Are you wondering what SEO Website Design is and why it is important for business success?
In this blog, we are going to talk about search engine optimization and why it needs to be built into your web development process.
Your website is the center of your digital marketing – it’s the place all digital traffic is directed towards. However, a good website alone can not sustainably drive quality traffic.
SEO Website Design refers to developing and managing websites that follow SEO best practices. By following Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices, you’ll rank higher in search results – which can lead to increased user traffic and visibility.
Why Does SEO Website Design Matter?
Website Design Can Make or Break Your Business
Much like meeting someone for the first time, your website delivers the first impression in a short amount of time. If your website is designed poorly, there will likely be no second chances.
It’s estimated that new users spend less than half a minute on a website. Your website can either pull people in or send them running to your competitors.
A good website created with SEO website design in mind does more than just convince new users to stay. A good website acts as a salesperson. If not explained correctly, even the best product/service will fall flat.
Bad Design Can Hurt Your SEO
SEO best practices like page loading speed, site layout, and mobile friendliness directly influence how you’ll rank on search engines.
You may think that a visually appealing website can outweigh bad SEO – or aesthetic components of a site are more important than SEO. However, keep in mind that this is not correct. A good SEO is what draws potential customers to your site.
SEO Website Design Increases Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is the traffic you receive from search engines that you do not pay for. These are the users that find your website by searching a keyword and going through the results page.
The websites on the second page of the search results receive much less traffic than the websites on the first page of the search results.
If you want to be featured on the first page of the search results and bring back high traffic, you want to design and optimize your site as best as possible.
SEO Website Design Improves the User Experience
Search engines like Google take UX (User Experience) into consideration when ranking your website. Improving the user experience on your website is an essential part of your SEO website design strategy.
User experience is how users feel interacting with your website. So the purpose of UX is to provide a positive experience to the user and keep them engaged.
Ask yourself these questions:
‘What does a website user want from this page?’
‘What is a website user trying to accomplish by visiting this page?’
The answers to these questions can help you create your content writing strategy and web design.
What Are Some of the SEO Website Design Elements You Should Optimize for
In general, website developers should account for the following SEO website design elements:
- Mobile-friendliness
- Alt tags
- URL structure
- Sitemaps
- Loading times/speed
- Web content
Mobile-friendliness
Did you know that more than half of your website traffic comes from mobile devices?
Ensuring your target audience has a seamless mobile experience improves your SEO drastically.
As your development team designs your website, make sure it’s tested both on desktop and mobile. Google’s algorithm will boost mobile responsive sites’ rankings.
Alt tags
Your images need alt tags for a number of reasons.
It improves your website’s accessibility. It helps people who are visually impaired using a screen reader understand your content better.
It’s not possible for Google to read your images unless you provide alt tags. If you want your images to appear in the search results, you must include alt tags.
In addition, alt texts can be really handy in case your images don’t load, as they will appear instead of the picture file.
URL Structure
Search engines like Google rank URLs that are unique and indexable. A site’s URL should be structured as simply as possible and include the keyword. Including the keyword tells Google what the page is about.
Relevancy is a big factor for search engine algorithms. This is why your URL slug should include your page’s focus keyword.
Sitemaps
A sitemap is where all your website properties like images, videos, texts, etc. live. Whether you have a lot of pages on your website or not, it’s always handy to have a sitemap file.
Sitemaps help search engines crawl your website so it can rank. So if you skip this step, your website won’t be visible.
Loading Times/Speed
Every additional second of load time has an impact on your conversion rates. Page speeds impact your customers’ buying decisions.
Google knows that users don’t deal with a slow website – so it won’t show it to users.
Try using Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool to get a full report on where your website stands.
Web Content
If search engines can easily crawl your site, your site is SEO-friendly. SEO Copywriting Services and keyword research are two essential tools you can use to improve your content.
Read our latest blog on SEO Copywriting services here.
Optimizing your web content helps improve your site’s credibility, authority, and ranking.
One of the main ways to optimize your website for search engines is by using relevant keywords. Your ideal keywords would have a high search volume among your potential customers and would be relevant to your business.
CM2 Media | Local SEO Company In Oakville & Burlington for All Your SEO Needs
Whether you are searching for an SEO website design or an SEO copywriting agency – CM2 Media is here to help.
CM2 Media is a digital marketing agency in Burlington specializing in website development and SEO services. We know firsthand the importance of SEO and how it can help your business succeed.
As a Burlington marketing company, we have worked with many local businesses, small to medium, and helped them take their online presence to the next level.
Talk to CM2 Media about SEO Website Design today! Our team is ready to answer your questions and come up with a good SEO strategy tailored for your business.