7 Important Considerations for Web Design and SEO

SEO is an important element in website design. You want users to enjoy using your website, and you also want it to rank well in search engine results. Finding the perfect balance between SEO and website design can be tricky, but they can work together so the people visiting your site stay there long enough to translate into conversions.

Whether it’s ensuring that your site is easy to navigate, loads quickly, works and looks good on different devices, or has helpful content that solves user problems, SEO and web design work to complement each other. The fact is that a well-designed site that takes into account these points will be more successful in the SERPs (search engine results pages) and encourage users to stay on your site.

If web design and search engine optimization have left you panicking, this blog is here to help.

What Is SEO Optimized Website Design?

To put it simply, SEO web design combines the best practices of both web design and SEO. The aim is to have a top-quality, sleek, user-friendly website that also scores highly in the SERPs.

There are 4 important goals to remember when combining web design with SEO:

1. Increased organic trafficOrganic search traffic (sometimes called natural or unpaid search) is the traffic that's driven to a website because of unpaid placement on a search engine results page.
2. Amazing user experience
3. A stronger online visibility
4. Better brand authority

Why Does SEO Web Design Matter?

As mentioned, SEO and web design work together to benefit each other. A well-thought-out website design makes it easier for search engine bots to crawl and index, which boosts your chances of flying up the SERPs, increasing precious organic traffic.

7 Things To Consider For SEO Web Design

1. Is Your Website Mobile-Friendly?

Google has a mobile-first approach to indexing and rankings. It’s been crawling and indexing the mobile versions of websites first ever since 2017. If you don’t have a fully functional mobile-friendly website, you don’t stand a chance of ranking high in the SERPs.

Instead of having 2 versions of your website, you should ensure your site has a responsive design. This means that the dimensions of your site will automatically change based on the device the user is accessing it on. Blending website design with SEO in this way will mean that your pages are more likely to rank highly. It is also excellent for user experience, which is crucial if you want to keep your bounce rateBounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a website who visit only one page. A high bounce rate indicates that visitors are not satisfied with your website. low. If your website isn’t loading properly on any set device, users will click off your page and find one that does.

Do Your Pages Load Quickly?

A slow-loading website is a surefire way to send organic traffic to your competitors’ websites, increasing your bounce rate, which is never good. As well as being pretty shoddy for user experience, pages that take forever to load and fail Google’s Core Web Vitals test won’t appear in its results.

With a few tweaks, you’ll be able to fast-forward your page load times:

• Compress videos and images – naturally, bigger file sizes take longer to load, which can bring your site to a halt, so make sure they’re compressed without sacrificing quality.
• Limit plugins – plugins can slow down your site, so try to be selective about how many you have at any one time.
• Crackdown on code – too much HTML, CSS, or JavaScriptJavascript is one of the web’s key programming languages but coding it incorrectly can cost you in technical SEO terms. In order to avoid common mistakes, and understand how Java operates, here’s a quick guide to coding Java the right way. code can make your website sluggish, so ensure you don’t have anything that isn’t essential and work to compress it.

3. Is Your Content Relevant, and Does It Contain Target Keywords?

Content plays a huge role in SEO and web design. Not only does quality content score highly in the SERPs, but it enhances user experience, too. There is no point making content with the sole intention of increasing your rankings, though. Instead, your content needs to be human-first, meaning it is relevant to your target audience, solves their problems, answers their questions, and keeps them engaged.

Your content needs to be easy to read, so keep it simple.

Think about including the following to make it easy to digest:

• Short sentences
• Punchy paragraphs
• Bullet points
• Breakout boxes
• Images
• Infographics

From a web design SEO perspective, your content must also fulfill Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines and show expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. It should also be optimized with keywords that seamlessly blend into your content. Be careful not to over-optimize it, though, as this can have a detrimental effect.

It’s important your keywords feature in your:

• Meta descriptions
• Headers
• Title tags
• Alt text
• Introduction and conclusion

4. Does Your Content Have Header Tags?

Properly formatted HTML header tags make your content easier for search engines and users to read. Headers break up the text, which makes it scannable for humans so they can read the parts that are relevant to them. For SEO, headers are vital for search engine bots to understand your content when crawling and indexing.

When your H1, H2, H3, and H4 headers contain keywords, you have an even better opportunity to rank for those phrases and have your content appear in featured snippets in search results, which is a win-win for your visibility.

5. Is Your Website Well-Structured?

When it comes to SEO web design, having a well-structured and logical website is non-negotiable. A clear website structure makes it easier for search engines to crawl your website and helps users find the information they need. Be sure to keep your navigation and search bar visible, as this allows users to find their way around your site. Make sure the layout of your web pages makes hierarchal sense by grouping pages into categories and subcategories. Concentrating on your internal linking structure can also help guide search engines and users to other relevant pages on your site.

6. Is Your MetadataPut simply, metadata is data that describes data. It’s a labelling system designed to help machines and humans understand what is contained within a packet of data. Up-To-Date?

Metadata is embedded in your website’s HTML code and tells search engines more about your pages. This information usually appears in search results and can persuade users to click on your pages.

Ensure your website has fully optimized:

• Title tags
• Meta descriptions
• Alt text on images

7. Have You Made It Accessible?

Accessibility is massively important for SEO web design. Search engines will always prioritize websites that are easy to use for all users. Again, ensuring your images have descriptive alt text tags, and all videos and audio come with a transcript can help make your site more accessible.

You’ll also need to consider:

• Making your site easy to navigate via a keyboard
• Having descriptive headings for those using screen readers
• Ensuring clear contrast of colors to make your site easy to read
• Using short sentences and paragraphs and breaking up text with bullet points for ease of reading

Web Design SEO Is Essential for Search Engine Success

Website design and search engine optimization should always be considered together instead of separate entities. Careful web design makes sure that sites are user-friendly by following a proper structure, loading quickly on any device, being accessible, and containing relevant, helpful information that people want to read. When implemented correctly, these elements can also earn some serious SEO points for your web pages.

At Click Intelligence, we understand that considering web design in your SEO efforts and vice versa can be complicated. That’s why our extensive SEO services are always carried out with user experience in mind. From technical SEO audits to on-page SEO, all our services can help improve your website design.