If you are looking to rank better in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), it takes more than just SEO. In today’s SEO world, web designs and the interaction with online visitors play a crucial role in determining your websites rank.
In today’s SEO world, web design practices also play a key role. User experience has become a crucial search engine ranking factor. Because of that, the design of your website and how users interact with it directly affect your site’s rankings in the search results. Your website also needs to be designed well, or you risk losing all of that organic equity you have been building.
Web designs affect SEO in different ways and are often incomplete without certain components. In order to improve your ranking a well optimized website includes everything from website structure, design, website speed, link building, website navigation and so much more. Having a good hosting provider can set the foundation right. Singapore has a lot of hosting options that will be quite beneficial for you. The quality of your web hosting provider can have a massive impact on the potential success of your site.
(A Good Web Design can Make or Break Your SEO. Credit: Pexels)
What is Web SEO Design?
A SEO friendly website follows SEO techniques such as mobile friendly websites, a fast loading website and descriptive URLs. By practicing SEO website design, businesses make it easier for search engines to understand and rank that company’s website in search results, which can lead to increases in rankings and traffic.
Why is Web SEO Design important?
Considering that design has to do with visual aspects, and SEO affects how a site gets found, it may seem like SEO and web design are separate sides of an equation. SEO and web design work together more seamlessly than many people might realize.
- Web design can erase or damage your SEO – Rebranding to a new domain or launch of a new website will result in SEO progress disappearing overnight because 301 redirects were not set up.
- SEO can influence your web design – Page speed optimization and site architecture will directly influence your website. skip SEO, and you’ll struggle to rank where you want.
Skipping SEO website design will definitely cost your company money, time and ranking on the internet. SEO and web design should be your foundation in your strategy towards a successful business.
Web Design Affects SEO
a. Page Speed
Page speed plays a key role in website design. Being one of the most essential factors utilised by search engines such as Google in website ranking. It is important for online visitors to have a good user experience when they visit your website. If you have slow loading time, it is likely that users will leave your site and move on to the next on the website rank. The usual suspects for a slow website are heavy images, flash plugs, etc.
b. Mobile-Friendly
Search engines such as Google have become smarter and made mobile-friendliness a ranking factor in 2015. Access to the internet has increased rapidly on smartphones and tablets. By making your website accessible on all devices, it will provide better user experience and also help your website rank better. More than half of all web traffic is coming from mobile devices, which means that more than half of your audience is also likely to be on their mobile phones. Without a mobile-friendly website design, you could be accidentally alienating half of your users. That is massive.
c. Clean Navigation
Your site should be simple and easy to navigate. Users shouldn’t have to dig for what they need; your navigation should be straightforward. The same goes for search engine crawlers: the more barriers and URLs they have to sift through to get to the good stuff, the lower your SEO score. Clean up your navigation. Simplify URLs so they’re short and easy to remember. Remove any duplicates and limit categories within your URLs if possible.
d. Image Optimization
Image optimization is not a difficult process but it is essential in your websites ranking. The process of uploading, naming, size and even tags of your images will make a big difference in moving up the SERP ladder. Remember overloading images names with keywords could cause you to be penalised by search engines. Adding Twitter cards, Opengraph, and Pinterest so users can use the image in social shares is another SEO practice.
e. Sitemaps
A sitemap provides search engines with a guide to all your content and pages available on the website. It is a crucial element to have if you want search engines to be smarter about how they crawl on your site. This gives you the chance to direct search engines to the pages that are most important on your site. It also enhances user experience as users visiting your site for the first time can refer to a sitemap to navigate your website smoothly.
f. Pop-ups
Many websites on the internet have pop-ups that appear as soon as a user lands on the website. You could lose credibility if the user is looking for some information, they could be distracted with ads and pops-up. Second, upon seeing the pop-up right away, the visitor might get frustrated and instantly quit your website. This sends a negative signal to Google that users might not be happy with your website in the search engine results page
g. Reading experience
Online want information, they browse the internet combing countless websites to find answers to their questions. As we have learnt that a smooth navigation which is pleasing and informative to a user is beneficial for your website design which will definitely help boost your ranks. Hence, Your website should be designed in a way to provide those answers in the easiest and most user-friendly way. A pleasant reading experience may lead to higher on-page time, lower bounce rate, and an increased engagement rate. All those factors (and more) eventually translate into better search engine rankings.
Web design can have a great impact on SEO. If your website is complex and difficult to browse different pages then users might get trouble using the site. Thus, a well-designed website with easy navigation design and use of fine images definitely brings good consequence in SEO. If you are preparing for a new digital marketing job and looking for the most exhaustive and complete list of SEO interview questions and answers online today, read more on Diggity Marketing today.
You can take a look for WordPress SEO Plugins if you’re using WordPress CMS.
Frequently Asked Questions:
- Does web design affect SEO?
- Does image quality affect SEO?
- How do I improve the SEO ranking of a website?