Loading...- What Is SEO-Friendly Web Design?
- Why Is SEO Web Design Important?
- How to Make an SEO-Friendly Web Design?
- SEO Web Design - The Takeaway
What Is SEO-Friendly Web Design?
As you may guess, SEO-friendly web design is a website development approach ensuring that pages are compliant with Google algorithms, rules, and recommendations. In simple terms, this design method takes into account the needs of both users and search engines. Creating such a user and SEO-friendly page isn’t easy, but it's worth the effort if you want to improve your positions in the search results and offer your potential customers a well-designed and functional site.Why Is SEO Web Design Important?
There are many reasons why it’s worth taking your time to make your page SEO-friendly even before it’s launched.
The most important benefits of SEO-friendly web design include:
SEO-friendly web design also has a positive effect on the position of your website in the search results. Thanks to this, your site can be more visible to potential customers, which will result in increased traffic and, consequently, higher conversion rates.
- improved website visibility in the search results,
- increased traffic,
- better user experience,
- higher conversion rates.
How to Make an SEO-Friendly Web Design?
Are you wondering how to make your website more SEO-friendly and fully benefit from its potential? Take a look at the tips described below.1. Make Sure Your Website Is Mobile-Friendly
Mobile-friendliness is a term used to describe how easy a website is to use on a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet. A page that is mobile-friendly is easy to read and navigate on a small screen, and will often have a simplified layout in order to load more efficiently.
Why should you focus on this aspect? Since more and more people are using mobile devices to access the internet and finalize transactions, mobile-friendliness is gaining increasing importance in SEO web development.
If your site isn't responsive and doesn't adapt to small screens, users will probably leave it and choose your market rivals instead.
Therefore, if you want to rank high in the search results, you should definitely take care of mobile-friendliness as it has an impact on both SEO and UX.
Want to learn more? Check out: Mobile SEO. A complete guide for mobile devices SEO.
2. Take Care of the Page Speed
Have you ever heard about Core Web Vitals? These are metrics used by Google to evaluate website performance. As you may guess, page loading time is one of them. Generally, there are three aspects that are taken into account:- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) - it measures the time from when the page starts loading to when the largest element in the viewport has finished loading.
- First Input Delay (FID) - it checks the time from when a user first interacts with a page (i.e. when they click a link, tap a button, etc.) to when the browser is actually able to respond to that interaction. A high FID can make for a frustrating user experience, as people may feel like their input is "laggy" or unresponsive.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) - it evaluates the unexpected layout shift that occurs during a page's lifetime. It's an important UX metric because it captures how often users experience unexpected layout changes, which can be disruptive and cause them to lose focus.
If your website loads fast and users can easily access all the necessary elements, you can be sure that their UX will be positive, which also supports SEO.
3. Create a Sitemap
A sitemap is a file containing a list of all the URLs and pages on your website. It helps search engine crawlers index your site more efficiently and effectively. Thanks to it, users are also able to find the information they're looking for.
A sitemap is especially useful for websites with a large amount of content or a complex structure.
If you want your website to be well-organized and easy to navigate, you should definitely focus on creating it. Want to learn how to do it step-by-step? Check out our article: Sitemap – what is it and how to configure it?
Another important aspect when it comes to the sitemap is keeping it up-to-date. Find out how you can update it automatically in the article: How to update sitemap automatically to boost visibility more than twice.
4. Make Your Design Clean and Transparent
Your website's design and layout play an important role in SEO web development. A well-designed website is easy to navigate and understand. All the elements are placed in logical places so that users can easily find what they're looking for. In addition, a transparent and clean design makes the page more readable. What does it mean? Thanks to it, users can focus on the content, not on intrusive ads, pop-ups or slowly loading graphics. If you want your website to be successful, you should make sure that it's well-designed and easy to use. Don't forget about making it accessible as well!
Find out more in our article: How to Improve Both SEO & Website Accessibility on Your Site.
5. Create Intuitive Website Navigation
This point somehow encapsulates the above few tips. If you want to reach high positions in the search results, you should make your page easy to navigate. Users should be able to find the information they're looking for quickly and easily. All the links and menus need to be placed in logical spots. Moreover, they need to be intuitive so that potential customers know what to expect from a given page, even before clicking the link. [caption id="attachment_62879" align="aligncenter" width="1293"]
Image Source: Delante's own screenshot[/caption]
If your website's navigation is complicated, users will probably get lost and leave the site.
Not sure how to improve your website’s navigation? We’re ready to help!
6. Take Care of Your Image Alt Tags
An image alt tag is a short text that describes a graphic. It's read to people with visual impairments and search engines analyze it to understand what's depicted in the image. Thanks to it, the crawlers can index the content accordingly. If you want your website to be fully optimized and SEO-friendly, take care of image alt tags, saturate them with relevant keywords, keep them descriptive, and use their SEO potential.
7. Take Care of the URL Structure
The URL is one of the places where you can and should use keywords to make your content more SEO-friendly. It’s also an important part of SEO web development. In order to make it easy for both users and search engines to understand what a given page is about, the URL should be clear, concise, and descriptive. Therefore, you should keep your website addresses easy to read. How to do it? Don’t use any special characters or numbers that could make it look spammy. Replace underscores with dashes and keep in mind that URLs are also an ideal extra space for keywords. Need a more illustrative example? Here's a good URL:
www.website.com/seo-friendly-web-design
And here’s a bad one:
www.website.com/page-456?=seo
What’s the difference? The first URL is short, clear, and contains the keyword you want to rank for. The second URL, on the other hand, is long, looks suspicious, and can deter users.
So, if you want to rank high in the search results and inspire trust in users, take your time to prepare the correct URL structure for your website.
8. Take Care of Your Metadata
Metadata is a term used to describe title tags and meta descriptions. They're displayed e.g., to users in the search results. This means that they can give you a competitive edge over other listings in the SERPs (provided they're structured in a proper, SEO, and user-friendly way). What are they? Title tags are the headlines of your website's individual pages, while meta descriptions are short summaries that describe what each page is about.
While title tags have a crucial impact on SEO and help search engine robots better comprehend your website content, meta descriptions aren’t important SEO-wise. However, they can either encourage or discourage potential customers from visiting your site.
Make sure that your title tags and meta descriptions are well-written, accurate, and describe each page's content. Don’t forget to saturate them with relevant keywords. Keep them attractive and informative for users.
Want to learn more about creating perfect meta descriptions and titles? Our article comes to the rescue! Check out: Meta tags - what are they and how do they affect SEO?
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