SEO and Web Design: How Do You Make Them Work Together?

As a business owner, one of the things that you will be concentrating on is getting people to your website. Whether the purpose of your website is to drive them to see you in store, or you’re offering your products online, it’s important to ensure that your website is both aesthetically pleasing as well as SEO friendly.

The problem here is that it’s difficult to have one without the other. So, if you were to say, invest into a web design company to make your business look incredible, your traffic could suffer. This is because of coding that’s put into website design. It’s rarely optimized to make it so that your website will bring in the traffic too.

Why Website Design is Just as Important as SEO

So, you’d have a beautiful website that would make you look professional which would of course, impress your visitors. A business that’s put the time, effort and money into their website shows that they care about what their customers think of them and usually that they care about their customers too.

People want that when they are spending their money. However, because of the coding, you’d have a beautiful website, but no one to appreciate it.

Another bonus of having a good website design is that people are more inclined to stay around for a little while. This is called dwell time, and it’s important because it reflects on your bounce rates.

For example, Mango Matter Media offer bespoke design services that can help you accelerate the amount of time that people are dwelling on your page. Think about it—you’re more likely to stay on a website that looks nice right? But, at the same time, they pay attention to the coding within their design and include keywords in their designs that help accelerate your SEO at the same time. That’s a win for everyone

Why You Might Lean Towards SEO Rather than Design

If you put all of your effort into your SEO, you would have a better flow of traffic and see your statistics rise. However, people judge things on how aesthetically pleasing they are, so the odds of your traffic leading to sales are low. Also, as mentioned above, you’d be less likely to hang around on a website that wasn’t very nice to look at.

So how do you resolve this issue so that your business doesn’t suffer? Take a look at these tips on how you can make SEO and web design work together so that you and your business are getting the best of both worlds.

Optimize the Content that is on Your Website

The thing about SEO is, even if your design isn’t SEO friendly, the content that you’re uploading will make the world of difference. Now, even if you’re not clued up on the ins and outs of SEO, there’s a few simple things to remember that will help you optimize the content that’s on your website so that search engines are likely to rank you higher.

Check it out:

• When you’re creating content, think about what you’d search for if you wanted to land on your page. For example, if you’re writing content on how to market your business successfully, you might search ‘best marketing techniques for business’. Take phrases and keywords like these and include them in your content.
• While it might seem obvious to use the keywords in your title, you should also try and get them into subheadings too—it makes the world of difference.
• Try not to have large blocks of writing without subheadings—people are less likely to read it.
• Don’t leave it too long before introducing a keyword again, but also don’t over do it either or it will come across as spam. If you’re using a WordPress platform, you can download Yoast as a plugin which is really helpful when it comes to SEO.

Optimizing the content on your website will only accelerate your traffic and then you can concentrate on design too!

Ensure that Your Website is Mobile Friendly

One faux pas that many business owners make when they are designing their website is not making it mobile friendly.

Did you know that the majority of most traffic these days is from mobile or handheld devices? That’s why it’s important to ensure that your website is mobile friendly. Even if your traffic is at an all time high, if your website isn’t optimized for mobile, then you’re less likely to land the sale that you’re after because people will find a website that can offer everything they are looking for. If you’re not sure if your website is mobile friendly or not, you can use this tool to check it out for you.

How Does it Work Together?

You may remember earlier we mentioned bounce rates. Well, when your website is designed with precision and the SEO side of things is taken care of too, then your bounce rate will be better—which makes Google happy. The better your website ranks with Google, the higher it will appear.

To Round It Off

It’s complicated going into all of the little details about what makes a good website, but it’s important for your business. Here’s a simplified way of looking at things so that you’re able to make both SEO and web design work together:

1. Good SEO = more traffic to your website = more sales
2. Great web design = longer dwelling times = better bounce rates = better search engine rank

You can see how they both work together here, and if you implement the tips given today, you should see an improvement in both traffic and sales on your business, all while having a beautifully designed website.