When developing a website there are two important aspects to consider search engines and consumers. To show up on Google you would require a SEO-friendly website when consumers are searching for your products. But you need a user-friendly, creative website so consumers are able to find what they want.
What is SEO web design?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing a website so that it ranks well on search engines. Website design is the creation and design of a website and all of its pages. If you put all of them together a search engine-friendly website covers the best practices that designers need to consider when developing a website.
Why is SEO web design important?
If your company website has a stunning look, but you are not able to get any pages to rank in search engine results, then how to make SEO friendly website is a point to consider. Learn how to build an SEO-friendly website that ranks higher. PPC ads and social media are great for increasing traffic, it is necessary to find organic ways to ramp up your website traffic and emerge in the search engine ranking result pages.
SEO web design increases organic traffic
Organic traffic to your website comes from search engines that have not been paid for. They are website viewers who found your website after searching them on Google and browsing through the top options. To be specific a search engine-friendly website if it is in the first search result would obtain a majority of clicks. The second result gets 15 % clicks and the numbers drop from there.
Since the 10th click gets 2.5 % of the clicks, it is fair to assume that ranking above the first page has abysmal results. You need to be aware of how to make SEO friendly website and obtain maximum clicks.
SEO web design attracts high-intent traffic
When someone is conducting a search on Google, they have a specific query as they are looking to find information. When an SEO-friendly website emerges on the first page with the exact answer they are going to click on that page.
After discovering your website, they may not immediately convert, though they are aware that they can come back to you if they have any queries. The top of brand awareness is vital for conversions and all this is possible only when you are having a search engine-friendly website.
Having that high-intent traffic is more valuable than any other form of traffic and it is necessary to optimize your website to increase your search engine rankings.
SEO web design improves user experience
If you want to be on the good side of Google’s algorithm, the website should be SEO optimized and user-friendly Google has defined its strategies when it comes to how to make SEO friendly website. Improving your website SEO is an essential part of any marketing strategy. It ensures that the website works well and is easy to navigate for any visitor so that they are able to search for any information they are looking for.
Google wants the best SEO-friendly website as they do not want the user experience to be impacted by other websites. So, when you have a high-ranking website, it develops trust among the users while enabling them to find exactly what they are looking for.
The ways to optimize for SEO web design
By now you have realized the importance of how to make SEO friendly website. During the entire design process keep search engine optimization on top of your mind and implementing a few strategies is of help.
Mobile-friendliness
Most of the traffic comes from mobile and this trend is expected to scale new heights by 2025. Having a responsive website improves SEO, but provides a seamless experience to the users irrespective of the fact whether they are accessing it from mobile or desktop.
The mobile version of an SEO-friendly website is easy to navigate and keeps the same flow of searching for products and heading to checkout which is paramount for an e-commerce website. When you plan on how to make SEO friendly website make sure that the development team works on the desktop and mobile versions.
Sitemaps
While Google is smart, it is vital that you give them a helping hand and this is the utility of sitemaps. A sitemap is a file that stores all web pages, videos, files and everything on your website. It is handy for a website with different pages if it is not linked with other pages on your website.
This helps Google to find and crawl all your web pages so that they are eligible for ranking. After all, if Google is not able to find a web page, it is not going to generate any organic traffic.
Readability
Another feature of an SEO-friendly website in terms of design is readability. If the visitors to your website are not able to read what is mentioned on the website, they are not obtaining anything valuable from the business. The best practices suggest that you should use bold fonts throughout the website.
Website navigation
The developers when it comes to how to make SEO friendly website are focused on the overall look, feel and user experience. Developers along with designers will care about the visual elements of a page, and how consumers interact with those elements. Their aim is to keep things as simple as possible since consumers using mobile devices have overtaken desktop users.
URL structure
The URL should be structured along the SEO strategy. Every URL should include your web page or the main keyword of a blog post. Ensure that you do a keyword search for each page to include in your website design or redesign at launch. Undertake the same process for every new page that you create on the way.
This enables Google to understand what keywords to rank your pages while keeping your pages accessible. Since most focus keywords are only a few words this ensures that URL slugs are easy to remember and type into a URL field if someone is looking for a specific page.
To conclude the key to a well-designed SEO-friendly website, is to bridge the gap between SEO and web development. From the beginning of the website encourage the team members to work together so that the SEO website is fully optimized for usability and SEO.