Website Design with SEO: Building a Site for Search Engines

For many years, creating websites for Google search rankings was prioritized over creating websites for the ideal human experience. Luckily, this is no longer the case. Google and other search engines have finally realized that the “best” results in their search rankings should also be those with the best user experience. Search engine optimization (SEO) has come full circle and put the human back at the center.

Considering SEO from the beginning of a website redesign project is paramount to a successful launch. An excellent SEO website design project that combines design and development best practices with content structure and a solid redirect strategy can increase your leads by 250%.

What is SEO website design?

SEO website design involves building a website that is easy for search engines to interpret and index. The term often refers to several best practices, starting with the basic foundation and ongoing content marketing efforts.

In short, SEO is embedded in developing a website. Although you can design a website without using SEO best practices, doing so will make it harder to rank for important keywords and can lose rankings you might already have earned.

A beautiful website gains you nothing if no one can find it, and SEO won’t retain visitors without an engaging user experience. Web design and SEO are two sides of the same coin. They work together from the beginning of the design process, creating a seamless experience for users and search engines.

How does SEO affect web design (and vice versa)?

Content marketing and website design go hand in hand. Both focus on pleasing web users while incorporating SEO. The successful implementation of SEO requires both a design strategy and a content marketing plan.

In web design, SEO is a technical process intended to increase your website’s visibility so it appears during web searches. Well-structured site architecture allows search engines to crawl and index your website smoothly, which directly impacts your search engine rankings. But just as important is the usability — from fast load times to responsive design that works across mobile devices. Without one or the other, you could lose out on visitors or ranking opportunities.

Take, for instance, an e-commerce site. Users will likely abandon their carts if the page speed is slow and the navigation is unclear. This could reduce conversion rates, increase the bounce rate, and harm your position on search engine results pages (SERPs). Websites that integrate SEO-friendly web design from the start avoid these pitfalls and set themselves apart.

By comparison, content marketing delivers information to your potential customers in a user-friendly format. Marketers optimize content by following a keyword research strategy yet ensuring the copy focuses on the customer first.

Content marketing and website design work together to provide relevant information in a compelling yet user-friendly format.

Design elements that impact SEO

Every design decision you make affects your site’s visibility, from loading speed to readability. Here are a few ways design elements affect your website’s SEO performance:

• Navigation: Clean, intuitive menus enhance usability and help prevent visitors from leaving too soon.
• Fonts and colors: Choose readable fonts and contrast-balanced colors. A user-friendly design keeps users on the site longer, signaling value to search engines.
• Mobile-friendliness: With most web searches happening on mobile devices, having a responsive design isn’t optional if you want high search engine rankings.

Fundamentals of website design with SEO

Crawling is the process search engines follow to discover and categorize page content for search engines — their software crawls (scans) pages to find new and updated content across the web.

Information architecture (IA) is the visual layout of content on your page. This includes the organization of schemes and structures, systems for labeling and navigation, and search options for users to find the information they’re looking for.

Mobile-friendly sites work just as well on handheld devices as on desktops. They’re responsive to changes in format, optimized for speed, free from clutter, and easy to use.

Page speed is how fast a page loads once its link has been clicked.

UX (user experience) focuses on presenting your site visitors with an easy-to-use, enjoyable, and accessible site to explore.

On-page elements include visible items like section headings, page titles, anchor text for URLs, and alt text for images.

5 things to know about website design and SEO

Building relationships with today’s customers isn’t easy. 63% of consumers responding to Salesforce’s State of the Connected Consumer survey say, “It’s hard for a company to earn my trust.” But a seamless web experience delivers an excellent first impression.

Since “48% of people cited a website’s design as the number one factor in deciding the credibility of a business,” according to Blue Corona, getting it right can boost consumer trust.

Successful SEO and web design stem from a strategic approach. This method outlines technical and on-page techniques while accounting for customer preferences. To promote confidence in your business, keep the following ideas in mind.

