How Web Design Affects Your SEO Strategy?
Every business has to invest in appropriate SEO strategies to guarantee its success. SEO is abbreviated as Search Engine Optimization, which is an organic way to increase the performance of the website in the search engine results page.
Of the many SEO strategies, web design is the most crucial one that dictates the business’ future performance. Here are a few ways on how web design affects the website’s SEO:
SEO and Web Design
SEO trends are constantly evolving. In the past few years, web developers have adopted an integrated approach to SEO and web design. For instance, keywords have a crucial role to play in SEO; these same keywords are wisely integrated into title tags, meta descriptions etc. However, you must do a thorough research on the relevancy of the keyword before using it.
Bad SEO Is a Result of Bad Design
Your target audience may have landed on the website after following a particular keyword. However, they often do not engage with the content owing to the poor design of the website – mostly because it is difficult to read or it is excessively cluttered. This can reflect badly on your search engine ranks and this behaviour of the user signals the search engine that your business is not the appropriate answer for the related keyword. Hence, to keep ranks up, customer engagement and satisfaction is of high importance.
Web Page Load Speed
An average user waits for only 2 to 3 seconds before bouncing back to the search results page. If you haven’t already eliminated any speed inhibitors like large image files or flash content, then you must do so immediately. Speed may not be the primary criteria for the search engines to rank your website, but a poor speed performance will affect other performance metrics such as the bounce rate, click-through-rate, and lead to a dip in the ranks. You can get the speed of your website tested using the Page Speed Insights.
Layout and SEO
A clean, crisp layout helps increase the conversion rate. It encourages consumer engagement. The easier it is to find information on your website, the better your SERP rank will be. People usually do not like to navigate via the layers of pages to get to their answers and expect to find it on the first page of the website. Cluttered and haphazardly designed pages also find it difficult to keep viewers engaged. Ideally, the content of your website must be ‘above the fold’, which is the upper half of the page and is visible to the eyes without scrolling. Free space and proper image spacing contribute more than expected to the overall experience and make the interface a lot more elegant and eye-pleasing.
Conclusion
SEO and web design have a symbiotic relationship and must be looked at together. The better the web design, the better the SEO performance.