How does website design affect SEO?

As a business owner it is impossible to not be emotionally attached when starting out in the web design and SEO process. You need a designer who won’t say yes to your every request. You need a designer who understands your business and who can take on board your ideas. At the same time you need a designer who can tell you no, and explain why there is a better solution. Any good designer from the start of the project will be thinking about what the visitor to your site wants. What can you offer them that the other 10 people on page one of the search engines are not.

I hate to start on a negative, but web sites have a downfall. However effective your SEO efforts are, you will always miss that personal connection you get from face to face meetings. If you are sitting in front of a customer you have the ability to “sell” your product or service, answer their questions and tell them why your company can fulfill their needs better than your competitors could. You need to achieve this same level of trust through your site.

A simple design that is easily navigated is ideal. Remembering that a website needs to meet the needs of your customers and search engines makes it a tricky combination to succeed.

Here are some tips for a successful marriage of web design and SEO:

Your site must portray a clear persuasive message that portrays your products and services as being trustworthy.
Fill the gap your competitors have not. Why should someone buy from you?
Images used strategically should communicate the look and feel of your services.
Using internal linking to ensure you give the search engines every opportunity to find all the information you have presented.
Present your optimised text as close to the top of the source code, as search engines read pages from top to bottom.
Search engines can not read content that is presented in JavaScript and Flash, navigation should be HTML, allowing for anchor text and internal linking.
Adding a sitemap will allow the search engine spiders easy access to all the pages within your site.
You homepage is the most important page of your web site. Don’t use splash pages, search engines and visitors don’t like them, and it will have an adverse effect on your SERP.
Plan your site’s content before you build the navigation, ideally you should have a specific page for each of your services.
Ensure contact information is visible and easily accessible. Even and more so if you are an online shop. Trawling through a site looking for contact details is infuriating!

Planning a successful website takes time and consideration, the design and layout can make a huge difference in how well your site performs. A well built search engine friendly site makes visitors happy, search engines happy and in turn you happy. Try to take an outside perspective and listen to your designers advise, you will end up with a more successful site in the long term.

One Response to “How does website design affect SEO?”

web page design company Says:
March 15th, 2011
Even and more so if you are an online shop. Trawling through a site looking for contact details is infuriating!