1. Technical SEO includes site structure and navigation.

Each element must be indexable and crawlable for an SEO-friendly website, meaning search engines can read your site and understand its purpose and hierarchy. Correctly setting up your information architecture (IA) requires planning your labeling, organizational, navigation, and search systems before designing. Implementing structured data like schema markup helps search engines understand your content better. This often results in enhanced visibility on SERPs, such as rich snippets or Knowledge Graph appearances.

Moreover, each should function with your end-user in mind, making site navigation a no-thought process. A purposeful approach gives you a site where users can access all pages within four clicks or less.

For search engines, clear categories and a simple uniform resource locator (URL) structure make it easier to crawl your site. Your internal links and XML sitemaps also contribute to a user-friendly web design that humans and search engines appreciate.

Breadcrumb navigational tools can further improve the user experience. These help people figure out where they’re on your website and quickly move to the previous page. You’ll see the breadcrumb navigation above this post to the left.

2. Good URL practices support people and search engines.

You’ve probably been on a website before, glanced up the URL, and saw a long line of numbers or dates. It can look spammy or unprofessional. Making your web page address readable to humans improves the user experience.

A well-placed keyword can also boost your SERP rank, as keywords in a URL are a ranking factor that search engines use to match search queries to appropriate content.

3. Usability: A broad but essential category.

Consumers want speedy and responsive websites. Any delay in site speed or page load times can increase your bounce rate and affect your SERP rank. From a design perspective, it’s vital to consider the following to improve your website’s performance:

• Using a clear page layout
• Offering a site search tool
• Designing lightweight and straightforward forms
• Creating a visual hierarchy
• Ensuring mobile responsiveness

4. Content marketing strategies influence SEO and web design.

Web designers rely on brand guidelines and your digital marketing plan to keep your site and content customer-focused. SEO is a long-term marketing strategy that starts from the first day you begin planning your website.

By combining web design and SEO, you can make it easier to find your website and use your content to increase traffic. In content marketing and web design, professionals answer six questions:

• Why: Define your website content’s purpose.
• Who: Know your audience.
• What: Identify your main message.
• Where: Understand how users access your content.
• How: Determine the best way to present your topic.
• When: Make your message relevant and timely.

5. Accessibility shouldn’t be an afterthought.

Offering an accessible website isn’t something you should want to do. It’s a must-have. Ensuring that your website is usable by everyone is good for your brand and rewarded by search engines.

Web developers and designers follow accessibility best practices and test sites using various browsers, devices, and assistive technologies. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) offers design suggestions, such as:

• Eliminate content known to induce seizures
• Include captions for audio and video content
• Allow full functionality via a keyboard
• Offer resizable text options
• Provide alt-text for all multimedia
• Avoid low-contrast text

6. Use internal linking strategies.

Well-placed internal links can:

• Direct users to related content for better page content engagement.
• Spread link equity across your site to boost keyword-relevant pages.
• Help search engines map out your website structure.

When developing an internal linking strategy, consider using descriptive anchor texts that clearly indicate the content’s subject matter. This not only aids in user navigation but also provides search engines with additional context to understand the linked content’s relevance.

Ensure that essential service pages or top-performing content are more heavily interlinked than less critical pages. For instance, link from blog posts to product categories for an e-commerce store or link your homepage to deeper service pages to keep users engaged.

It’s important to routinely audit your internal links to identify and rectify broken links. Maintaining a seamless navigation experience is pivotal to user satisfaction and SEO success.

On-page SEO and web design optimization tips

Your website’s visual and organizational aspects keep people focused on your product and brand, not distracted by fancy elements or hindered by hard-to-find pages. Once you’ve developed a usable blueprint, it’s time to ensure everything you add is SEO-friendly.

Consistency is key to brand awareness, so following a plan can increase your site’s visibility and conversions. Whether you use SEO services or do it yourself (DIY), apply these tips to optimize your content.

Use accurate and readable title, header, and meta description tags.

Title, header, and meta description tags structure your web pages, making it easier for customers to learn about your products or services. Tags also help search engines understand your pages.

