SEO-Focused Web Design from the Ground Up
“Are you laying down a swell foundation?”
Creating a website that excels in search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for driving traffic, generating leads, and increasing sales. However, many websites don’t take these considerations on at the start. Instead, they only do this later, once they realize that they need to. Creating unnecessary work and costs that could have been avoided if SEO was taken into account from the start. Sometime necessitating a full rebuild of the website if the issues are severe enough.
SEO-focused web design ensures that your site is optimized from the ground up, making it easier for search engines to index and rank your content. In this guide, we will explore the benefits of SEO-focused web design at every step.
Mobile-First Design: Because Your Glued to Your Phone
With mobile devices accounting for over 60% of all searches and growing, a mobile-first design approach is essential. Google wants to rank pages that are responsive, so ensuring your website is able to handle multiple screen sizes is paramount.
Use the same HTML code and URL for all devices, but adjust the layout based on the device’s screen size. Most modern content management platforms, such as WordPress allow for this and help to easily create responsive pages from the start. While there are other methods that you could use to serve mobile visitors, this is often the most straightforward for new and established websites.
To test this, check your Google Search Console for more reporting on how responsive your website is.
Website Speed: Because We’re Not on Dial Up Anymore
Fast page load times are a confirmed ranking factor by Google and are critical for reducing bounce rates and improving user experience.
To do this optimize Images, use modern formats like WebP to reduce file sizes by up to 34%.
Reduce HTTP Requests by minimizing the number of elements that need to be loaded.
Enable Browser Caching to store frequently accessed resources locally to speed up return visits.
To check your website speed, you can use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to verify, analyze, and optimize your site’s speed and Core Web Vitals.
Proper Website Structure: Because Messy Websites Confuse Users
An intuitive website structure enhances user experience and helps search engines better understand and index your content. Have content buckets that group related pages under broader categories. To do this use descriptive URLs that reflect the site’s hierarchy, but take care to no overdo it, longer paths not always better. Strike a balance between length for humans, and good folder structure for robots.
dogbreeds.com – Home Page
dogbreeds.com/terrier – Category Page
dogbreeds.com/terrier/yorkshire-terrier – Sub Category
dogbreeds.com/terrier/yorkshire-terrier/temperament – Individual Page
Finally, you may want to leave off file extensions from your URL’s. Should you ever have to change platforms or content management systems, this makes moving over easier
Internal Linking: Because You Want People to Find Your Pages
Internal links help distribute page authority throughout the site and aid in navigation for users and crawlers like Google Bot.
Keep navigational links easy to find, include these in the header, footer, or navigation bar. Placement will depend on your website’s purpose, but these should always be easy to find.
Contextual links for related content on your website or external links to expert websites should have appropriate anchor text that accurately reflects what you are linking to.
Have breadcrumbs to help users navigate back to previous pages. This is especially important for blogs and ecommerce websites.
To analyze your existing link structure, you can use tools like SEMRush or Screaming Frog to see a map of how your website links internally.
Indexability and Crawlability: Because Robots are Kind of Dumb
Ensuring that search engines can crawl and index your site is fundamental to SEO success. If Google can’t crawl and index your website then you will never rank. Don’t use excessive JavaScript or website designs that force large amounts of HTTP requests. Google Bot will only expend so much time crawling your website and you want the information to be as easily found and digested as possible.
To do this ensure every page is linked from at least one other page. Use “no Index” tags to exclude pages that shouldn’t be indexed. Finally, submit a Sitemap to Google Search Console to submit a sitemap.
Again, Google Search Console is an excellent tool to verify these things.
Page Design and Usability: Because You Want People to Stay
A well-designed page enhances user experience and meets Google’s page experience signals, impacting your SEO rankings. Structure your content properly with H1, H2, and other tags to lay out the content properly. Also minimize off-page elements like JavaScript and iframes. These make pages more difficult to crawl and understand.
Finally prioritize Above-the-Fold Content. Ensure valuable content is immediately visible without scrolling. Supporting content can be further down the page, but a visitor should know that they have found what they are looking for as quickly as possible.
Accessibility: Because The Web is For Everyone
Accessible design improves user experience for everyone, including those with disabilities, and indirectly benefits SEO.
To make your website more accessible, utilize descriptive alt text on images, useful for screen readers. Use colors that have high contrast and don’t blend into each other, especially text. Use legible fonts that are 16px or larger, no wingdings or overly stylized fonts.
Schema Markup: Also Because Robots are Dumb
Schema markup helps search engines understand your content better and can enhance your search results with rich snippets. We have a dedicated write up that covers Schema markup in more detail, but be sure to add it where ever possible. Ecommerce websites especially should be utilizing Schema Markup.
Example
“`
{
“@context”: “https://schema.org”,
“@type”: “Recipe”,
“name”: “Juicy Roasted Chicken”,
“image”: “https://example.com/photos/roasted-chicken.jpg”,
“description”: “A delicious roasted chicken recipe.”
}
“`
Images: Because Robots Can’t See (Yet)
Optimizing images for SEO can drive additional traffic from image searches.
Use descriptive file names that describe the image properly (e.g., `black-ford-bronco.jpg`). Again, provide descriptive text for each image with alt tags, and use small images.
Wrapping Up
SEO-focused web design is essential for ensuring your site ranks well in search engine results, provides an excellent user experience, and drives traffic, leads, and sales. By focusing on mobile-first design, website speed, structure, internal linking, indexability, page design and usability, accessibility, schema markup, and images, you can create a site that meets the needs of both users and search engines.
By following these guidelines and using the recommended tools, you can build a website that not only looks great but also performs exceptionally well in search engine rankings.
If you want help in designing your website for SEO, or with any aspect of your Digital Marketing Campaign, contact us and we’ll custom craft a solution for your individual needs.
