The design of your site is impressive – every design element is in place, and the user’s journey is smooth. However, it does not rank well in search engines to generate the targeted organic traffic and leads that it ought to. A great design alone would not suffice in a scenario where 75% of the users do not go past the first page of the search results. Every day that your website remains uninterested in the search results brings more lost revenue and business opportunities, while your worried competitors put their business ideas into practice and earn your customers. By including fundamental SEO strategies in your web design process, you will be able to amaze website visitors and rank highly in search engines. In this list, we present sound approaches to help you turn your website into an appealing and business-effective one using a cohesive approach to design and SEO.
Website Navigation
Website navigation is a critical component of user experience and search engine optimisation. When search engines crawl a site, navigation provides the primary framework for understanding content hierarchy and page relationships. Ineffective navigation can potentially increase bounce rates by up to 45%, directly impacting search rankings.
To optimise navigation, websites implement a well-structured hierarchical model. This approach visualises the website as a pyramidal structure, with the homepage serving as the apex and progressively specialised pages forming the lower levels. The fundamental principle remains consistent: users should access any significant page within three clicks from the homepage.
To illustrate, let’s consider a suggested structure of an online shopping site.
To facilitate users’ navigation of your website, consider incorporating breadcrumbs, which show both users and search engines their precise location in the structure of your site. For big sites, consider incorporating a search feature and keeping your menu headings more informative than imaginative—it is better to be straightforward than clever in SEO.
Website Speed
Website speed transcends technical metrics, directly influencing user experience and search engine rankings. Research indicates that 53% of mobile users abandon sites requiring more than three seconds to load, underscoring the critical importance of performance optimization.
The modern approach to speed optimisation depends on several fundamental principles:
- First, optimise high-resolution images using the modern web standard WebP and fall back when necessary.
- Then, there is codeless compression, where all the extra white spaces and other unnecessary elements in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files are cleaned up without altering the functionality of the codes.
Related read: Top 10 Ways To Optimise Your Website Speed For Better Optimisation
Site speed is heavily influenced by server response times. As such, apply browser caching to store infrequently changing resources on users’ devices and use CDNs to deliver resources from the closest geographical distance. These measures may reduce loading speeds by as much as 50%.
Take these performance measures into consideration:
- First, Contentful Paint should occur within 1.8 seconds
- The time to interact should be under 3.9 seconds
- The largest Contentful Paint should happen within 2.5 seconds
Mobile-Friendliness
Since almost 60% of global web traffic comes from mobile devices, mobile optimisation can no longer be considered an option—it has become a necessity. With Google’s mobile-first indexing, the mobile version of your site is ranked the highest, no matter how compelling the desktop version is.
Responsive design is just the beginning of mobile optimisation, as this aspect extends far more profoundly than mere aesthetics. One has to pay particular attention to touch elements such as buttons and links, which should ideally be sized to fit the average finger without zooming in (minimum 44×44 pixels) and be spaced out sufficiently to avoid mis-clicking. Think about the flow of your content on different screen sizes and ensure that images use the correct scaling and balance, not to compromise the quality.
Related read: Importance of Mobile-Friendly Website Design to Gain Traffic
Special focus is essential in mobile design, especially when it concerns navigation menus. Consider integrating a hamburger menu for your mobile devices, but ensure it is user-clear and within reach. A mobile version of the site should not only offer all the options available on the desktop version but also do it faster and more conveniently.
Sitemaps
Consider sitemaps, navigational tools for search engines when it comes to your website. They help direct crawlers through the content you have to offer, making sure that all critical pages are included in the indexing phase. In most cases, websites that have systematically used sitemaps tend to have an increase in the number of pages that are indexed.
Sitemaps in XML format typically include all essential URLs while omitting pages that are non-canonical or carry a ‘no index’ directive. You are also advised to refresh your sitemap whenever you add new pages or make major edits to existing ones. Also, try to keep the size reasonable—for instance, if your sitemap is larger than 50,000 URLs or 50 MB, it should be divided into separate sitemaps with a sitemap index created for them.
URL Structure
URLs are not simply web addresses—they serve as an important asset for SEO. Properly crafted URLs can enhance CTR by up to 45%, and help engines understand the hierarchy of your content.
Good URL structure respects these principles:
- Describes the content clearly
- Uses hyphens to separate words
- Keeps the length reasonable
- Follows a logical hierarchy
For instance:
Readability
The ease of understanding directly affects users’ interactions with your content and search engines’ content quality assessment. Sites with optimal readability generate 58% more social shares.
Concentrate on producing simple, reader-friendly, and coherent content. Use section titles to help split the long texts and direct them appropriately in your content. Refrain from writing long paragraphs; 2 to 4 sentences will be ideal. Also, write shorter and longer sentences to avoid monotony.
Typography significantly impacts how readers perceive and understand reading materials. For this, remember:
- The body of the text should use at least 16px font size.
- There should be a proper separation between the text’s background colours and the colours of the text.
- The spacing between lines should be approximately one and a half times the font size to enable the readers to sit comfortably while reading.
Image File Names
Image optimisation is a minor detail in the context of Search Engine Optimisation. However, it can remarkably boost a site’s search visibility. Appropriately titled and optimised images can contribute more organic traffic from image searches alone.
To begin with, opt for informative file names that have correlating keywords. Instead of file names such as ‘IMG001.jpg,’ use something like ‘blue-denim-jacket-2024.jpg.‘ This helps search engines better understand the image content.
Related read: Professional Images on Website are “Necessary” or “Nice to Have” Element
Go beyond the image file names. Ensure that the images are high quality yet compressed and saved in more contemporary formats such as WebP. Also, include a responsive image for the suitable end device when serving the right asset size. Lazy loading for imagery below the fold can also improve site speed and performance.
