Most businesses nowadays understand the concept of search engine optimisation or SEO. More and more people are searching for products and services online nowadays and if you’re not featuring in those search results, you are going to lose out to the competition. Companies spend a lot of time and effort building links, researching the latest SEO trends and making minor tweaks to their strategies, often overlooking the actual design of their website.
Your business website is your direct line to your customers. It’s how they will reach you when they need to find you, where you are going to sell your products and services to them and how you will inform them of any updates to your business or offers you might be running. In order to be successful, you need to ensure that both your existing customers and any potential customers can find you among the millions of websites out there. How your website is designed, will have a huge impact on how successful you are but with the help of an experienced and knowledgeable web development company, you can make huge strides towards improving your rankings in the search results.
Let’s take a look at some key elements of your web design that you need to pay attention to and why they are important in terms of your SEO strategy.
Optimal Keyword Placement
The days of listing long strings of keywords in every footer of your page and stuffing the key phrases you are trying to rank for into your content as many times as possible are long gone. In fact, Google can penalise websites for taking these outdated approaches, having a negative impact on your SEO efforts.
Instead, you should be placing your keywords in the right places, in a natural way and without overdoing it. When designing the static pages of your website, you should aim to include the keywords you want to rank for in the Page URL, the Meta title and in the Meta description. You should also include it in your page title and in a H1 header on your page. It’s also important to focus on secondary keywords that can give your page an extra boost in the rankings.
Pay Attention to Your Images
When developing your website, it’s critical that you pay attention to your images. Google now takes page load time into account as one of the ranking factors for SEO. If your images are not optimised or compressed, it can lead to your website dropping in the rankings.
Images can also be used to your advantage if you include the keyword you want to rank for in the image’s ALT tag. This is a way for the search engine to better understand what the image is about and relate it to the topic your page is discussing
Develop for Mobile
Accessing the internet via mobile has overtaken desktop as the most popular way for people to get online. When you take some time to think about it, it’s not surprising. Google now ranks faster loading mobile responsive websites higher than those without a mobile responsive design implemented. It’s not necessary to change the entire look and aesthetic of your website, however it is crucial that your website is designed with mobile users in mind. Web developers can create a more streamlined version of your website to make it easier of users to navigate on mobile devices to avoid you dropping off in the rankings.
Develop your Website With SEO in Mind
To secure your place in the Google rankings, or to at least increase your chances of featuring it’s vital that you develop your website with SEO in mind. Google is always updating its algorithms in an effort to ensure they are giving users the information they are looking for.
Avoid spamming your website with keywords, make sure your images are optimised to allow for a quick load time and have a mobile responsive design in place. You should also ensure your website is easy to navigate so that users can easily find what they are looking for. While you need to design your website for Google, you also need to ensure that the user has a positive experience. When you find a way to do both simultaneously, you will find yourself climbing the search rankings, overtaking your competitors and with more visitors to your website as a result.
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