If you find that your website can be sometimes problematic or encounter issues from time to time, this can be one of the reasons why you’re not performing well organically. This post will help to teach you how website design can benefit your SEO strategy.
Effective Web Design Can Benefit Your SEO Strategy
In the digital world we now live in, websites are the bread and butter for any business to succeed. Users are finding themselves online more than ever before and their behaviors are beginning to change regularly. Search engines are one of the core influences for this approach as users shift their interests to convenience in finding websites that suit their needs based on their search queries.
Considering this, it’s important that with your website design you’re taking into account how it can affect your SEO strategy. There is a common saying that if your website doesn’t appear on the first page of Google, it may as well not exist online. Website design has an influence on whether a website performs well on search engines, or not.
Here are 4 ways effective web design can benefit your SEO strategy.
1. User-Friendly Design
The first and most important thing when it comes to web design is making sure that it’s user-friendly. Your users will be the target for your website and if they’re unable to navigate through it seamlessly, you’re unlikely to attract them to use your products or services.
This is particularly important with the first impressions of users. If they have a poor experience with your website the first time around, it’s unlikely they’ll use you again. Consider user testing, utilizing analytics to understand customer journeys, and monitoring the pages on your site to see where they can be improved. With the right design, you can ensure larger conversion rates and feel comfortable knowing your website meets the needs of your users.
2. Avoid Duplicate Content Issues
With mobile-first indexing now becoming a priority for Google, you need to be sure that your website works just as well as on mobile as it does on desktop. In the web design remit, this can mean creating two versions of the website so it can cater to both devices. The only issue with this is that it can easily cause duplicate content issues which can be extremely harmful to your SEO and will not benefit your SEO strategy.
With the use of responsive web design, however, this feature can be built into your website so your website automatically adjusts to the device that it’s being used on. So, whenever you update your website you can be assured that it previews on various devices, including desktop, mobile, and tablet regardless of their size.
3. Attract More Users Through Mobile Devices
As what’s already been mentioned, mobile is now the most common device that users tend to utilize when they’re searching for products or services. It’s convenient and users have them practically everywhere they go. It’s now understood that around 80% of the population use their mobile device when browsing the web. This makes responsive web design even more important to implement. It should be easily accessible and navigate through mobile devices providing a smooth experience for the audience.
4. Improve the Speed of the Website
Another update that Google provided as part of the ranking factors they consider for search engine results is speed. This needs to be looked at from Google’s perspective as they want to provide users with the best possible search results on their pages. Users are continuously on-the-go and need access to information quickly, therefore websites with fast loading speeds are essential.
To achieve this, there are several factors to consider to ensure that the speed of your website is quick. Firstly, AMP technology helps to generate accelerated mobile pages on websites and enables them to load the content faster. You should also be wary about the number of HTTP requests that your website uses as more of these can cause the website to load slower. There is also the impact of plugins too.
Final Thoughts: 4 Ways Effective Web Design Can Benefit Your SEO Strategy
Google tracks practically all of the elements that come with your website in order to determine whether it’s the right fit to rank well on their pages. At the end of the day, they need to make sure that the needs of their users are met through the search queries they make.
Improving your website design can go a long way to helping you achieve better results in the search engines. The points made above are just some of the things you should be pointing out to your design agency when you collaborate with them to make your website.
Take a look at the articles How to Build a Robust SEO Strategy for Website Designers, When Is It Ok to Use a Template?, and Boost Your Business Growth With These 5 Free Marketing Resources for more digital marketing tips.
Hey Jamie, I love how you think.
A user-friendly website will not only attract more visitors but will also help you in generating more revenue. It will be easier to convert clicks into sales, get advertisements for sidebars & engage the audience in a better way with an effective web design.
Cheers 🙂