Web Design and SEO: 10 Factors to Optimize for Top Rankings

Intro

Ranking well in the Google search is what each and every company and business strives for. A way to reach that goal is by optimizing the website. To draw more traffic to your website, you must be attentive to brand awareness. For this, you will need some basic knowledge of SEO.

A severe part of your website traffic depends on the search interrogation, and here is where search engine optimization is vital. If your company has a website, you must know where your traffic comes from. If customers have to Google you, you will need some search engine optimization done.

Gone are the days of waiting several minutes for websites to load. Now that many of us have access to high-speed internet connections – not just at home but everywhere we go – there's no more excuse for slow websites. Internet users expect web pages to load in less than three seconds. If you don't meet this expectation, you're losing a lot of website traffic and, as a result, your revenue.

Besides, isn't it obvious that if the clients don't know about you, how will you conduct a business? The search engine is what keeps people aware of what they are Googling.

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What is SEO web design?

Designing and developing websites that optimize their search engine is what SEO web design is. Mobile-driven experience, explicative URLs, and quick load times: these are SEO best proceedings. Search engines can detect a company's website by executing SEO website design: companies make this process easy for search engines. This makes search-engine for companies and contributes to the development of websites.

It is essential to acknowledge that a beautifully designed website is useless if no one checks it. And vice versa works the same: if you have a top-ranking website that is designed in a poor and uninteresting or incomprehensible way, visitors will leave it and not consider it anymore. On the other hand, if you use marketplaces to sell, consider following some Etsy SEO tips that are more specific. No wonder web designers are the most trending specialists nowadays, and the specialty of a web designer is one of the highest-paid and in-demand jobs. All because the companies and businesses need a digital page of their products and services to help them succeed.

Google and other search browsers drag each page on the website easily with a search engine-friendly website. They can also propose content and note it in their database. And just like that, web visitors and web rankings rise to this search-engine optimization method by using rank tracking tools. But not to forget that SEO is managed by copywriters, designers, and developers. These people have to work in a team to build an SEO website.

How are SEO and web design-related?

Many people would wonder for several minutes about the relationship between SEO and web design. But the relationship between these two is more effortless than many people think.

Web design is all about the visuals and strategies of the website, while SEO provides the "popularity" and visibility of the site. A successful website is one that suggests to its traffic what they want. So, if you think that SEO and website design are not connected to each other, you are wrong. Some entrepreneurs are of the opinion that an excellent website design can compensate for lousy SEO or, on the contrary, which means that these two can compensate for each other and fill in the blanks with each other. But the experience has proven that this is wrong. A good SEO draws traffic to the site of the company, and the professional design keeps them interested in it.

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These two are both essential to provide success for the website. But let us finally clarify what SEO in web design is? To allow the search engine to read pages across the site: is why having an SEO-friendly site is necessary in our times. Developing an SEO-drawn website needs you to have a strategic and architectural approach. The website is the face of your product or services in the digital space, so it says much about the quality of the product and service you deliver or sell, so elaborating on a perfect website is essential.

If the site is engaged in e-commerce, it needs to increase sales. If this is a blog, it needs more traffic, subscribers, and discussions in the comments. A service-oriented business site needs more hits and as much traffic as possible generated by the site's operation. This will help with business development and sales growth for the long-term.

If a web designer wants his clients to be happy and wants to continue to be approached, he must be as interested in meeting the business goals of the site as in its visual appeal. The traffic attracted to the site from search engines helps in achieving the desired business goals, no matter what type of site is being developed.

Often web designers who do not provide SEO services are hired. The business itself expects something different from the site, like a powerful pulse in development, in spite of the fact that the main criteria for a client when estimating a website designer is the visual component of the site he is working on and aesthetics. Sales need to be increased if the site is engaged in e-commerce. In this article, you can read about some factors that will help you increase the ranking of your company.

1. Discuss the topic of search engine optimization with customers

Discussing the topic of search engine optimization with customers is helpful for several reasons:

1. If a client has inadequate expectations from a web designer in terms of getting a site to the top of the search results, he needs to know about the basics of SEO and the role of a web designer in this process;

2. The web designer and the client should work closely together to define the target keywords and how the site should be optimized. For this process, such tools as keyword finders are usually used. It is imperative to involve clients in the process of defining search queries because clients always know much more information about their business and their clients than a designer.

For this process, you can conduct a customer success survey to see what they’re interested in and what they expect.

2. Web design

The first impression of your business will be your website design, as mentioned earlier. Sites that are designed in a luxurious style are difficult to read, and customers leave these kinds of sites very fast. Leading companies hire the best web designers and organize effective employee onboarding and training to make it comfortable for them to work in their company.

Search engines are smart technologies, but they are still not human beings; they are software. If your site is too tricky to use, the search engine finds it hard to examine your site's content properly, and in the end, the notation would be inefficient and subsequently result in a low rating. Website design is part of your branding as well because you can integrate brand guidelines here. Later, you can use these guidelines for a branded T-shirt design for employees and other strategies.

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The page should have 10% keyword density, according to some, but there are many opinions from different SEO specialists. Keyword density should be 5%, and others consider that the percentage should be 20%. Summing up, 10% is the final number, the average.

