Do You Have an SEO-Friendly Web Design?
We could easily relate web design to user experience, but not much with SEO. People have the misconception that SEO-friendly web design is a set of limitations imposed on designers to manipulate the search engines. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should be seen as an effective method and standard which also aims for user experience. With this kind of mind set, web designers will appreciate both SEO and UX.
How to make a web design SEO-friendly? Below are some tips you can adopt:
1. Optimize not only the content but also the design.
If you want people to locate your website, you need SEO. Most people make sure that the website’s copy writing is good and blog posts have specific keywords to achieve this. What they fail to realize is, it is not enough to create high quality content, it should be displayed effectively. Focus on the content’s hierarchy and put the smooth navigation in mind. An SEO-friendly design is not just simply scanning for keywords, it also scans good website layout.
2. Break blocks of web content for easy scanning.
The Internet has made everything fast thus we want information fast as well. Because of this, people tend to scan the webpage first. Their eyes move in a particular direction, something like the letter H. If they get interested, they’ll continue reading, if not, they proceed to the next. Breaking a big block of text into small blocks with headings and subheadings plus enough white spaces make your webpage easy to scan.
3. Go for intuitive navigation.
Make the visitors’ navigation easy by providing a prominent menu that spell clear and understandable labels, instructions, and heirarchy. Also, let the menu or navigation follow a logical order for better UX.
4. Lessen interruptions.
Once you have the visitors on your webpage, don’t interrupt their web experience with annoying pop-ups requesting for newsletter subscription or social media likes or shares. If you need to offer these, make it minimal and solicit only the necessary info.
5. Integrate social media.
Incorporating social media into the design may help boost SERP ranking. Make sure that your social media icons are included on your website so visitors may share your website to others.
6. Don’t overdo the visuals.
Content is king and content supported with attractive visuals is great. But too much of anything is bad, even in websites. Too much images with less text is not advisable, either. Use videos or infographics but include transcripts or summaries on the same page. SEO will be much better this way. Also, don’t forget to put an alt tag on every image for SEO purposes.
7. Use headers tags.
Search engines recognize headers by number. Therefore, put H1 tags and insert keywords in them for better SEO.
8. Mobile-friendly = SEO-friendly.
Use responsive website design and opt for layouts that can be adapted across all devices. Nowadays, most websites are accessed via smartphones and search engines are reward these sites with good rankings.
9. Make it simple but attractive.
Simplicity is beauty. Clean and simple designs are definitely in. Don’t be afraid of white spaces, they’re good for the eyes.
10. Good user experience boosts SEO.
Bounce rates also affect a website’s SEO ranking. If less people visit, the site won’t be ranked much. Make sure that the images, loading time, blocks of texts and images wouldn’t encourage bounce rates.
Overall, it still boils down to a good web design, with a better user experience in mind, and SEO follows thereafter.
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