Remember to add relevant alt text explaining the purpose of the image used. This is important for accessibility reasons and to provide extra information to search engines.
Indexable Content
Before analysing the documents, let’s clarify how search engine optimisation works. Reaching out to search engines to make them index and rank your website is only part of the process.
- It’s also essential to ensure that search engine crawlers are not placed under unnecessary limitations, preventing them from accessing vital specific webpages located at URLs you want to rank.
- One of the first things you should examine is the content of your robots.txt file and check that it does not prevent search engine spiders from accessing any key pages.
- Additionally, unwanted duplicate content should be removed with canonicalization, and access to any resources necessary for the search engine to grasp the entire concept of the website should not be prevented.
The most suitable content hierarchy for a site is also valuable for indexability. It is important to ensure a coherent, rational arrangement of HTML headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.) to assist search engines in page navigation. Additionally, schema markup helps enhance the search engine’s comprehension of pages.
Frequent and appropriate checks of your indexed pages, crawl budget, and mobile indexing will help you recognise problems and fix them when search visibility is troubling.
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Optimising Website Structure and Content
A well-organised site enhances the experience of users visiting it and makes it easier for search engines to understand its content. By doing both for visitors and search engines, it becomes easy to build an engaging online presence that incorporates all the relevant elements.
For example, one may incorporate semantic HTML tags to add useful information regarding their content for the benefit of search engines. Use schema to keep your pages from the correct perspective of the entities they represent. Make sure the internal linking is consistent, leading both users and search engines to the required pages in your website.
In terms of content, present the information in a definite hierarchy, where the main pages, for instance, cover more expansive territories while pages more profound into the site functionalised narrower areas. Adopt meaningful meta titles and descriptions that summarise how search engines would appear to understand the page content.
The challenge, however, lies in providing a consistent, friendly, and smooth interface that allows users to locate information quickly while ensuring that the content is accessible for search engines to understand and index.
Creating High-Quality Content
The most effective approach to SEO is content. Well-written, long text not only captures the attention of your audiences but also informs search engines about your site’s reliability and value to users.
While creating any content, make sure:
- You are meeting user intent.
- What questions are your target audience asking, and how can you provide the most helpful and informative answers?
- Depth is critical – research shows that long-form content (2,000+ words) receives significantly more backlinks and engagement than shorter pieces.
To reinforce your knowledge of the topic, back up your assertions with figures, percentages, and quotes from specialists. Also, use additional content types such as pictures, diagrams, and movie/YouTube clips to enhance the appeal of your content.
Create and integrate fresh and relevant content regularly to ensure that the existing content remains useful and up to date. Search engines tend to favour websites that regularly offer new information that is relevant to users.
Building High-Quality Backlinks
Content is undoubtedly the key element, but backlinks are effective tools that help enhance your site’s visibility on search engines. Quality and relevant backlinks demonstrate to Google and other search engines that the website’s content is worthy of ranking.
Link building should be approached tactfully. It is best to create “linkable” assets focusing on content that will be referenced by other experts and publishers in the area, like original research, all-inclusive instructions, or cutting-edge solutions. Posting as a guest on other established industry blogs is another suitable method to earn high authoritative backlinks.
Related read: The Importance of Backlinks For SEO
Construct rapport with reputable individuals, experts, and affiliated enterprises within your sector. They can enhance each other’s websites through link exchanges and joint articles that help raise one’s profile.
Do not forget that it is better to have a few backlinks from high-quality websites than thousands of links from low-quality ones. Try to get links from sources relevant to the website’s content, rather than gaining access to several inconsequential links from many places.
Regularly Updating and Maintaining Your Website
SEO is not just done and dusted—it is part of an ongoing campaign that requires continuous engagement and enhancement. It is critical to track your performance, find opportunities for improvement, and make the necessary modifications regularly to ensure that your search positioning does not deteriorate over the years.
First and foremost, plan to maintain the site as a whole.
Every week:
- Assess your technical SEO
- Look for 404 pages
- Track your Core Web Vitals
Every month:
- Complete a content audit and assessment of broken links
- Examination of your backlink profile
Site structure, keyword research, and general SEO performance metrics should be reviewed more closely in quarterly and yearly evaluations. This approach enables you to anticipate the changes in the algorithm inside out, note potential areas for growth, and strategize on SEO spending.
Keep in mind that the digital ecosystem is constantly changing. Therefore, it is essential to know the current trends and strategies of SEO so that your websites stay in rank and meet the results expected by your clients.
Transform Digital Potential into Market Leadership with Make My Website
There has been a fundamental shift: professionally constructed websites are now visible to target audiences. With these SEO best practices, you now have a blueprint for creating websites that will rank well.
Make My Website is spearheading this design-SEO integration with several benefits that help your business stand out:
- Sustained Excellence: We have a creative team with experience in SEO, which leads to a visually impressive website that will do exceptionally well in search.
- All Sets of Strategies: We implement not only all the best practices in SEO discussed in this guide, but also some more that are our own, resulting from years of practice and great success.
Achieve measurable results with us by:
- Increasing organic traffic
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- Significant enhancement in local search visibility
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Begin your journey towards digital domination by collaborating with Make My Website. Our comprehensive services include:
- Audit your current website’s SEO performance
- Develop a customised optimisation strategy
- Implement these best practices while maintaining your unique brand identity
- Monitor and adjust for optimal results
At Make My Website, we believe that our services are not limited to web design only—we are a partner in your path to digital success. Our design and SEO strategies go hand in hand, ensuring that your website not only looks good but generates leads and has great ROI.
Want to know how we can get your business off the ground? Contact Make My Website today and learn how we can transform your business’s visual appeal and ranking in different search engines. Craft an exceptional digital presence.
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