Web design and SEO - making your web app visible
Considering search engine optimization as part of your design process is about thinking ahead. You’re factoring in the future performance of the site once the design stage is over and it’s out there in the world, being used. This article will look at the connection between SEO and digital design, highlighting the key factors to consider for a high-performing website.
Table of contents
What is SEO (and why is it important)?
Search engine optimization is an umbrella term for design features or activities that improve your website’s ranking in search engine results. This is important to a website because, well, if no one can find it, traffic and visitors are likely to be low and presumably that isn’t the plan for your website?! In more detail, SEO is important for your business because:
- Searches tend to be the main source of website traffic.
- Appearing on the first page of search results builds credibility.
- Good SEO (i.e. easy to find) is a part of creating a better user experience.
- SEO leads to more engagement, traffic and ultimately, conversions.
- SEO is relatively inexpensive.
- SEO results are measurable.
- As long as people use search engines, SEO (in some form or other) will be important.
Although the key criteria built into search engine algorithms may change over time, SEO itself remains an important (and cost-effective) element of any digital marketing strategy.
SEO and UX
As mentioned in the above list, SEO is a part of your website’s UX - as opposed to its UI. How users interact with the site is a reason why user experience is a critical factor in a site’s success, encompassing all elements of the user’s journey. The quality of that experience directly informs how users perceive the website and whether they will visit and use it again – not to mention what they tell others about the site.
If a user is searching online for sites like yours but you’re absent from the search results, your user’s journey is over before it has begun; the UX they could have is nipped in the bud. SEO gets people to your site, then the UX elements of the site’s design keep them there, interacting… or not. SEO and UX are tightly linked.
How does SEO influence web design?
What aspects of SEO do designers and developers need to keep in mind when creating your website? Let’s see…
- Text – The words (or should we say, keywords) on your site are highly influential on its SEO performance. Apart from considering readability (typography, etc.) the inclusion of words and phrases that potential visitors search for will impact on search engine rankings.
- Responsive design – Since 2014, Google has used mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor in search results. Text should be readable on the smaller screen, content should be sized so that users don’t have to scroll from left to right, link spacing should be convenient for fingers and thumbs, etc.
- File names for images – Any images on the site should have logical, descriptive names so that search engines can ‘see’ them.
- File sizes for images – Likewise, when designing the site’s visuals, consider that large, high-quality images will increase pages’ loading times, increase your bounce rate, and therefore push you down the rankings.
- Alt tags for images – Alt tags (also ‘alt attributes’ or ‘alt descriptions’) provide a text alternative to images on a website. Not only can this be good for people with a visual impairment, or those whose browsers just don’t support your file format, it’s also information used by search engines.
- Descriptive URLs – For the same reasons, each page on your site should have a URL address that describes the page’s content. Put simply, Google doesn’t like complex URLs, so keep them largely free of special characters (the underscore, for example) and add in a relevant keyword or phrase.
- Architecture and navigation – Is your website structured so as to be easy to navigate by users? If not, they’re more likely to leave ‘unfulfilled’ and consequently make your bounce rate worse.
- Page speed – As well as image size, other factors influence how quickly your website pages load (and therefore impact ranking); including the HTML code, CSS styling, use of JavaScript, multimedia (e.g. video clips), the size of page elements, and even the server your website is hosted on.
- Sitemaps – A sitemap (XML or HTML) is basically a guide or directory to your site, including the details of each of the site’s pages. By placing a sitemap on the homepage, you’re providing information and metadata about the whole site up front, allowing search engines to automatically index more pages, more easily. Result? A better ranking.
Choosing the right platform for your website’s SEO
Depending on what kind of site or web presence you’re designing, not all of the above factors will be within your control. For example, if you’re creating content to be deployed on an e-commerce platform then clearly the SEO performance of the platform as a whole is a key factor, likewise if you’re using a content management system for your website.
e-Commerce platforms
Unsurprisingly, in SEO terms, not all e-commerce platforms are created equal. Research from ecommerce-platforms.com has identified the following key factors in determining the ranking of e-commerce platforms:
- Custom navigation links
- Custom page titles
- Custom page URLs
- Custom meta descriptions
- Custom image ALT tags
- Custom H1 headings
- Canonical URLs
- Integrated blogging features
- Social sharing buttons
- Auto XML sitemaps
- Custom domain names
- Custom IP addresses
- 301 redirects
- Robots noindex capabilities
The same research identified the four best-performing platforms (i.e. scoring 95 or more out of 100) as Shopify, WooCommerce, Shift4Shop (previously 3dcart), and Adobe Commerce (previously Magento) – all of which offer significant (if not almost total) control over the SEO elements of your e-commerce page.
Content management systems
As with e-commerce platforms, different content management systems offer different performance when it comes to SEO, and not all will help you optimize your content. What you’re looking for are particular tools or functions, namely:
- Page optimization – URLs, title tags, alt tags, etc.
- SEO tools – these tools allow you to analyze the performance of pages and content, and therefore optimize it.
- SEO support – apart from the tools and automation, what level of (often more human) input and guidance is available?
With this in mind, some of the better options to check out include Netlify, strap.io, and Contentful.
Web design and SEO are both critical success factors
In a nutshell, SEO is a key factor when designing a website with various issues influencing its search engine rankings, including whether it is mobile-friendly, page loading times, and the use of descriptive URLs. To be clear, there’s no either/or, or better/worse dichotomy here, both web design and SEO are critical to the success of your website. Bearing this in mind, the design process becomes much more effective when the designers and developers involved have a good understanding of search engine optimization. And that kind of knowledge is not always so common…
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