Optimizing your website for search should be a major consideration during any website redesign project. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is crucial for enhancing your site’s visibility and attracting more organic traffic. With search algorithms constantly evolving, staying abreast of the latest SEO practices is essential to maintain and improve your website’s ranking over time. One critical component of this includes understanding what elements influence website design SEO.
Implementing these seven strategies effectively during a redesign will help align your website with best practices, make your site more discoverable to potential users, and create an improved overall user experience (UX).
1. Written Content
It’s critical to show the search engines you are relevant to the search query. You can do this in a variety of ways:
- Each page should have a minimum of 300 words of copy.
- Content should be split up into shorter paragraphs to make it scannable.
- H1, H2, and H3 headers should be used to separate blocks of text.
- Include SEO keywords naturally in titles, headers, and content.
- Don’t reuse the same meta description on multiple pages.
2. Images and Media
Images contribute to optimizing for search, so you need to make sure they are optimized so search engines pick them up. Alt-text is one way to ensure that people who can’t see the images (such as visually impaired people) still know what they are about. You should name each image with a descriptive title and, if it makes sense to do so, use keywords in the file name.
Image size also matters, so before posting, make sure to optimize your files. This likely involves compressing images ensure they are the highest quality possible without being too big of a file. Large files take a long time to load, which could cause your site to slow down. Speed is a critical aspect of UX and SEO.
3. Site Navigation
Make it easy for people to find what they need by simplifying your website navigation. Don’t bury your most popular products or services in a complicated menu hierarchy. The faster you can get your site visitors to the results, the happier they’re going to be. And that’s really the bottom line for your website design SEO.
4. Layout and Design
When designing your layout, keep it simple and intuitive for users to continue browsing. Keep it clean, simple, and easy to read. A few tips:
- Choose a web font that loads the same on all devices.
- Use no more than three or four colors for your site design scheme.
- Make sure the font color has good contrast against the background texture.
- Text should be big enough and spaced adequately so that it’s easy to read.
- Don’t clutter up your pages with busy design elements or unnecessary copy.
5. Mobile-Responsiveness
Having a mobile-responsive design is fundamental when creating a website for today’s consumers. This means your site will look and function the same whether viewed on a desktop, tablet, or mobile. Plus, it satisfies Google’s mobile-first index. Essentially, you’re ensuring any site visitor has a good experience no matter what device they’re using, and you’re telling Google you care about that.
6. Working Links
The existence of any broken links and 404 errors are not good for SEO. They signify a dead end and might be the last page your site visitor sees before they click away. However, you can’t always control what pages other sites have linked to, and sometimes a misspelled URL will result in a 404 error. Run a link report and fix anything that’s broken—including links to internal pages.
7. Periodic Site Audits
Use a site checker tool to review page load times, performance issues, security, and more. Your website is essentially a living document that changes as you add information. The more it changes, the more often you’ll need to keep tabs on its vitals to ensure overall SEO health.
Ultimately, investing in a well-designed, user-friendly website not only enhances your digital footprint but also sets the foundation for sustained business growth and customer satisfaction in the digital age. A good website design is critical to SEO, improves your search engine rank, and perhaps most importantly, helps you attract new customers and delight your existing ones.
Is your business website in need of a design refresh? Contact us and let’s talk about your project needs.
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