Although web design combines the programming and graphic design disciplines, it’s not just a task for developers. So, in order to get the best out of your website, you need to get the best digital marketers involved from the beginning.
For instance, in the light of the global pandemic that’s ongoing, many edtech companies and related sectors reached out to affected sectors to help out the best way they can. Digital technology’s effect on education has never been as felt as now.
Even web products not related to the education market found a way to capture students and educators surging online for distance learning. They included this in their marketing campaigns and customized some products for education in the new normal.
Such campaigns are the brainchild of digital marketers finding ways to increase brand awareness in a time of global crisis. And web design is a big part of these marketing campaigns.
Web design is more than just aesthetics. Any element of your online presence is influenced by great web design. Ensure that your website is one of the primary sources of information about your company and promotion in the online world.
Given that design is concerned with graphic elements and SEO is concerned with making your website discoverable, it may seem that SEO and web design are independent of each other. Designers and SEOs can execute very different activities, but that doesn’t mean they work together.
When combined, the two will have a significant effect on your company’s profits. That’s why, whether you’re considering getting a website built or revamped, it’s critical to understand why website design and SEO are necessary — and what that means for your site.
How Web Design Boosts Your SEO
1. Page Layout and Formatting
The design of your page is critical. The interface will vary in anything from the size of the text to where you place information, links, and images. Users would be dissatisfied with a website that has little or excessive font size.
It is necessary to use a standard font size and to remember the color of both the text and the context. Using a difficult-to-read backdrop and font color would also prevent users from engaging with your content.
It means they can skip vital details or abandon the website entirely.
Your URL can also be updated to a worded structure, such as www.Google.com rather than www.Google.com/?page id=2021.
Companies in this day and age are so many different online businesses that if they are dissatisfied with your website or what you have to sell, they will quickly find it elsewhere.
So, you must make sure that your page layout and formatting are user-friendly and accessible. The more readers and visitors engage with your site content, the greater your dwell time will be. Higher dwell time means a lower bounce rate. These are part of the SEO metrics that search engines look for to determine SERP (Search Engine Results Page) rankings.
2. Navigation and Accessibility
Navigation is one of the essential components of a great user experience, and because of that, you should keep it simple. The more efficiently your web users will discover what they’re looking for, the more likely they are to convert.
Easy-to-use navigation also lowers your visitors’ chances of getting confused, leaving your site, lowering your bounce rate, and improving your rankings.
3. Readability
Although your designers may be more concerned with the non-text elements on your site, they must choose fonts and sizes that are easy to read for your guests.
The designer should know to leave plenty of room for copy. To rank high, you’ll need a lot of valuable, optimized content that can help the SEO of your site. Sometimes, designers might have difficulty aligning their design with the corporate objectives because they like their design.
But a good designer can use their design to boost corporate objectives to the best of their capacity. They can strategically combine aesthetics with function, so they create designs that convert as well.
4. High-quality Imagery
Another element that can boost your dwell time and domain authority is including high-quality imagery in your web design. It boosts your user’s trust in your website. It is why web design has a significant role in businesses. Most users will leave a website and cease any business because they did not like the web design.
A good web design is both visually pleasing and navigable, which encourages greater engagement with on-site. It will improve chances for conversions and improve SEO rankings.
Good design delivers a one-two punch that makes consumers overcome their natural distrust of brands, allowing them to enter into a partnership with your business more efficiently.
You must also have quality material on your website. By combining high-quality content with eye-catching graphics, you encourage visitors to associate with your content, indicating to search engines that your platform is trustworthy and deserving of ranking.
5. High-Quality and Relevant Content
Aside from keywords, the content is the most critical part of creating a website. The content can be anything from the types of words used on a webpage to pictures to sound clips and any content that gives a user information about a business. Content is significant to your website.
The content on your homepage will help a user determine whether they want to keep reading or check out what is on the other pages. It is the first thing users see. If you will take your time on something on your website, it should be the content. Content planning will make or break your website’s success.
6. Keyword Research
Keywords assist a search engine in knowing that a website is attempting to communicate and whether it is relevant and helpful to people. You need to know what users in your target market are using to search for information on the web.
What problems do they have that pushed them to search on the internet in the first place? And does your website provide some solutions to those problems? If your website can add value to users, then search engines will rank you high in SEO, so users find your site better.
So start a keyword analysis and see what consumers are looking for and how competitive the market is. There are online resources that will assist you in determining which keywords would be more effective for you to use while building your website. Your web design should also reflect this value. Include keywords in your images, videos, titles, and tags as well.
It’s normal for SEO to expect a keyword to appear once every 100 sentences. It means that if a page has 200 words, you can use the keyword twice, each time in a different way. It’s crucial not to overuse keywords, as search engines also consider when determining SEO rankings.
It’s also a social media trend to include keywords you rank for in your campaigns. Use them as hash words in your posts to keep echoing your keywords online.
7. Site Speed
A 100-millisecond delay in load time will reduce conversions by 7%. A sluggish website can kill your conversion rates. Your web design has to be fast to keep users on-site, which boosts your SEO ranking.
If users get tired of waiting for your site to launch, they will leave in a matter of seconds. Google will consider that you’re giving its users a bad experience. Therefore, it will lower your search engine rank.
Make sure that your website has robust protection against the most prevalent cybersecurity risks. One of the significant effects of a cyber attack is crippling your site’s performance and speed. In most cases, it is worse, as your website can get taken down by a cyberattack or taken down by the search engines because of spam issues. Improve and protect your site’s speed and performance with a robust cybersecurity strategy that fights against malware attacks and detects them before it’s too late.
Conclusion: Improving Your Web Design Boosts Your SEO
Web design affects user experience, but it also affects search engine rankings. Poor web design practices lower your SEO rank, showing your site lower in search. That directly affects your business’s bottom line, which is why it’s so important to invest in SEO-focused web design from the start. Combine marketing and web design best practices to create a site that looks great and ranks highly in search.
It can take months to see significant SEO results, but it is necessary to ensure a business can thrive in this highly digital age. There is so much competition out there. With SEO in mind, your website is on its way to ranking higher than if you have to go back and rebuild it. By keeping these factors in mind from the very beginning of building your website, you can only benefit in the end.
AUTHOR: MAYLEEN MEÑEZ
Mayleen Meñez used to work in media before finding her true passion in NGO work, traveling the Philippines and Asia doing so. She homeschools 3 kids and loves reinventing Filipino dishes. She is a resident SEO writer for Softvire Australia and Softvire New Zealand.
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