Web Design SEO for Your Business
Today we’re talking about the importance of web design SEO in digital marketing.
What? Isn’t SEO all about content and analytical stuff? you might be asking.
Technically, yes: but the design can also play a huge role in SEO. Making an optimized website during the entire creation process can make the world of a difference!
The worst thing to possibly do is to spend hours or days creating a beautiful website, only to go back and have to change everything later on in a desperate attempt to optimize the site for SEO.
Making a website with good SEO lets the search engines thumb through your book of business to determine if it’s a good resource or not. When someone searches the internet for a type of service that you offer, having a good website with the right SEO can show your company at the top.
Optimize Your Web Page
SEO means Search Engine Optimization. There are all types of ways to optimize web pages on your website to get picked up by search engines. The most important of these include:
- Titles and headers
- URLs
- Page descriptions
- Content Keywords
- Usability
Titles and Headers
Titles of pages and posts should be the best balance between SEO and readability. On Google search results there are so many characters that show up in titles before the words get cut off by an ellipsis…
In general, the character limit for the main title line ranges from 55 to 69. Keywords you want to rank for are ideal the beginning of the title where it’s noticeable. Using the answer to question statements is a wise use of character space, such as “How To”, “Why,” What To Know”, or lists titles like “Top 10 Best…”, etc.
URLs
URLs or “slugs” are what show up in the web browser and under the title in a Google search. If you’re not careful sometimes URLs can end up being a slew of numbers or letters with zero meaning. Always make sure to customize URLs when creating new pages or posts on your website. They should be readable, simple, and relevant to the page content.
Meta (Page) Descriptions
Page descriptions (often called Meta descriptions) are the short excerpt or blurp that show up under the title and link on a search result. It’s usually 30 words or so and should always include keywords you’re trying to rank for. Other than an immediate copy of what the page or post is about, it should urge the reader to click to read more.
Content Keywords
The content of your page should have a range and a solid amount of keywords. A wise option before writing website content is to use a content template tool or keyword finder.
Obviously, there should be keywords included in the content of which you want to rank high for on search engines. Not only that, there should be a bit a variance as well– in other words, related keywords. Content length comes in to play, too. These are all laid out within a content template for the best optimization possible for each page.
Usability
The usability of your website comes down to several things. Page loading speed– how fast does your website load? Many people don’t want to wait around for a slow site to load these days. They might automatically assume that if your page doesn’t load, maybe you’re not a legit website!
Where are your ads? Are they annoyingly intrusive? Don’t bombard your website visitors with annoying ads that make it virtually impossible to enjoy the actual content on your site. One to three ads per page is normal– more than 5 is simply obnoxious.
Lastly, your page layout better be beautiful. Who wants to trust a company with a cluttered, outdated, or flat out ugly website design? Not anyone smart, at least. Make sure your site is functional, understandable, and easy to navigate for all users.
How’s Your Site’s UX (User Experience)?
The overall website experience your visitors have starts the interest in the sales funnels for them. Creating a site that’s sleek, functional, search engine friendly, and high quality is extremely important. Landing pages are also an important aspect to consider with the point!
A landing page is a specific, simple page aimed at offering a targeted Call to Action. The sole purpose of a landing page is to “land” leads. Often it’s an extension or a totally separate website from your main website. You might notice landing pages as a sponsored page at the top of a search engine sometimes. This happens when the company pays ads to show up near the top. It’s smart, but it’s not organic (hint: you’ll need both organic search and paid traffic for optimal leads).
Website Design: Make Yourself Presentable
Design is the makeup and face of your company’s website. Sure, you might not think this aspect of your online presence necessarily makes your overall site SEO friendly, but it for sure is a part of it you need to consider. There aren’t enough web design SEO hacks out there to ever be entirely perfect, and the industry is constantly changing which means you have to be aware of what to keep up with.
Theme, layout, fonts, image quality, colors, aesthetic, and overall clarity of the site can seriously make or break a potential client, so get yourself decent web designers and developers, especially if your brand is all about appearance.
Create Quality Content… Consistently!
Your website and all social media platforms will need (and we mean NEED) quality content to offer value and information to potential clients. You can’t expect a majority of people scrolling a results page to trust you automatically if you lack quality content. Buyers need to know and trust you first before they commit to your products or services.
Setting up a weekly content posting schedule can do wonders for your online engagement. Aside from web development, content comes in as King. Hiring a content management team is extremely helpful, or making one on your own team can boost your business.
Overall, SEO web strategies are broad and specific to your brand. Although we don’t cover every single detail for web design SEO in this post, we’re experts in this field so if you need to know more, contact us at your convenience. We’d love to help you out.
