Table of Contents
You may think of SEO as being completely separate from the design of your website; but this is not the case.
As the Google algorithm has become smarter, so the user experience has been placed at centre stage. Google wants you to provide a high all round high quality experience for the people who visit your website, and the way your website is designed has as much impact on this as your SEO strategy.
You should not think of the aspects of creating a website separately. It’s not just about meta tags, it’s not just about high quality content and it’s not just about providing easy navigation. All of these factors are equally important. The truth is that every element of your website design contributes to user experience. Without good user experience, no amount of keywords and backlinks are going to work. We are going to take a look at three elements of website design. Hopefully, you can see how they have an impact on your SEO.
Making navigation simple
People are quickly going to lose patience with your website if it’s difficult to navigate. You need to ensure that you make good use of menus, headings and links. Do not forget that while you are making the site easy to navigate for users, you are also making it easier for Google bots to find their way around your content. This has a positive effect on your Google rankings.
Thinking about the effect on site load time
Images, graphics and animations can be excellent tools to use to get your message across on your website. Unfortunately, they can also increase your site load time. This is an important consideration when it comes to user experience. Mobile users in particular like to be able to access sites within around two to three seconds. Load time is also a vital consideration when it comes to SEO. You can be penalised by Google if your site load times are slow. You need to balance what you want your website design to look like against the effect the design has on the load time.
Put the important stuff first
This may sound obvious, but it certainly does not always happen. You need to think very carefully about what the aim of your website is. You then need to concentrate the design of the website on enabling visitors to help you achieve that aim. This means that the important information you need them to have has to be given priority. Doing this also enables Google bots to see what your site is all about, clearly and easily. As you can imagine, this is good for your search engine rankings.
Website design is more closely linked to SEO than most people imagine; click here for more information about the design process. Remember, that any design process you use should be completed with SEO in mind. It’s about creating the best possible user experience which has a direct impact on how you rank with search engines.
UI/UX Consultant, Photoshop, XD, SketchApp, Product Designer, Website Designer, Mobile App Designer, Expert WordPress Developer. For web/mobile design and wordpress development related projects please contact me at dibakar@themepurpose.com
