Web Design and SEO: How to Build a Website That Ranks (2023)

When creating a website, there are two major factors: customers and search engines. You'll need an SEO-friendly website to appear on Google when customers search for your products. But you also need a user-friendly, creative website where customers can find what they want to buy.

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What if you need to be made aware of the relationship between SEO and web design?

Unfortunately, this dynamic is frequently overlooked, which is a huge loss because you can change the design of your website and take your search engine optimization to a whole new level.

But what is the link? How do codes and images relate to links and keywords?

This article will cover what SEO web design is, why it's important, and what things you should optimize to find common ground between these two goals.

What is SEO web design?

seo-web-design

SEO (search engine optimization) is optimizing a website so that it ranks well in search engines. The website creation and design and its pages are known as website design. It discusses the SEO best practices that designers must adhere to when creating websites.

What Is the Connection Between SEO and Web Design?

Web designers, developers, SEO specialists, and copywriters should collaborate. The optimization must fit into the design and vice versa.

connection-between-seo-and-web-design

Why?
Some people believe that a great website design can compensate for poor SEO or that a perfect optimization strategy can overcome web design issues.

The first page to rank in a SERP receives an average click-through rate of 29.17%. The CTR varies by industry, but we present average percentages. The tenth spot receives only 0.99%. To rank first, you must have an SEO-friendly website. This is where SEO web design comes in as a potent weapon. This needs to be corrected.

How SEO and web design are related:

The quality of design can have an adverse effect on optimization. For example, if you're launching a new website or rebranding an existing one, remember to set 301 redirects, which communicate with search engines to tell them where to find the new version of the page. As a result, Your SEO efforts are ruined by a single blunder. Another example: you rank #1-3 and receive a lot of traffic, but you have better rankings for website traffic that needs to be more natural. This could mean that the page takes an eternity to load, finding the necessary information is difficult, or the web design could be more user-friendly.

The quality of design can have an adverse effect on optimization. For example, if you're launching a new website or rebranding an existing one, remember to set 301 redirects, which communicate with search engines to tell them where to find the new version of the page. As a result, Your SEO efforts are ruined by a single blunder. Another example: you rank #1-3 and receive a lot of traffic, but you have better rankings for website traffic that needs to be more natural. This could mean that the page takes an eternity to load, finding the necessary information is difficult, or the web design could be more user-friendly.

Why is SEO web design important?

How will people find your company website if it has a beautiful design, but none of its web pages rank in search engine results?

While PPC ads and social media are great for increasing traffic, finding organic (read: free) ways to boost your website traffic and get to page one of the search engine result pages is also important.

Let's go over some of the most significant advantages of SEO web design.

  • SEO web design boosts organic traffic.

Organic traffic to your website refers to unpaid traffic from search engines. These website visitors discovered your site after searching for something on Google and scrolling through the top results.

To be more specific, the first search result receives over a quarter of all clicks, the second search result receives 15%, and so on.

seo-web-design-boosts-organic-traffic

So because the 10th outcome receives 2.5 percent of the single click, it's fair to presume that one has poor SEO rankings results beyond the site. This is why you should design and optimize your website as well as possible to increase your chances of ranking higher on SERPs.

  • SEO web design enhances the user experience.

Every dollar invested in UX yields 100 in return, for a 9,900 percent ROI—but that's not the only advantage. If you want to get on Google's good side, your website must be SEO-optimized and user-friendly. Google has refined its criteria so that metrics related to user experience factor into your rankings.

According to Backlinko research, some of these criteria include:

  • Dwell time
  • Mobile usability
  • Bounce rate

Improving Your Website SEO is an essential component of any marketing strategy. It ensures that your website functions properly and is simple to navigate so that visitors can find the information they seek.

Google only wants to rank the best websites to protect its user experience from being harmed by poor websites.

  • SEO web design attracts high-intent traffic.

When someone performs a Google search, it is because they have a specific query for which they are looking for information. And when your page appears at the top of the search results with that exact answer, they'll click over to your page.

While they may not convert immediately after discovering your website, they know they can contact you if they have further questions. This high brand awareness is suitable for growing conversions since they were looking for something in your company.

  • SEO web design makes the most of your marketing budget.

It may take some time to implement an SEO strategy, but the variations are generally free. With a little website knowledge, many business owners can set up SEO parameters or assign them to a group member.

The aspect is that SEO is a minimal method for assisting your website meet its marketing goals and increase its overall ROI.

Here are the following Things to Optimize for Web Design and SEO That Ranks (2023)

  • Site Navigation

The structure of your website matters. When it comes to user experience, one of the top priorities is the ability to navigate a site easily without having to think too much. Navigation is flawless:

  • Is easily found
  • It is consistent throughout the website.
  • Has a limited page depth - up to four clicks from the start page to the destination page. For an e-commerce website, for example, Homepage > Category > Subcategory > Product page.

side-navigation

Both users and search engines care about the appearance of your URLs. The former find it easier to navigate the website; the latter better understand what the page is about. SEO-friendly URLs can help you rank higher, appear safer, and make your web design more wholesome and trustworthy.

