Do you know how to design a website that guarantees the best SEO results?
Always keep in mind that backlinks and good content are important but there’s more to on-site SEO than just those two tasks. You have to evaluate your site’s whole design and behind-the-scenes coding to ensure Google’s crawlers like what they see.
It’s okay if you don’t where to start. If you’re new to online marketing and SEO, this can all seem quite daunting. To help you get a firm foot forward, here are a few crucial steps to design a site Google’s SEO will love:
Learn How to Design a Website Google’s SEO Will Love
On-site SEO isn’t something you can fix in a day.
If your page is suffering from poor SEO decisions, you may have to overhaul the whole website from scratch. This is why it is important to check the following tips before ever launching your site to make sure you optimised it as much as possible for better organic search results.
It all starts by making sure your pages load in the snap of a finger.
Faster Website
One of the most important tips on how to design a website that’s SEO-friendly is to keep your site fast.
A lot of companies focus too much on a beautiful design. Adding too many images, Flash content, and complex design choices can make a site look pretty but it also makes the site slow. This is a major problem for people viewing on desktop computers but it’s even worse on the mobile side.
Research from Google shows 53% of mobile users will abandon a site if it takes longer than over 3 seconds to load.
How does this affect SEO? If people keep abandoning your page, your bounce rate increases. Google’s algorithms penalise sites with a high bounce rate since it means user experience is at an all-time low and people don’t find your pages useful.
Shorter, Optimised URLs
If your site’s URLs cough up a garbled mess of numbers and characters then it means you’re not optimising them properly.
Focus on using short, optimised URLs that help search engine crawlers and users alike to understand which page they are. Your URLs should make navigation an easier task. To further optimise URLs, make sure they use strong, short keywords that are relevant to the page content.
SEO-Friendly Images
The goal is to compress images so that their file size shrinks but picture quality remains stable and beautiful. You can use programs like Photoshop’s “Save for Web” option or tools like Smush It, W2E, and Kraken.
Doing this ensures your pages load quickly but you still get to showcase gorgeous photographs in full HD quality.
Don’t stop there, however. Always make it a point to edit the ALT tag for the images and ensure that they carry the right keywords relevant to the image.
Remember that search engine crawlers don’t see the image when they search a website. They won’t know how it relates to the content on your page. In order to help Google’s crawlers make a connection, use ALT tags that relate what the image is and what its purpose is.
Improved Site Indexing
Always keep in mind that search engine crawlers don’t understand Flash content, images, or videos. They don’t understand how a specific photo relates to the rest of the content on your site.
This is why a professional web designer has to focus on using text-based content behind the scenes. This is why all the ALT tags for the images and videos are important. You also have to make sure to edit the data for the page title, GIFs and links to make sure search engine crawlers see them and understand what they are.
Always run your site on a tool like Browseo to know what it looks like in the eyes of a search engine. Your page might look amazing for users but it could be bare and empty for search engine crawlers.
In relation to this, make a sitemap that helps crawlers find their way around your site. Like a real map, it keeps pages and content in order, speeding up the indexing process.
Schema Markup
Structured data markup, which you can amplify using the Schema.org project, helps categorise all your pages and content. It’s like putting behind-the-scenes labels on everything your site to help crawlers go through the pages and index everything.
Go a few years back and structured data markup was only a thing big businesses did to help them sort through the back-end of a website. Nowadays, it’s a major SEO trend every site should utilise to make their pages SEO-friendly.
It’s not even that hard to do, meaning you won’t have to take too much time out of your day to add the extra HTML code to get this done.
Better Site Navigation
Do all the internal links work? Do all the pages load up properly instead of running into an Error 502? Can users and search engine crawlers easily find the pathway from the homepage to the contact page or to a specific blog post?
You need to focus on good site navigation and this is two-fold: you have to first make sure that users can find their way around your website without going back too many times and you have to make sure that crawlers can do the same, behind the scenes.
This means ensuring tab menus don’t branch out until they cover the whole screen and making sure the words are both optimized keywords for SEO purposes. Limit menu items to only 7 at a time and always test navigation on both desktop and mobile devices.
Responsive Website Design
Did you know more than 2.53 billion people use a smartphone today? It won’t be long before the vast majority surf the Internet on their mobile devices more than they do on a regular desktop computer. Your site, to be SEO-friendly, has to cater to both crowds. You need a site that can work for traditional computers but is also mobile-friendly.
This is why a responsive website design is an essential factor to consider.
Responsive designs rearrange how a page appears depending on the device used. This guarantees someone viewing your site on the tiny screen of a phone can still access everything without too much pinching and scrolling. At the same time, nothing gets lost for people on a wide, desktop monitor.
Discover More Web Designing Tips Today
Learning how to design a website that search engines love takes time and effort but with these tips, you can get a head start. With the right design, you’ll see an increase in traffic, better lead generation, and more conversions.
Don’t stop there. Contact us today and we can help you discover more ways to improve on-site SEO and your backlinking profile.
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