How to Properly Design Your Website for SEO
Building a successful website requires more than simply delivering high-quality products, services, or content to users who have a genuine interest in learning more. Providing a positive and welcoming website user experience is essential to maximize your online reach while motivating your visitors to visit your website again. Knowing how to properly design your website for SEO, or search engine optimization, with a professional website designer is a way to ensure your site loads and appears exactly as you envision regardless of the browser or device a visitor uses to access it.
Mobile Friendly
Creating a website that is responsive and mobile-friendly is imperative, whether you are launching a personal blog, eCommerce store, or an online community for your target audience. Responsive website layouts load according to the type of device being utilized to browse your website. Due to the advent of smartphones and tablet devices, creating a mobile-friendly website is essential to prevent the alienation of an entire group of online users.
When your website design is responsive and mobile-friendly, allow users to access it via smartphones, different browsers, traditional computers, or any other handheld device they prefer. Because more users browse via mobile phones and tablets, a responsive and mobile-friendly layout design is a must. Working together with a professional web designer is one way to guarantee that your website loads properly and works on a variety of browsers and devices.
Page Speed
With millions of websites available today, users expect to find the information they seek within seconds. Ensuring your website’s page speed is optimized and loads as quickly as possible is one of the most important factors of designing a great website. When a website lags or does not load in its entirety, you run the risk of losing prospective customers or loyal fans.
Whether you are working on building a website of your own or if you have a professional web designer to assist, seek out a web hosting service provider that offers optimized hosting. If you intend to use CMS such as WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, search for a web host that specializes in hosting CMS solutions. WordPress-centric hosting guarantees faster loading times for individuals who intend to use a CMS to host their content, blog, and even their eCommerce store. Take the time to thoroughly research, review, and compare the web hosts you are interested in to find a solution that is affordable, reliable, and guaranteed to deliver fast loading, regardless of the size of your website or online community.
Usability
Whenever you visit a website for the first time, you likely immediately search for the navigation section to visit additional pages available. Ensuring your website is highly usable and entirely functional is imperative to prevent a high bounce rate on your website’s homepage.
A bounce rate is the percentage of users who leave a website after only viewing its homepage (or the landing page they were directed to via social media or another post you have shared). Bounce rates over 50% often mean that users are having difficulty navigating your website or trouble loading the layout you have implemented. If your website is not currently mobile-friendly or responsive, you are likely missing out on the opportunity to maintain users who genuinely want to learn more about your business and brand but simply cannot properly browse or navigate your website’s current design.
When choosing a design that is best for your website, consider the audience you want to reach. How do you intend to reach your users and prospective customers? What are the demographics of your intended audience and how are they most likely to browse your website (using mobile phones or traditional desktop computers)? What type of design does your top competition currently use on their own websites?
The more pages users browse (due to usability), the easier it is to boost your website’s SEO and your URL’s current rankings in top search engines such as Google, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo!, and Bing.
SSL
Invest in an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate for your website, especially if you prompt users for their email, password, or other personal and sensitive information. Using an SSL certificate is extremely important for larger and more robust websites, especially when launching an eCommerce section for your website.
SSL certificates help to add an additional layer of online protected and security for all of your visitors. With an SSL certificate, ensure the data that is entered and shared across your website is entirely encrypted and kept from potential hackers and thieves. SSL certificates also help to boost your website’s professional and secure reputation, which assists with an improvement of your site’s overall SEO in top search engines.
Sitemap
Creating a sitemap is one of the first steps to take as you build new pages and add content to your website. Sitemaps are not only beneficial for users who are interested in seeing the content you provide in one page, but they also help search engines to virtually “crawl” your website while properly organizing links and directories. Using a sitemap is necessary to keep content labeled correctly within search results while boosting your website’s overall SEO each time relevant content and posts are searched for by users.
Site Structure
Consider the overall structure of your website and how it appears to all types of users who access it. If your website does not have any structure to it, it becomes increasingly difficult to retain users while promoting the content you share. A clearly defined navigation area is necessary to keep users on your website without causing them to lose interest in your business and brand.
Work together with a professional web designer to develop a site structure that works for your website based on the purpose of your website and how you want your brand to appeal to those who are new to your site and those who are loyal followers. A professional website designer is capable of providing valuable insight into the best ways to structure a website to better optimize your site’s URL for search engines while maintaining the ability to attract new users and prospective customers. With a professional web designer, showcase your navigation properly while implementing your logo and other graphic elements that appear professional, modern, and mobile-friendly.
Image Optimization
Optimizing the images you upload and share on your website is another element of ensuring your site is ready for today’s top search engines. When you use images and animations that have not been resized or optimized, search engines are less likely to pick them up as they may have difficulty if you are using larger image sizes. With proper image optimization, increase your online visibility within search engines while also drastically improving the overall loading speed of your website to your visitors and prospective customers. Optimized images, animations, and video media make it much easier for users to browse your website efficiently without experiencing lag or timing out. The slower a website loads or the more images that fail to load and appear, the more likely you are to miss out on a potential opportunity of gaining a new follower, fan, or loyal customers.
Building an SEO friendly website with the help of a professional website designer is a way to drastically improve the website user experience you provide to your visitors and prospective customers or followers. With an understanding of how to properly build an SEO friendly website, feel confident in having the ability to attract the intended audience and demographic you intend to reach.
