The Impact of Website Design on SEO

When it comes to website design, the concept of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) at times seems to be a separate entity. This is why designers often only consider striking a balance between functionality and the aesthetic value of a website, without thinking about SEO. If they do, there will appear to be a clash in their decision-making on SEO and web design.

Nevertheless, did you know that web design and SEO are actually correlated? In fact, digital marketing experts say that web design can significantly affect your SEO ranking. That said, here’s what you should know about the impact of web design on SEO efforts and what you can do to integrate both on your website efficiently.

Website design and SEO in a nutshell

As far as website design is concerned, web designers pay particular attention to various elements, such as text, images, videos, other valuable content, background, layout, and web structure. They also emphasize on the speed, navigation, and usability of a website. When it comes to web design, the goal is to strike a balance between visual appeal and overall functionality.

SEO, on the other hand, is the process of optimizing your site, writing relevant content with effective keywords, and building links for authority. The primary goal of SEO is to put your website on top of the ranking of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) environment to increase your business’s web presence and drive website traffic up the scale.

The impact of website design on SEO

Today, Google updates underscore the fact that SERP ranking is based on effective web designs. For this reason, it is possible that crawlers visit your site and check your content, and assess if your website deserves the top spot.

If you do not produce valuable content and your site functionality has various issues, such as slow speed and complicated navigation, crawlers immediately assume that your website doesn’t offer value to the online users. As a result, your site will end up not being visible even on the first page of the SERPs environment.

This just goes to that your web designing can greatly impact your SEO pursuit. Ultimately, a highly effective web design improves your SEO ranking and takes your business up a notch.

What you can do for your web design for SEO

Now that you know how web design and SEO are intertwined, we’ll provide you with a few important tips. That said, make sure to consider the following:

Web structure and design:

• Make sure to have ample whitespace.
• Use fonts that can have the utmost readability.
• Sort your content into headings, sub-headings, and bullet points.
• Use short sentences and paragraphs for natural content consumption.
• Publish images, infographics, and videos to catch the users’ interests.

Web page load speed:

• Remove flash content or large image files.
• Utilize more compressed images and CDN.
• Reduce HTTP requests.
• Minimize the use of redirects.
• Employ the use of a caching solution.
• Upgrade your web hosting solution.

Web layout

• Include relevant keywords to the title of the images.
• Keep the menu relatively simple and readily available on all pages.
• Make sure that the main menu is straightforward.
• Use simple and familiar languages.
• Ensure that the URL for each web page is clear, concise, and descriptive.

Final words

The truth is, gone are the days when SEO and web design were considered two separate entities in digital marketing. Today, the dynamics have drastically changed, and both aspects go hand in hand. That said, combine both entities and see how your digital marketing endeavors can help your business grow, thrive, and succeed in the long run.