5 Specific Strategies to Design a Website with SEO in Mind

When designing a website, you should keep Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in mind. If you take care of the key aspects of SEO when designing the website, you will need to do less work in the future because rebuilding a website to make it SEO-optimized is a much more difficult and time-consuming task. However, if you have an already established website and want to increase your rankings in search engines, you will also appreciate this article. The importance of SEO is hard to overestimate, especially when it comes to business. In the modern world, SEO optimization is not an option but a necessity that is crucial for your success.

To build an SEO-optimized website, you should understand what SEO is, and how your business’ website can benefit from it. The main purpose of SEO is to bring more visitors to your website. However, there are more than 1.2 billion websites on the internet so the competition is extremely intense. The higher your rankings, the more people will likely visit your website. Higher rankings also mean that these visitors will more likely turn into customers and purchase your products or services.

Your position in search results depends on numerous factors, such as keywords, usability, the relevance of your links, conversions, traffic, etc. However, some of these factors are more important than others. Therefore, it makes sense to take care of these things while planning and designing the website.

How Web Design Impacts Rankings and Organic Clicks

The first thing that affects your positions in search engines is HTML title tags so we recommend that you optimize them strategically. You won’t improve your rankings if you just use as many keywords as you can. Instead, make your tags short (50-60 characters). Add your keywords at the beginning of a tag and use dividers to separate different elements, such as categories and locations.

Another important factor is meta descriptions because they contain information on what your page is about. If you want people to click on your page, a description must be informative, well-written, and concise. Include keywords if necessary but make sure that they don’t damage the overall readability of meta descriptions.

Heading tags help in creating a proper page structure and organizing information. Thus, they can help search engines index and categorize your content. You can increase the effectiveness of your SEO efforts if you use heading tags properly. H1 is the main header on a page. Use it only once and optimize it for your main keywords.

Poor web design is a common reason why visitors don’t engage with a product. They visit a web page, and then they return to the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), looking for another answer. This is called “pogo sticking.” Such actions tell search engines that users’ requests were not satisfied, and your website is not the right solution. Google’s RankBrain monitors such behavioral signals, optimizing the search algorithm and making your rankings drop.

Strategies to Design a Website with SEO in Mind

1. Make your website mobile friendly

The layout does matter. Many users may spend just a few seconds on your landing page so their first impression is very important. Mobile devices account for about 60% of the overall internet traffic, and this figure is growing constantly. Thus, if your design isn’t responsive, it will be a disadvantage that will impact your SEO rankings. People will quickly leave a website that doesn’t fit their screen size, increasing your bounce rate. Most platforms, including WordPress, allow you to adjust your design to different screen sizes. You can also use Google’s mobile-friendly test to make sure that your pages look right. In addition, we recommend that you make your emails mobile-friendly, as well.

2. Create an effective information architecture

Your information architecture is crucial because it determines the way search engines find your content and recommend it. If search bots cannot access your content easily, it won’t get high rankings. Information architecture is also important for humans, as well, because they need to quickly find what they are looking for.

We recommend that you stick with a flat site structure so that any page can be accessed in no more than four clicks from the homepage.

3. Optimize for voice search

Personal assistants are extremely popular, and voice search is one of the hottest online trends, so you shouldn’t lag behind. According to forecasts, voice search will account for 50% of all searches by 2020. When designing your website for mobile searches, keep in mind that voice users use different phrases.

For example, text searchers might type “Johnny Depp movies,” while voice searchers would ask “What movies has Johnny Depp starred in?” When writing your content, use questions so that voice searchers can discover your pages. Voice searchers also like to ask follow-up questions so your SEO strategy will certainly benefit from an informative FAQ section.

4. Improve machine readability

Your website may use such technologies as Flash, Javascript, Ajax, etc. Robots often have hard times understanding these elements so you have to structurize data, marking up HTML to give more detailed information on your content.

There are standardized vocabularies, such as Schema.org and Microformats.org, which are supported by major search platforms, including Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Search engines will easily understand attributes and entities from these standardized lists.

5. Use long-tail keywords

Obviously, you should use the most popular keywords in your niche. However, don’t forget about long-tail keywords. Although this big group of keywords accounts for a relatively low number of searches, they are very important because they increase your authority, being able to attract a lot of traffic. In addition, the most popular keywords are also the most competitive, while long-tail keywords are not only useful but also cost-effective.

Conclusion

If you want your website to fulfill its purpose, you should optimize it for search engines. It’s important to understand how search engines work and to keep SEO in mind while designing your website because it’s much more difficult to rebuild a website for SEO purposes later.

Organize the information to make it more accessible for robots, keep in mind your keywords while creating the general structure, optimize your pages for voice search, and don’t forget to make your website mobile-friendly. Follow these tips and your website will get higher rankings, getting more traffic and so increasing your profits.