3. Working with keywords

The web designer can implement some actions by finding out which phrases are mainly utilized by people who are looking for information on this topic and what other keywords and queries they use if the client has not determined (or is not sure of the correct choice) which keywords and questions will be targeted.

If the web designer does a little analysis on the possible use of keywords, it will be great, even if the client has already decided on the potential use of keywords. There are other keywords and phrases that clients may not select but are better in terms of search frequency or competition. If keywords are chosen by the client without applying any analysis, it will be beneficial to show the comparative client research of the stages of competition of the keywords that he has chosen and for the similar phrases.

4. Minimize page load time

Page load time is very important for website users. In addition, in recent months, Google has begun to emphasize that load time will significantly affect search results. Minimizing page load time is a topic that could take a separate article to cover, but we will focus only on a few basic points. Objects such as images, audio, and video, database queries - increase the page load time. On the other hand, you also need to focus on video protection and manage your rights as a creator.

In general, the Internet connection speed of most users has increased significantly in recent years, so heavier pages and slow page loading are no longer such a big annoyance for most users. However, it is still handy to optimize files and use tools like "Y Slow" to determine what else can be optimized.

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5. Consider page titles with the client to optimize them.

One of the easiest ways to improve your site's search engine rankings is to look at the filenames. Before writing this guide, we did a lot of research on filenames and found that search engines like Google place too much importance on filenames. You have to think about what you want to put on your web page and then give it the appropriate filename for that page. SEO specialists can use such tools as Zoom or Zoom alternatives to discuss this with content writers.

Just try to put any keyword into Google search engines, and you will find the file names highlighted with the keyword you have given. It is shown that the file name must have the appropriate keywords.

6. Mobile SEO

Millions of users these days access the web using Android, iOS, or Windows smartphones. Mobile phones are with us practically always, unlike computers. Therefore, it has become imperative for websites to adapt to this changing environment and make the right changes in website design to attract more audiences. The desktop version of a site can be difficult to view and use on a mobile device. The version that is not mobile-friendly or adaptable requires the user to click or zoom in order to read the content.

Users find this a frustrating experience and are likely to leave the site. In contrast, an accessible mobile version is readable and immediately usable. A recent Google update makes it mandatory for a website to be mobile responsive in order to be effective in phone search engines. Keep in mind that a website that is not responsive will not have any impact on regular search engines.

For a website to be suitable for mobile services of different screen sizes and have low bandwidth, web designers create mobile versions of the company's websites and make them SEO-friendly. Extra care is needed when creating this kind of website for mobile devices, besides implying all the SEO rules that are implemented to a website created for a computer screen.

7. Use the correct link text

The use of keywords and phrases in the link text allows search engines to determine the topic of the page that the link refers to. You should avoid using "click here" text and use text with keywords for optimization purposes.

A crucial fact is the text of the link (the area of any link, which is clickable): be it an external or internal link. We are only talking about internal links because only the designer can clearly control them. Ideally, the link text should correspond to the key phrases or at least contain them in the text.

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8. Clean code

The site, which is open to search engines, basically requires a clean code that makes it easier for search engines to note pages. You can't expect a good position in the SERPs by separating page content from markup; a CSS-based page layout makes HTML much cleaner. You can consider using Ranktracker, which is the best SERP-checker tool and can rate your results meanwhile.

9. Place important information as high as possible.

The leading information on the page should be located as high as possible in the page's HTML code. Usually, in the page's HTML code, the information in the header comes first. It is crucial to ensure that the primary information is found above the info in the sidebar. Even if the page's sidebar is located to the left of the main data, you need to ensure that the primary information is located in the HTML code of the page above, then the sidebar code, which is easily implemented with CSS.

The location of the preliminary report at the top of the page code leads to a significant increase in the speed of finding it by search engines and a decrease in the time spent on its recognition. The information in the header comes first in the page's HTML code.

10. Alt text with images

All the text describing images and photos must be included on the page. Being usable and accessible are the two primary purposes of alt text. For instance, various users with health problems use alt text by different screen readers. Correct alt text gives you the chance to find out about the image without seeing it. Using SEO keywords and phrases as alt for SEO purposes will provide a slight advantage in search results.

Conclusion

There are numbers of factors that a designer can and has to consider when creating a website that is open to search engine optimization, and design is only a tiny part of the SEO process. The client often has an overestimated expectation of the web designer's information, etc., and the designer must enter into a dialogue with him. The designer must first enter into a conversation with the client before developing a page linking system and adding optimized information. In a competitive environment, it is vital for the designer to explain the main factors that affect the position of the web page in the search results and tell him what needs to be done to make the site top.

Taking into account that PS algorithms are constantly being improved and new updates are regularly released, it is necessary to make every effort for the successful ranking of the resource. Showing users in the search results the best match to their questions is the target of SEO. It is crucial to consider the trends in the search engine optimization world and be aware of the channels, promotion methods, and tools that are trending and the ones that are losing their relevance: this is necessary to higher the rank of an Internet resource and meet the expectations of customers and potential customers.