Web Design and SEO Go Hand in Hand
In our last article we reviewed how to increase sales using SEO. Now we are going to tackle SEO and web design.
How your site is designed could very well mean the success or failure of your brand. In the e-commerce space, it is the audience that dictates if your brand is worthwhile or inconsequential. It’s therefore crucial that you plan the design carefully, making sure the features work as it should. Below are some tips you can employ to ensure the web design of your site improves your SEO.
OPTIMIZE IMAGES
Images play a crucial role in web design as it helps convey feelings to the audience. The kind of images that help rank are usually the ones that are best optimized for search engines.
Work to keep your image resolution at 72 dpi and its size of about 50 to 100 KB while still maintaining quality. If an image takes a long time to load, it’ll discourage your visitor from exploring the page some more and drive them somewhere else. If this happens too often then Google will mark your site as one that doesn’t solve people’s problems. This will eventually lead to Google dropping your site from the search results.
If you’re creating an alt image text, make sure to use relevant keywords in the header images, graphics, button images, as well as the logo.
RESPONSIVE DESIGN
Different users have different ways of accessing the internet. Having a responsive design helps ensure that you only have one design that’s able to adapt to any type of screen, whether desktop, tablet, Android, or iPhone. Switching from one to another should display the same information even when the layout changes.
If, for instance, you switch from desktop to smartphone, the web design should accommodate the smaller screen size of the device while at the same time maintaining the readability of all the important information. Failing to accomplish this will mean an increased bounce rate which will negatively impact your ranking.
MAKE YOUR SITE MOBILE FRIENDLY
A lot of consideration should be paid to the design of a website. The layout and overall look of the site is crucial and could mean between success and failure. With users spending only very briefly on a mobile landing page, you need to make a good impression to encourage them to stay and explore your site some more.
Around 80% of users online accessed it through their mobile device. This figure continues to rise every year as smartphones and tablets become even more capable than before. Therefore, web design that doesn’t accommodate for mobile will put your brand at a disadvantage and could potentially harm your SEO rankings.
MAKE YOUR SITE SEARCH ENGINE FRIENDLY
Using Flash can be great especially if you know how to make Flash artifacts that are accessible and user-friendly. Search engines find it hard to crawl sites that use Flash. This issue has made Flash almost obsolete in web design.
But designers have other alternatives that are much more crawler- and search engine-friendly like HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. Keeping all this in mind, make sure that the content you have is accessible for search engines to index. Also, make sure the structure of the link, sentences, and paragraphs fit nicely with the layout. A good rule of thumb to remember is if Google finds your page easy to crawl, most likely viewers will find it easy to read.
REMOVE UNNECESSARY CSS AND JAVASCRIPT
CSS and JavaScript codes can make your site beautiful and appealing to look at but too much of it can bog down your site, making it load slower. Using confusing codes may render some of your content unclear and confusing. Check to make sure that codes don’t overlap. If you do decide to integrate JavaScript into your site, do so with caution.
Thanks to Evelyn for another insightful article. Evelyn Paulson is an informative content writer who enjoys sharing tips on web design, digital marketing, and SEO. She is currently working with Nettonic, the leading social media marketing agency based in London, which offers ultimate link building services.
