An Approach to Keep SEO in Mind While Designing

SEO and website design are two sides of the same coin — and both play an essential part in drafting an SEO-optimized website.

Apart from creating beautiful graphics, to monetize a website for better SEO website designers need to have a better and more in-depth understanding of the business aspects of a website. These insights and implementations can positively impact the entire process of designing.

Are you a small business owner?

If yes, then you desperately need to become visible in organic search results. And there are some critical points you should know while planning to design a website that may profoundly affect your SEO efforts.

Nowadays, creating a highly optimized website is probably the most significant task small business owners have to grapple with.

9 SEO Perspectives for Website Design

In this article, we will discuss the basics of SEO for web design, along with nine useful perspectives to keep in mind while designing a website. Whether you’re building a new website or revamping an existing one, these valuable tips will help you to better optimize your site for search engines.

1. Content Management System

Good content helps you boost your site’s SEO. A content management system helps you manage that content and organize visuals, links, and data on the website. To select a CMS, you should first ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the purpose of your website?
• What does your website do for you?
• What will be your website’s business objective?
• Is your website the extent of your dealings with the audience?
• How is your site going to support your business?

After being clear on the needs of your website, selecting a proper CMS will enable you to play with your creativity more effectively.

2. User-Friendly Navigation

Many visitors may just leave a website and never came back because it’s too difficult for them to navigate it. To resolve this issue, be a visitor of your own website from a completely new server and conduct an in-depth analysis, then review your experience.

This approach will help you increase the efficiency of your website’s navigation and improve its appeal for visitors.

3. Responsive Design

Statistics from the last three decades suggests that the usage of mobile devices to search online has increased exponentially. A significant number of mobile users (up to 85%) prefers to search for local services and products as well as international suppliers on their mobile devices. The percentage is growing even more thanks to the introduction of artificial intelligence technology.

As a result, creating a responsive website will undoubtedly increase the chance of your website being accessible from mobile devices like laptops, tablets, and iPads.

4. Appealing Theme and Visuals

Your website’s presentation affects conversions. A good color scheme with appropriate visuals can make your website attractive and encourages visitors to stick around for a long time. It also reduces your bounce rate. In short, a good theme is essential for your website’s success.

WordPress offers a variety of visuals to choose from. Pick a theme that reflects your company and brand and keeps it consistent from the beginning. The layout and patterns should complement the development of your color scheme and site navigation.

An appealing color scheme can be used to attract and keep visitors, convey messages, and enhance the beauty of your site.

5. Short Loading Times

Slow loading speed and long loading time of a website can be a nightmare for visitors. When people are looking for information, they need to get it quick. If your website is too slow, they’ll go somewhere else to find that information.

If you’re not sure how fast your website is, run a free website speed test. Then follow some guidelines to help you decrease loading time and make sure your website is user-friendly in terms of user experience.

A periodic loading time or speed test evaluation of your website will help you retain visitors by providing them with a smooth user experience.

6. The essence of the Brand

Branding is essential to all kinds of businesses. To create brand awareness, your website should convey the essence of your brand to your target audience. After all, that is the actual purpose of creating a website in the first place.

Inbound marketing is the best way to engage your customers with your brand. For this, your website should reflect your brand and use branding elements prominently. For example, your logo, tagline, slogan, and promotional deals should be visible on all pages on the site. It is also essential that a visitor can identify your website along with your brand from your on-site elements even if they are off-site. These elements may include images, typography, color schemes, and most importantly, your identity.

Use the same elements on every promotional item you have, including business cards, letterhead, packing material, invoices, advertising material, and others to maintain the consistency of your brand.

7. Social Media Integration

We live in a world of digital marketing, where the power of social media cannot be denied. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Medium, Google Plus, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and other such social media platforms can provide your businesses with opportunities to grow significantly.

To sway the power of social media, you should maximize your exposure in those channels and integrate them on your website. Here are some ideas on how to make your integration effective:

• Make sure you display social media buttons on the header, footer, or somewhere else on every page.
• Make them simple and easy to use for your visitors.
• Create buttons that open in a new window when clicked, without closing your webpage.
• Maintain your presence on social media platforms by regularly updating your accounts with relevant posts.

8. Customer Testimonials

Testimonials are the best form of word of mouth marketing. Customer reviews help you gain new customers and build the trust of your existing customers organically. Also, it promotes your business without any promotional costs.

Your customers’ testimonials can be used to demonstrate your product features, company services, customer care, and your commitment to quality and dedication to your work. If you have a loyal prospect that advocates your company products and services, get in touch with them and ask for their on-site comments. If they do give a testimonial, then make the most of it. The advantage of real-time reviews is that they are genuine and cover a detailed aspect of their psychology — you can directly show how your product/service is helping real people with real problems.

Make sure any testimonial is well-polished, professional and mistake-free. This will add authenticity to your content. Use Grammarly, Academist Help or any other language tool to double-check the content before posting it on your site.

9. Comprehensive HTML Sitemap and Internal linking

A comprehensive HTML sitemap with well-organized internal linking is considered highly useful from an SEO perspective. HTML sitemap allows visitors to find any page of your site.

Internal linking represents an efficient way to distribute your links among your site pages while interconnecting them in a sleek style. All pages of a website are linked to a HTML sitemap that links them back to internal links. Adding an HTML sitemap to the footer section can help establish a sound linking system for your visitors.

Take-Home Message

As mentioned above, SEO and website design are two moving parts of the same entity. Therefore, a beautiful design with key SEO elements is a proven formula to create a powerful website. A good website designer should understand that they are the first step on setting the SEO fireball rolling for your business.

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**About the Author: Stella Lincoln is a professional SEO analyst at Crowd Writer. She has contributed to the success of many projects in both large and medium-sized industries in the last two decades. She currently works as a writing contributor at Australian Master.