The Internet has become incredibly important in the modern world and SEO helps web pages in a number of different ways. Developing good SEO on a website is one of the most important things to do in order to get success. But what exactly is SEO and how can it be used effectively?
Popular websites that do well online often have more to them than a good quality sense of search engine optimization within their overall design.
They have often gone to where they are by being mentioned throughout the web on websites that have lifted their SERP and have linked them in different ways to other websites. It is not often that one can achieve this sort of networking on the website without some sort of method in place and you would have to be very lucky for it to happen on yours. This is why SEO can do wonders for websites if it is implemented properly.
What a designer should really focus on is getting a balance between good web design and well implemented search engine optimization within their site. When this is achieved, a website will really begin to shine and will start attracting more and more users.
Why you should care
It is not just the well trained online marketers who should be using SEO. You should always make sure that you carry out good SEO on your web content as this is the only way people are going to find the site if they do not have a direct link to your webpage. A search engine can be very powerful and can help many people find your site, so long as you have implemented SEO correctly.
However, SEO is a skill in itself and can be sold as a separate skill on top of other important skills within the world of web design. If you understand a search engine correctly and the algorithms that it uses when notifying webpages, you can create SEO that connects well to those algorithms. When a SEO expert is hired they usually work within two factors, this includes on-site as well as offsite.
On-site SEO is all the things that you have control of on the website, such as internal linking and target keywords. You can also develop the site structure and HTML. Offsite SEO on the other hand are the elements that are out of the designers control, such as the amount of back links that you obtain and the amount of people that link to your site because they need the content you have.
The key is to find a balance between a well-designed site and one that has content that is SEO optimized. If you do this correctly you will then begin to receive back links from individuals.
Designing SEO friendly websites
It can be difficult to find a balance between well-designed websites and those that have good SEO optimization. This is a problem, as a well-designed site is useless if it cannot be found.
Web designers may find it difficult to develop pages that work well with SEO optimization and search engines. It is for this reason why many web design designers give up on the SEO skills that are needed for the search engines.
Keep a good structure
The structure of the website is incredibly important when developing a strong SEO throughout the site and it is important to link the webpages together in a way so that search engines can find them effectively.
A search engine will prioritize your site depending on how well it is set up in terms of the webpages and how they are linked with one another. This will determine whether you get a high ranking page within the search engine. When an individual searches for the keywords that is used on the SCO within your site, a well-designed set of pages that is easy for the search engines to crawl through will be crucial.
Use internal links
Make sure that you don’t confuse the search engine by making it search through every page on your site and instead link your pages together to one main page which the search engine can find.
You can then use this page to promote the most important pages on your website via links. Try and implement these links in a fluid way by integrating them within the text content. This is more effective than creating links out of words that say ‘click here’.
Pay attention to navigation
When you are designing the website try and think about navigation and make it as easy as possible for the user.
Creating a website that is shallow in design will help a lot and using less content that is more effective is the key for this technique. Make the content simple but effective and easy to use.
Good content is always effective
One of the most important things to remember is that quality content is key. Include static content on your website as well as content that is updated over time, such as with blogs.
Make the website fast
The time in which it takes a page to load is also an important factor and will determine how well the search engine finds a website. Google also agree with this and have expressed that a websites page ranking is improved with the speed in which the page loads.
Google also has a program called page speed insights and this will show you how quickly your page loads and will outline the problems with it. You can also find tips on how to speed up your website with this program. General things to remember when speeding up a website is to compress images, compact the Javascript code within the website and try and keep anything else as compact as possible.
Have a good information architecture
When you’re developing your website and the information architecture within that site you should already be thinking about how to implement SEO within it. Don’t believe the SEO objectives until after the information has been developed on the website.
Have a set of keywords which you can use throughout the site and which will stick in people’s minds when they visit the site. Also use these keywords so that people can find you when they search for those words within search engines. The trick is to implement these keywords in a smooth and natural way within the content.
Use just the web fonts that are necessary
When designing your website it is important to make it as fast as possible for the end user. It is for this reason why you should use the least amount of web fonts as possible. Web fonts are usually around 50 K and will increase the loading time of the page, depending on how many are used.
Mistakes to avoid
Many web designers choose to use fancy features such as Ajax. This can be a problem for navigation and makes SEO implementation difficult. This is because things like Ajax content is something that loads dynamically and does not sit well with the spider like structure of what search engines like.
When designing the site you should focus on the details, such as the title tags on each site. Each one should be unique and should not be too similar. Many designers make this mistake and this is bad for the search engine when it needs to look for that unique content on each page of your site.
Another important thing to remember is not to overfill your title tags with the same keyword several times. This will not make the search engines find your site any quicker and will also be regarded as spam, which is a bad thing to happen to any website.
Ending thoughts
When it comes to SEO implementation, The main goal of a successful website is to be positioned highly in Google. If you can effectively achieve this when you design your site you will experience online marketing in a very powerful way.
One of the reasons why this is powerful is because it is very cheap and will bring you many customers for free. By properly maintaining the SEO on your website, you will begin to drive traffic in a way that is consistent, so long as the SEO is continually optimized effectively.
By staying in control of the keywords that you use within your SEO optimization, you also have control over the visitors you bring to the site. This will then make it easier for your visitors when they visit the webpage and allow them to find what they need quickly and easily.
