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Website design and SEO go hand-in-hand. Therefore, it is important that both the web design company and SEO team members work together from the very beginning. In this way, your new website design will rank high in search engines.
There are four elements that will help to ensure that your website design works well with your SEO goals.
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1. Usability
Usability is a key ingredient in SEO, or search engine optimization. All the different search engines want to make sure that Internet users visit their platform again in the future. That’s because the more people who use their search engine, the more money they can earn with advertising.
In order to encourage Internet users to use their search engine again and again, the search engine has to give users search results that they can use. Therefore, if your website gives users a bad experience, your page will rank lower and lower in search results. Most Internet users tend to look at only the first three pages of search results. And if your ranking should drop, users might not even see your company’s name.
2. Discoverability
Your website design needs to allow the different search engines to crawl your site. For this reason, your website can’t afford to have any broken links or buried content. The most important information—such as your “about” page and your shop and product pages—should rank high in your website architecture. Also, be sure to use keywords in your product copy and on your “about” page.
To determine what keywords to use, ask yourself, “Which words would people use to look for my business?” Compile a list of those keywords and make sure that they form part of your website copy in a natural way. This is a critical piece of website design.
3. High-Quality Content
High-quality content is also essential to good website design. If the content on your website is good, visitors will tend share it. When they do, it will rank higher in the search engines. On top of that, your website content tells the different search engines what your business does—the services it renders, or the products it sells.
Before you start to design your website, you will need to think about what you want each page to do. Consider how you can illustrate this with imagery, moving content, and copy.
An image says more than a thousand words. Therefore, while using stock imagery might be a great way to save money, it might not give your customers the right idea about who you are and what you stand for. There is also a big chance that other businesses have already used the same image. This can make it harder for search engines to categorize your business.
Additionally, be sure to avoid blurry or too-small images. These can lead to a bad user experience. Always remember that with every aspect of website design, high quality is key.
4. Redesigning Your Website
You might have spent years in building up your SEO ranking. However, if you carelessly redesign your website you could lose all of your hard work. Therefore, always work with an SEO expert. Only in this way can you ensure that your new website design does not wipe out all of your hard work.
However, be cautious. Make sure that when you are hiring an SEO expert to help with your website design, you look at his or her portfolio. Ultimately, you want to see long-term relationships with clients instead of short contracts.
To give an example of the complexities of website design, take a look at the different pages you want to remove from your website. You cannot simply take those down, as where would the search result link go to? Where should this page redirect to? Your home page, your product page, or a newly designed page?
Therefore, take your time. Go through each page to see how each particular page currently ranks in the different search engines. Then consider how you can make sure that your highly ranked pages stay highly ranked.
Also, when you are changing your website URL be sure to install some redirects. You won’t want to miss out on traffic that’s still directed to your old website URL.
Summing Up
To sum up, understand how your website design and SEO efforts are linked. Then you will be better able to make sure that your website uses every single chance it can get to obtain high rankings. If you would like to read more about website design, check out this article by Brisbane Web Design.
