The Importance of SEO in Web Design

It used to be that businesses approached a web design company for their website needs whether it is for a custom website design or a revamp of their existing site. It wasn’t until after the site was up and running or re-tooled that the company would switch their focus to SEO, or in some cases that wasn’t really a concern at all.

Now this scenario has shifted. Many SEO companies are offering onsite services or even house a web team and sell SEO and design as a package. Still though, some people seem to have a hard time understanding that search engines, and even users don’t particularly care how beautiful your design it.

Sure a unique website can be draw eyes to your page, but what users really want is to be able to easily find the information they’re looking for and a site designed with consideration to SEO makes it easier for Google to index them and for searchers to find them.

What part of design is related to SEO?

Google and users alike pay attention to where information is placed on the page. Sure Matt Cutts has drilled into us all the importance of quality content, but on-site SEO goes beyond content and delves into placement, title tags and uniformity.

Hummingbird changed the rules of the game (again) and if your site is already optimized for local search you’re probably enjoying the algorithm change. If your site was already lacking in content and had poor search optimization though, you might have actually lost some traffic.

The most basic aspect of onsite design is NAP (name, address and phone number)—simply put you need to tell people how to find you—but you also need to tell Google how to find you too.

It makes sense to include your contact information in the footer of every page of your site and you want the format of that information to be identical to the format used in relevant directory listing, your Google Places page, Yelp and anywhere else your site is listed online so Google can associate all the listings with your business.

You also want to use your contact information to optimize for local search so including NAP in your meta description, Title tags and in your company blog if you have one and in a natural way.
Your location is essentially one of your keywords, so keep in mind like all other keywords you don’t want to over optimize and court a Google penalty.

Location isn’t everything though, for balanced search results you’ll also want your page optimized for navigation, your business slogan and domain, header tags and internal as well as external pages using a variety of keywords, both long tail and specific words.

Image Credits: unlimitedsoftz.blogspot.com

What should you avoid?

There are a few general mistakes some web developer’s use that will hurt you in the long run, the first being the use of images for buttons on your navigation toolbar. Text should always be used instead of images otherwise search engine robots won’t index it.

Next, Flash and Java script really should be avoided. You can get similar if not the same pretty on page effects by using CSS3, and it’s also search engine friendly and will load faster compared to Java and Flash which makes it user friendly as well.

Finally, learn how to properly utilize photos on your site. Images that aren’t compressed result in large files and slow load times. Keep in mind when discussing good content that isn’t just limited to the words filling any given page but are also in reference to images.

The images need to match the text and relate to the information being displayed—that includes image titles and accompanying captions. Keep in mind, even if you use a whole slew of really great images on your site, but they take a long time to load most users won’t stick around waiting for the page to display, they’ll simply move on to another site.

Are you courting social media shares and likes?

Its true Google has kept fairly mum on the impact of social media in search, but the evidence tells its own story. Currently Facebook is one of—if not the most visited site on the web on a daily basis and Twitter scandals make the news and are a part of many people’s regular conversations. It’s nearly impossible to say how search engines are using social signals, but regardless, it’d be hard to argue that likes, shares and tweets don’t matter.

Optimize your site for social traffic and make it easy for users to share content on your site or your site in general with their friends by including social media buttons and create accounts on at the very least the most popular social platforms.

Finally, your web design is of course ultimately your call, but keep in mind the Hummingbird algorithm overhaul is drawn to local search results the way real hummingbirds are to sugar water. And if you already have optimized your site for local search and SEO you’re ready to move on to the next step—mobile optimization—the new frontier.

Jameson Ballinger

About the Author:

Jameson Ballinger is frankly obsessed with coffee, SEO and web design. All three go together like Miami, sunshine and the beach. Speaking of Miami, Jameson currently resides there and spends his time working with Z Networks Group, writing about two of his three obsessions.