If you’re wondering how web design affects SEO, you’re not alone. A lot of people are interested in this topic because they know that web design is a really important part of SEO. In order for your website to rank well in search engines, it’s important that your website is designed in a way that makes it easy for search engines to read and understand your content. There are also other factors that play into SEO-friendly web design, such as the overall structure of your website and the quality of your content. In this blog post, we will discuss all of the ways that web design affects SEO!
One of the most important ways that web design affects SEO is by how easy it is for search engines to read your website. If your website is cluttered or difficult to navigate, search engines will have a harder time understanding what your content is about. This can lead to lower rankings on search results pages. In order to make it easier for search engines to read your website, you should make sure that your content is well-structured and easy to understand. You should also use keywords throughout your website in a way that makes sense for humans and search engines.
Another important factor that impacts SEO friendly web design is the overall structure of your website. If your website is difficult to navigate, it will be hard for users to find the information they’re looking for. This can also lead to lower rankings on search results pages. In order to make sure that your website is easy to navigate, you should use clear and concise menus and titles. You should also use breadcrumbs on your website, which help users understand their location on your website.
The quality of your content is also a really important factor when it comes to SEO-friendly web design. If your content is poorly written or doesn’t offer value to users, it’s not likely that people will want to read it. This can lead to lower rankings on search results pages. In order to make sure that your content is high-quality, you should make sure that it is well-written and informative. You should also include images and videos in your content, which can help to break up the text and make it more visually appealing.
As you can see, there are a lot of factors that play into SEO-friendly web design. If you’re interested in improving your website’s SEO, you should focus on making it easy for search engines to read your content and understand your website. You should also make sure that your content is high-quality and informative. By following these tips, you can improve your website’s SEO and get better results in search engine rankings!
The navigation structure of the website
The structure of your website is very important for good SEO. The visitor but also the search engines should be able to easily navigate your website. There are a lot of ways to do this, breadcrumbs are one possibility. But also the use of clear and concise menus and titles makes it easier for both groups.
Make sure the menu is also easy to navigate on mobile devices. More and more people are using their phones to visit websites. If the menu is not easy to use on a small screen, they will leave your website. This will increase your bounce rate, which is bad for SEO.
The ‘404’ page
From time to time it can happen that an old page of your website appears in the search results or an internal link is broken on your site.
In this case, the user will be redirected to the 404 page of your website.
Make sure you have a really nice-looking custom 404 page on your site. This will make the user feel welcome on your website and might keep him on your site for a while. Try to give him some options like ‘return to homepage’ or ‘browse by category. This can prevent the user from leaving your website.
If the user will leave immediately after he lands on a 404 page, it will give bad signals to the search engines. So make sure you have a custom 404 page in case someone clicks on a broken link or lands for some reason on a non-existing site.
Responsive web design
Responsive design and layout are also very important. Nowadays more and more people will visit your website from their mobile phones or tablets. So it’s important that your design will adjust automatically to the right format.
Also, the layout on your mobile website version must be optimized. The text size must be readable and also the buttons on your website must be optimized, so people can click on the buttons on their mobile phones.
Most common platforms these days, like Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, etc automatically provide a responsive layout. If you’re using really old software or platform, make sure to check how your website looks on different devices.
The use of images and videos
Images and videos are very important for a good SEO and they will make your content more visually appealing. Try to use them in a way that makes sense and don’t overuse them. A good idea is to use them as ‘featured images’ for your blog posts or as illustrations in your articles.
Embedding videos is also a good idea from an SEO perspective because if someone watches a video on your site, the season duration is increasing and that is a very good SEO signal.
Try to find a video on YouTube that fits your topic or the better way is to create your own video and upload it to YouTube and then embed it onto your site.
Try to make each page as much interesting as possible!
The loading speed of a website
Make sure your website loads really fast. The faster your website loads the better. Make sure you remove all the unnecessary scripts and plugins from your website. Also, try to use a good hosting company with fast servers.
Google also takes the loading speed of a website into account when ranking websites. So make sure your website loads as fast as possible to get better SEO results.
There are various services and websites that you can use to test and analyze your website speed. There you can see exactly how fast your website is available and what are the biggest elements on your website that are slowing down your website loading time. You can use this data to start optimizing your website. Most often, large images need to be loaded. So you can try to reduce the image size. We recommend using the “GTMetrix” service to analyze your site. You can also use Datacrypt’s tool to check your website.
If you’re using WordPress, there are a lot of different Page-Speed and Caching plugins available that you can install and make your website much faster.
The best free Cache plugin for a WordPress website is the “WP Super Cache” plugin.
The best-paid speed plugin you can use on your WordPress website is definitely the “NitroPack” plugin.
If you’re using Wix, Squarespace, or a similar platform for your website, there are a lot of services out there that can help you with your loading times. You can take a look at Fiverr or UpWork to find someone who can help you with that.
Images, image size, and alt text
Images are a really important element on your site. Images will make your site alive and add some personality to the different pages on your website.
But there are also a few points you have to watch out for if you’re using a lot of images on your site.
- Make sure your images have a good file size. If your images are too big. It will negatively impact the loading time of the page. You can use tools like “TinyJPG” to optimize your images before uploading. Or if you are using WordPress you can use plugins that will automatically optimize the file size of your images.
- Make sure to name the files in a proper way. When you take a picture with your camera that you want to upload to your website, most of the time the camera will save the image as “IMG123456.jpg”. Try to rename the images that the file name fits the picture. For example, if you have a picture of a beach, rename the file from “IMG12345.jpg” to “beach.jpg” before you upload it to your page.
- Now that you have uploaded the images to the page. Give the image a good description. The Alt-Tag of an image is very important because search engines like Google or Bing can not see what’s on the images. The search engines only can read. So make sure your alt tags explain what is visible on the image. For example, if you have a picture of you and your dog at the beach, make the alt tag something like “me and my dog on the beach”. This way, search engines will know what the specific image is all about.
Pop-ups
Do you want to bring a website visitor to do a specific action on your website? Do you use pop-ups to display a message to the visitors? Maybe that is not the smartest idea… If the pop-up displays directly after someone comes to your site, that might be harmful.
Make sure only to display at max one pop-up on your site and also delay the time in which your pop-up displays on the page.
Reading experience
The quality of your content is very important as well for SEO. If you want people to visit your website, you will have to write high-quality content that is worth reading. No one wants to read a wall of text, so make sure to include pictures and videos as well! This will also help SEO because search engines will be able to index your website better.
- Try to avoid using dark background colors. They can be hard to see and make your home look cluttered. Stick to lighter colors, like white, to make your home look clean and spacious.
- Leave plenty of white space.
- Make sure to use large font sizes when creating your marketing materials. This will ensure that everyone can easily read them.
- Use a font that is easier to read. Many people prefer a sans serif font because the letters are easier to see.
- Use headings and subheadings to organize your content
- Use bullet points to list important information
- Make sure your content is easy to read and scan
- Use shorter sentences and paragraphs to make it easier for your readers to consume the content. This will also help keep their attention on what you are saying.
- Keep your content interesting by using images, infographics, and videos. This will help break up the text and make it more enjoyable to read. Nobody likes a huge chunk of text without any breaks.
SEO is important, but web design is just as important. By following these tips, you can make sure that your website is designed in a way that will help you rank higher in search engines and attract more visitors. Just remember to keep your content high-quality and easy to read, and you’ll be on your way to success!