Search Engine Optimization For Website Design
Search Engine Optimization For Website Design
Website design should always consider professionalism, usability and attractiveness. However, all this effort is wasted if the website design lacks SEO. Because without it, your target market might never make contact with your content. SEO ensures your website can be found and indexed by search engines and therefore your audience. Search engine optimization is the cornerstone of every business’ online content marketing strategy. Conversely, a website not designed with search engine optimization in mind can cause ranking problems to occur.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
for Website Design
USABILITY FACTORS FOR WEB DESIGN
The goal of all search engines is to offer the ultimate user experience by being the best online hub of information. This is the most efficient way to ensure customer satisfaction and keep the audience coming back for more. Poor usability translates into a bad user experience, this is the reason why search engines seldom rank poorly-designed websites well. Good usability and navigation translates into user satisfaction with the properly optimized website and the search engine. A good user experience also translates into a few other benefits, such as:
- A longer dwell time on site or page;
- Higher volumes of inbound links;
- Healthy amounts of social shares; and
- Mobile responsiveness.
Search engines reward websites for these factors, as they are indications of quality.
Search engines must be able to crawl and index the website in order for it to be discovered easily.
Search engines are highly sophisticated (Google considers over 250 factors used in complex algorithms in order to determine the rank of websites) however they are limited to discovering content through links.
Therefore buried links, broken links, or if the correct links to your content don’t exist, your content will not be discovered. This makes it near impossible to get your website’s pages to rank.
From a web design perspective, the goal is to create a site architecture that encourages user engagement and is easy to navigate.
From an SEO perspective, the goal is to create an architecture which allows the pages to be crawled and which distributes internal links sensibly. Fortunately, these goals are achieved simultaneously.
DESIGN A WEBSITE FOR CONTENT DISCOVERABILITY
CONTENT LEADS TO HIERARCHY
The content on each page of your website informs search engines what the page is about. As a result, it is important to prioritize the most important content high up in the website design architecture.
This will include top-level services or product categories. This creates a hierarchy that should link directly to your priority keyword themes. From there, one can create subcategories and individual product and service pages.
In the past it was all about quantity (which caused the infamous habit of keyword stuffing), but these days it’s all about high quality content. In order to create truly high quality content, one must plan for it before the website design or redesign phase is underway. For every page created, one should ask:
- “What purpose does this page serve?”
- “What do the users want/need to know about this topic?” and
- “What type of content is necessary to convey our message as effectively as possible?”
Then use the answers from these questions to inform the design of the site. The designer must consider the website design to accommodate the content you’ve deemed essential.
If you are not using your website as a tool to market your business then you’re missing out on many opportunities to generate customers, sales and conversions.
Digital Marketing South Africa can help you take your business to the next level. We have a team of digital wizards equipped with all the tools necessary to help you grow your business online.
We handle all aspects of online marketing, including:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Content Creation,
- Content Strategy,
- Content Publication and Distribution
- Social Media Marketing (managing and sharing across all social networks)
- Email Marketing
- Pay Per Click Advertising
- Marketing Automation
Feel free to contact us for more information about our online marketing services.
DIGITAL MARKETING SOUTH AFRICA
ITM – WEBSITE DESIGN CAPE TOWN
It is vital that your web design is modern and uses current technology. In addition your website should support your marketing efforts and include elements such as a blog and Social Media. Digital Marketing South Africa utilises the professional web design services of ITM Website Design. ITM is a superior webs design company that strives to create the most effective website for your business. View their website design pricing and packages and recent projects.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Website Design
From an SEO perspective, the goal is to create an architecture which allows the pages to be crawled and which distributes internal links sensibly. Fortunately, these goals are achieved simultaneously.
