SEO website design is designing a website with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). What does that mean exactly? There are many facets of design that make search engines rank sites higher than others. Each of these items can play a role in helping your page rank higher on search engines. They range from how a page is organized to its speed to the factors behind its coding. Let’s take a look at some specific factors and what can be done to optimize them for SEO.
General SEO Website Design Features
Forbes.com cites four tips to ensure website design and SEO is done right:
- Know your usability factors – Customer satisfaction is measured in usability. Don’t forget mobile usability.
- Design for content discoverability – Create intuitive architecture so search engines can crawl and index. Repair broken links.
- Plan for high-quality content – Modern SEO is all about quality content. Content that you are going to have should be planned before the design, so it’s not placed in as an afterthought.
- Be vigilant during a redesign – Be sure not to lose high-value content when redesigning. Often a search expert is left out of the redesign process.
Each of these categories encompasses specific things you can do to make your website shine in the eyes of SEO.
Specific Search Engine Optimisation Factors
Content
Engaging, relevant content including keywords early in the content, and lightly throughout, featuring natural writing. Use headings, paragraphs and links to add structure to your content. Also, Search engines like to see new content on web pages.
Navigation
Navigation on your site helps the user to find what they need and points them toward other pieces of the site that they may find interesting. Without good navigation, they may become lost, frustrated, and leave due to bad user experience. Navigation must be considered before you build the pieces of your site. It should be as intuitive as possible.
Organisation and Keywords
Map out site hierarchy and structure before adding keywords to pages. Do not duplicate a keyword in another page on your site or you will be competing with yourself for ranking on the same page.
Page URLs should be organized with a path that makes sense and has a context for users. It not only helps the search engines optimize the pages, but it serves a point in helping users understand the hierarchy of the filesystem.
Also, your site should be hosted on a domain that makes sense to the product or service you provide.
Page Information
Use heading tags like h1 to create structure and hierarchy on the page and document. The title tag that is used backstage can also influence SEO. Remember to put your keyword in the title, but also keep the title readable natural English as well.
Speed
Webpage users are impatient, and the speed of your page is important. Ensure your page is fast loading to capture their eyes before they click away. You can test your site, get a report of what you might do to speed things up from Google’s mobile-friendly test for mobile sites and Google’s pagespeed for regular resolutions.
Image Optimisation
Image optimization helps your chances of being discovered through image search results. You should keep the images relevant to your content and be sure to be descriptive in the alt text and filenames fields. Optimising the image’s file size enables it to improve load times without compromising its quality.
JavaScript/Flash
Search engines have issues indexing Flash and JavaScript. Don’t go overboard with these two on your site, especially if you are trying to make an SEO- friendly site.
Coding
Search engines like clean code. The site is indexed easier, and it could be an indication of its well-formed construction. Keeping the amount of code to a minimum to do the job is another plus for the search engines.
Resolutions
Today’s user has many different devices, and they may be viewing your content on a mobile phone, and iPad, or a desktop computer. Your SEO website design needs to work well at all these different resolutions and layouts. Mobile users may also be interacting with your site differently than desktop users, so your site should reflect that and provide a great user experience for them.
Conclusion
Search engine optimization is important to get your page to rank higher on search engine pages for your customers and users to find. A lot goes into tweaking SEO website design to find the optimal mix of factors, including the biggest, hottest thing that search engines are looking for: quality content.