• Title tag: Many content management systems (CRMs) automatically convert your title into an HTML title tag. An SEO-friendly meta tag is typically 50-60 characters long and uses a keyword near the beginning to signal relevance to both search engines and potential visitors.
• Header tags: Page headers give structure to your copy, making it scannable. Search engines use headers to understand the content in the paragraphs under the header. Header tags are essential for visual appearance, website design, and SEO.
• Meta description tags: Although search engines don’t rank sites based on meta description tags, people use these to decide whether to click through to your page. Create relevant yet compelling meta descriptions to boost traffic. A well-optimized meta description can enhance user engagement by summarizing page content in about 155-160 characters. Focus on a strong call to action and include secondary keywords when applicable.
• File names and URLs: Optimize images with small file sizes, descriptive names with important keywords, and clear URL structure. Alternative text (known as an alt tag) describes the image so that screen readers can read it aloud to visually impaired users.

Focus on the readability of SEO and web design elements.

You may be familiar with industrial jargon, or your audience may read at higher levels than the typical person, but that’s still not a reason to fill your page with it. Making your site easy to comprehend saves people time.

Although optimizing your content for search engines is essential, humans should come first. If a key phrase doesn’t make sense to a consumer, don’t put it in your copy. Instead, focus on user-friendly, SEO-optimized, high-quality content.

However, readability isn’t only about sentence structure and word choice. Well-structured content with headers, bulleted lists, and plenty of white space makes your copy shine.

Add alt text for all images, video, and audio.

Search engines don’t see images, videos, or audio files. You need to add text to make it readable. The first part is adding a file name that accurately describes your photo or multimedia file. If you can squeeze in an appropriate keyword, it’s even better.

Next, complete the alt text for all media. There’s no reason to give a lengthy description; you’re merely describing what’s in the photo or video content. Helping search engines read and index your multimedia files also assists people using screen readers.

Plus, adding a transcript for video or audio files supports search engines and people using screen readers, making your multimedia content accessible to everyone.

Measuring the success of your SEO strategy

How can you tell if your SEO-friendly design changes are working? Monitoring metrics that track website traffic, user engagement, and other KPIs is crucial. Tools like Google Search Console help analyze the following:

• Bounce rate: Are visitors staying on your site or leaving quickly?
• Conversions: Is your improved user experience leading to sales or leads?
• Ranking factors in SERPs: Are you climbing for your target relevant keywords in organic traffic results?

Increase visibility with a robust website design and SEO strategy

SEO and web design work together to deliver excellent user experiences. When done correctly, search engine optimization tactics focus on your customers first, and a well-formed framework satisfies search engines.

In short, your website can make your business stand out among competitors, so Adobe reports that 73% of creative, technology, and marketing professionals “say their companies are investing in design to differentiate their brand.”

Before you build a new website, contact our Big Sea team to discuss the best approach.

FAQ about SEO web design

Is SEO worth it for small businesses?

Yes, SEO is highly valuable for small businesses. By optimizing their website for search engines, they can achieve greater visibility online, leading to increased traffic from potential customers. With more competition in the digital space, SEO helps small businesses stand out by improving their search engine rankings and making their websites more accessible to a broader audience. This targeted approach to reaching customers can enhance brand awareness, drive sales, and foster business growth without the ongoing expenses associated with traditional marketing methods.

How do you structure a website for SEO?

Structuring a website for SEO involves organizing its content in a way that is easily accessible and understandable for both users and search engines. This includes creating a logical hierarchy with a well-organized menu and internal linking strategy to ensure important pages receive adequate visibility. Implement clean and descriptive URLs that are keyword-rich and focus on optimizing meta tags for each page. Use responsive design to enhance user experience across all devices and ensure fast loading times. Additionally, high-quality, relevant content should be published regularly, and schema markup should be utilized to provide search engines context about the site’s content. These elements create a cohesive structure supporting SEO objectives and user engagement.