this is happening too often, Google will consider that you are not solving people’s problems.
As a result, Google will drop you on the search results.
When creating an alt image text (yes, you should add that to your images), ensure the use of keywords in the graphics, header images, button images, and the logo image.
Here we go again with making a site user-friendly. Using Flash can be a good idea unless you do not know how to make Flash object crawler-friendly and accessible.
Search engines have a hard time crawling websites that use Flash. This tool is slowly turning into disuse.
Other alternatives are much friendlier to search engines such as JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3.
Taking all this into consideration, make the content accessible for search engines to crawl. Make sure the structure of sentences, paragraphs, links, etc., is only adequate. If Google finds it easy to crawl, it will render your page easy to look at.
3. Make the web design responsive
Google recommends designing webs that respond well in multiple platforms. Your design must perform equally well regardless of the device.
An SEO-responsive website will have the exact same URL for the desktop version and the mobile version. This means that you can drive links to only one URL instead of two. Your backlinking count will be much better as they all go to one version of the link instead of spreading them in two.
4. Create Sitemaps
Create an XML sitemap (instead of a conventional one) and manage it to make it SEO friendly.
Web designers already knew the importance of a sitemap for the best web experience. When search engines adopted sitemaps, they became even more important.
Not only will a sitemap provide search engine visibility benefits and offer more straightforward navigation, but it will inform crawlers about any changes to your website for the sake of immediate indexing.
5. Design friendly URLs
URLs are not query strings. This means that they should not be hard to crawl. In other words, make them friendly.
Friendly URLs are optimized to indicate its exact location. They are short and easy to read.
Take the following examples of good URLs.
yourfriendlyplumber.com/services/repairs
yourfriendlyplumber.com/services/residential-repairs
yourfriendlyplumber.com/services/commercial-repairs
As opposed to that, pretty bad URLs would be:
yourfriendlyplumber.com/services/repairs-final-version
yourfriendlyplumber.com/plumbingservicesforhomes
yourfriendlyplumber.com/PVCcommercialgrade4companies
Be aware that some CMSs will automatically generate numbers and codes and add them to your URLs. The good ones will allow you to beautify these URLs.
6. Harness the Power of Keywords
There are entire studies about the effectiveness of placing relevant keywords to help rank in SEO.
Make sure you place them appropriately without making the site look unnatural. Don’t overuse them, or Google will detect the poor experience you provide to your viewers.
You can use Google AdWords do find out what your potential clients are looking for.
7. Write Scripts Outside the HTML Document
Here’s the gist: Search engines like to get a website’s content as easily and quickly as possible. JavaScript and CSS, if included in your HTML, will bring some roadblocks to that.
First, JavaScript and CSS will add several lines to your code and, generally, ahead of the actual content. Second, this will make the crawling process slower.
When writing the code for your website, make sure you externalize the JavaScript and CSS.
8. Update everywhere
Make sure the info on your blog posts is up to date. The rate at which information is changing nowadays, demands a revision of fact at least every six months, if not less.
Also, allow excerpts of the latest blog posts all over your website. This creates a dynamic atmosphere that search engines love. It is an indication that your site is alive and well.
When content is continually changing, and you have a friendly sitemap, search engines will crawl more frequently.
9. Use Heading Tags Appropriately
Heading tags provide search engine the information on the HTML structure. They usually give more value to these tags than to the rest of the text, except for hyperlinks.
Indicate the main topic with a <h1> tag and use the <h2> through <h6> tags properly to clearly indicate content hierarchy.
Since your post should only be about one topic, maybe you want to stick to only one <h1> take as not to dilute it.
Find out more about optimizing images for SEO.
10. Meta Data should be Unique for every page
Descriptions, titles, and keywords should be unique for every page on your website.
When designing a web, many designers will usually create a template and forget to change the metadata for each one. This results in several pages using the same information.
To help search engines better understand the structure of a website, the metadata for each page should be different.
Final Thoughts
Creating a web design that is friendly for users and search engines is the key here. Yearn to provide viewers a prime experience and make it easy for search engines to crawl and index your content.
Following the above tips will help your web rank higher in search results and bring more traffic to your site. Improved visibility converts to increased sales.
Devin Schumacher is an internet entrepreneur, digital marketing consultant & search engine optimization (SEO) expert. Currently acting as CEO of SERP Co, Devin also serves as an advisor and mentor to numerous marketing consultants, local businesses, influencers, talent agencies, & e-com brands.
