The goal of both web design and SEO is to provide a positive user experience. And these two ideas are inextricably linked. While one may be concerned with your site's appearance and the other with its ranking in search engine results pages, they both strive to create a site that provides visitors with the information they require. Simply put, Google ranks websites because its goal is to provide its users with the best and most relevant content. The quality of your website's design will influence Google's ranking in various ways.
For instance, Google will rank your website higher if it is intuitive and responsive, and web design determines both of these factors. Therefore, if you wish to know a bit more about how web design and SEO work together, keep reading.
Web Design and SEO Work Together to Improve User Experience
If you want to rank high on Google search results, your website must be SEO-optimized and user-friendly. Google has modified its criteria such that variables relating to user experience now weigh into your results. Some of the main UX factors that are going to influence your ranking are:
• Bounce rate
• Time-on-page
• Content quality
• Page load times
These are just a few factors that Google bots consider when ranking your website. However, prioritizing SEO will ensure that your website functions properly and is easy to navigate for visitors. We will now cover specific aspects of web design that will make SEO much more effortless.
Visual Appeal Can Influence SEO
If you put a lot of focus on the visual appeal of your website while creating it, it will go a long way towards making the user experience positive. Although visual appeal alone will not directly impact your website's ranking, UX is one of the most critical markers for SEO. Therefore, you can expect more visitors if you create a visually appealing website. Moreover, if your website is visually appealing, you can anticipate visitors spending more time on it. All of these factors create a positive feedback loop that will increase your website's Google ranking and, as a result, increase your website's general traffic.
Web Design Determines Readability
As is typically the case in the realm of SEO, content is king. The content you provide is the primary factor that will bring traffic to your website and ensure that it remains there. But, you must ensure that how you present that content is suitable. Therefore, your website design must make it simple for visitors to take that content in. To do this, you must examine the structure, font type, font color, and font size of your textual material. This is important to do because it is the only way to ensure that your visitors enjoy reading, watching, or browsing your content.
Another aspect of readability that will influence your ranking is the ease of navigation. Your website navigation must be simple and intuitive. Check that your top and side navigation menus and dropdown menus work correctly. Also, check that the links in your navigation menus are structured logically. Easy navigation will improve the user experience and encourage them to explore more pages on your website. Therefore, readability is an excellent place to start if you are thinking about improving your SEO through web design.
Page Speed Is Critical
When pages take too long to load, it is often a result of a design flaw. As you probably know, most people don't wait for a page to load for longer than 2 seconds. If it takes too long for the content to appear on the screen or navigating between pages is cumbersome, people will go elsewhere to find what they are looking for. Furthermore, according to experts from digitaldot.us, page speed is also one of the most important metrics that Google uses when ranking websites.
This means that making sure that all of your pages load quickly needs to be a priority. If Google finds that your page takes too long to load, they will move your website down in the search results. If you want to know how well your website is performing, there are numerous tools and plugins available that will measure your page speed.
Your Website Design Needs to Be Mobile-Friendly
For almost seven years now, Google has been giving mobile website traffic precedence over desktop traffic. As a result, having a mobile-friendly version of your website is essential if you want to achieve the highest possible Google ranking. Moreover, search engine rankings may suffer due to a website that is not responsive to various screen sizes or takes a long time to load on a smartphone.
You should also take into account the fact that more people than ever before are accessing the Internet via mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. If you don't account for this in your website design, you risk alienating a large portion of your audience. The result is that your company will miss out on many potential customers and revenue, which is exactly the opposite of what you want.
Conclusion
Now that we've covered how web design and SEO work together, you can see how much overlap there is between these two concepts. If possible, you should consider both of them when developing your website.
This is because once you build a website, it may be challenging to rebuild some of the elements that are not SEO friendly. However, even if you discover that your website has some design flaws, it is not the end of the world. Knowing is half the battle. As a result, if you discover any design flaws preventing you from maximizing your SEO potential, seek assistance as soon as possible, and you may be able to fix it.
Meta description: If you are looking for a way to increase traffic to your website, here is how web design and SEO work together.
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