5 Web Design Rules for Better SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of helping a website be found. Kevin Costner’s character famously was told in Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come. However, in SEO if you build it you must then cultivate inbound pathways to attract the desired search traffic.
If you build it, they will come …with SEO
From a web design perspective, onsite structural work will help gradually improve the ranking signals Google and other search engines use to determine how to rank a site for relevant searches. At Endertech we preach relentless improvement; this is certainly a fundamental truth with SEO as a site never achieves SEO nirvana. Rather it needs to relentlessly workshop, modify, and fortify to demonstrate to the search engines it is alive and kicking.
As such, here are 5 important web design concepts necessary for giving a website a fighting chance in SEO:
1. Site Fundamentals
There are several core elements that set the stage for a well-optimized website design. This includes having a domain that makes sense and relates to what you do, good site speed, text-based content (not images, flash, or video), internal link structure that the search engine can crawl including XML sitemaps, proper use of heading tags (H1, H2), and a sensible URL naming structure for internal pages.
2. Focused Content
Content quality is more effective than quantity. A well written and structured page is more effective at optimizing toward a targeted keyword phrase than an onslaught of articles. Having said that, it is useful to craft some articles and have each contain an internal link back to the primary page that is the focus page for the targeted keyword phrase. For example, at Endertech, we have several articles published on our blog about Drupal development, with each of them funneling to our primary Drupal Developer technology overview page via a network of internal links on the site to boost that page’s authority.
3. Transition from Rules Based Content
Web designers harness template rules to automatically assemble meta title and description tags for all pages. As such, inevitably some pages will have duplicate page titles. It is good practice for a business owner to take their new site and concoct unique metadata to replace the original placeholder information. Every page should have its own set of meta content tags to help search engines get a better individualized grasp of each page.
4. Commitment to Change
SEO is a long-term strategy. Sometimes a client will ask us to have their site “SEO’d” during its design and development. They presume it will come out of the gate SEO-ready, whereas in actuality a new website will not immediately witness returns on proper structure. It will be many months before a noticeable rise in search rankings happens because it takes time to foster the authority and relevance necessary to compete in search results. During that time a website owner/admin needs to learn and refine the site in conjunction with signals obtained from the search engines’ algorithms early placements.
5. Battleground
Competitors are active in enhancing their tactics too. Some of them will be making hefty investments for intelligently optimized content and formulating placements on authoritative publishers. An investment in well-written content and custom design elements can help create a more competitive site. Furthermore, one of the SEO signals is overall site traffic and on-site visit durations. SEO has a symbiotic relationship with other digital marketing strategies including social media marketing that recruits repeat visitors. This traffic can produce more backlinks and some of them will generate subsequent repeat visits as direct (type-in) visits.
Why to Web Design with Endertech Endertech has a full team of web designers, web developers, and SEO experts to guide your project appropriately. We offer SEO consulting post-deployment to help ensure the websites we build continue to relentlessly improve their search optimization tactics.
David Alpern is the Digital Marketing Director for Endertech, a Los Angeles web design agency based in Torrance, California. Contact us for your free consultation.