How to Make Great Design and SEO Work Together
One common problem that professionals in the web design field often encounter is determining how to set up their sites to cater to different crowds. On one hand, there is a need to provide great SEO to rank well with various algorithms and search engines. On the other, there is a need to provide the ultimate user experience. Traditionally, both avenues have been dealt with independently because they seem so drastically different. However, both aspects are more similar than you think.
Keyword Optimization
Don’t keyword stuff or your sites will pay dearly for it. The best thing to do is to focus on keyword optimization and space your keywords accordingly. As long as the content that you are providing is relevant and useful, your users will readily accept what you are offering them.
Avoid repetition. Don’t make the mistake of saying the same thing over and over again. Redundancy leads to boredom and lost interest. It also affects your credibility. Broaden your vocabulary and make sure that any verbiage you use speaks to your readers in a manner that they are accustomed too. In other words, don’t use a lot of uncommon words or syntax. If your readers have to think too hard to understand what you are saying, you’ll lose them.
Site Structure, Intuitiveness, and Responsiveness
Depending on the products and services you are offering, you may want to consider creating one-page sites. One-page sites that are SEO optimized can significantly improve UX because they provide users with what they are looking for right away. They don’t have to click through to deeper pages to search. While single page sites can be beneficial, you have to remember that they do not always create the impact that multipage sites do, and they often contain fewer features.
With the right site structure, you can incorporate great content and design to enhance user experience. You need to stay on top of the current and outdated trends in SEO marketing and be able to change things up at a moment’s notice. You need to regularly update your content so that it accurately reflects the times and user intent. Your sites should also be intuitive and easy for users to navigate through once they arrive at them. Even if you decide to use a paginated site design, your users still deserve to be engaged and catered too while they search for information. Think in terms of a minimalistic design.
Useful navigational tools to use include:
- Drop down menus
- Prompts
- Tabs
- Other types of bread crumbs
Having a responsive web design is one of the hottest trends in the marketing world today. When it’s done properly, it can help to boost your site’s ranking and credibility with Google, other search engines, and your users. If you choose to enhance your site’s responsiveness, don’t forget to pay attention to load times. The faster your site loads, the better. Aim for a consistent load time of five seconds or less. Anything more and you risk losing users and rankings.
With the right amount of planning and strategies, you can reach and exceed your marketing and design goals to achieve short-term and long-term success.