Make an effort to connect your blog posts and other pages for a better user experience. People will spend more time on the pages, giving you more time to make a lasting first impression.

While UX is very useful in SEO, it is the responsibility of the website designer. The easier it is to find the necessary information, the better.

  • Mobile-Friendliness and Responsive Design

By 2021, mobile will account for 55% of all global traffic. By 2025, it is expected that three-quarters of the world will only use smartphones to access the internet.

A responsive website improves your SEO and ensures that your target audience has a consistent experience whether they access your site via computer or mobile device.

Consider this website example from The Sill. They rank on page one for keywords like plants, house plants, and where to buy them. The mobile version is still simple to use and follows the same flow of searching for products and proceeding to checkout, which is typical for an e-commerce site.

As you design your website, ensure you or your development team tests it on both desktop and mobile. This is an important ranking factor because Google released a mobile-friendly update to their algorithm in 2015 that boosts responsive sites in search results.

  • Website Speed and Web Vitals

Heavy web design can frequently slow down a site, affecting both Google and your visitors. Page speed is one of the ranking factors used by search engines, so during the design stage, make sure to:

  • Remove unnecessary plugins from the site, allow browser caching, and so on.
  • Lighten images by optimizing them.

Use a CDN (content delivery network) if your speed is adequate, but people continue to bounce for unknown reasons. PageSpeed Insights can help you determine the speed of your page.

website-speed-and-web-vitals

Amazon is a great example of a fast website. Amazon is a great example of a fast website. When you test the homepage with PageSpeed Insights, you'll notice that the Core Web Vitals are green, indicating that the site is fast, loads quickly, and provides a good user experience.

The Core Web Vitals evaluate the website's loading speed and quality, interactivity, and visual stability. Perform a regular check to ensure everything is in order with your website's technical SEO, which is closely related to search engine optimization website design.

SEO Ranking's site audit for SEO is one of the tools that may be useful for quickly crawling all of your site's pages and generating a list of issues related to speed and Core Web Vitals. The tool will also show you what percentage of your pages are fast enough, need improvement, or provide a poor user experience regarding CWV.

  • Image file names

Image file names are so small that you may not even consider them, but they can be valuable to your website optimization. So think twice before naming something home-page-header-final-2.jpg.

Instead, include keywords and descriptors that help Google understand what is in the image.

image-file-names

Image file names in this section of Method's website, for example, could be:

  • aluminum-hand-wash-bottle.jpg,
  • srefillable-soap-pouches.jpg,
  • Srainbow-cleaning-products.jpg.

Do the following to optimize them for SEO:

Create alt-text if the image cannot be loaded. Alt-text is also an important optimization tool because it allows you to include keywords, thus SEO-ing the image.

Use compressed images- while some compression will not impair image quality, it can improve the user experience by allowing for faster loading. By using compressed images, you reduce server load and increase the speed of each page.

Implement lazy loading- load pages as viewed rather than loading the entire page for longer.

Use keywords in file names: Search engines can see the file names you are using. Why don't you also enhance them?

WebP image formats. These offer more compression while preserving quality better than the previously popular JPEG and PNG formats.

  • URL structure

Your URL structure should also be based on your SEO strategy. Each URL slug should only include the focus keyword of your web page or blog post. Make sure to conduct keyword research for each page you intend to include in your web design or redesign when it goes live. Do the same for each new page you add along the way.

This assists Google in determining which keywords to rank your pages for a while also maintaining your pages obtainable. Because most center keywords are only a few words long, your URL grubs will be simple to remember and categorize into a URL field if someone searches for a particular page.

  • Engaging Content

The content should look good within the page layout, which is the web designer's responsibility for working on the site. The quality of the content is also essential. Engaging in writing or media keeps people interested, shares expertise or experience, and potentially improves conversion.

This content should be both well-structured and interesting. You should use sufficient headings, subheadings, and lists that allow people to skim through the text to get the most important takeaways. Tables of contents make a blog post more user-friendly and facilitate navigation.

Dividing a piece of writing into paragraphs will make the post more readable and easier to scan.

You should also vary your content. Don't just focus on the text. To engage the audience more, use videos, images, graphs, infographics, podcasts, etc. Communicate with your readers, viewers, and listeners by posting interesting content to your target visitors.

The content should include the following:

  • Headings
  • Subheadings
  • Lists
  • Tables of contents
  • Media content

Conclusion

The key to an SEO-friendly website is bridging the gap between web design and SEO. Encourage your teams to collaborate to optimize your website for SEO and usability.

Remember that providing value to your customers is the best way to rank in search engines. Optimize the above elements to improve your search results, write high-quality content, and create excellent user experiences.

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You can also leave us an email at
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and we will get back to you as soon as we can. Cheers!

Let us get talking and see where that leads us!


Tell us what is keeping you up at night and let us see how we can help you chase those monsters away.

This form to your right is the easiest way for you to get in touch with us.

You can also leave us an email at
[email protected]

and we will get back to you as soon as we can. Cheers!

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