Website owners today are usually well-aware of the importance of SEO (search engine optimization). Google and other search engines are using complex algorithms to determine any website’s visibility on their search engines. A website’s content plays a great role in SEO, so website owners are busy dealing with keywords and other SEO hacks that will boost search engine rankings. However, web design is another factor that should not be disregarded when devising a solid SEO strategy. With that in mind, we’ve prepared this guide on all the useful web design tricks to boost your SEO. Keywords are just one part of the puzzle; here’s what else you should know.
Search engines are using their “spiders” to crawl through the website and find unique content. The messier the code behind the website is, the harder it will be for search engines to do so, resulting in lower rankings. Be careful with your use of JavaScript. While it is undoubtedly an excellent tool when creating an interactive website, in terms of SEO JavaScript should still be minified and used sparingly, as too many such scripts may overwhelm the search engines. In addition to trying to minimize their amount, you should also implement JavaScript and CSS files externally, as opposed to being a part of the HTML code.
Polish the code and watch as your SEO improves!
Code bloat will also make your website harder to load, in addition to its negative influence on SEO. And the less unneeded code you have, the smaller are the chances of coding errors appearing. While such errors, technically speaking, may not influence SEO (or even have a visible impact on the site’s performance, for that matter), they will still make it harder for search engines to index your website’s content. Therefore, eliminating them will provide more than one benefit to your website’s performance. Optimizing your code can be tricky, so consider hiring the professionals from moversdev.com to help you with this problem.
One of the most important web design tricks to boost your SEO includes designing your website with mobile users in mind as well. Of course, it is no secret that many users today are browsing the Internet on their smartphones. Not thinking about such users in today’s climate is akin to professional suicide, and not only because it would lead to unsatisfied users, but also because of SEO, as this is one of the factors that search engines are using to rank pages.
As people are regularly using smartphones to browse the Internet, no list of the best web design tricks to boost your SEO would be complete without tips on mobile-friendly design.
What is an effective mobile-friendly design? There are three most important factors to have in mind:
When designing a website, you should, of course, think about its look as well, and not just the content and the code. An appealing look will not only attract visitors, but it will improve your rankings as well.
Perhaps surprisingly, among the web design tricks to boost your SEO, proper use of colors is one of the factors that will have a visible influence on your search engine optimization. It seems that these days, in terms of color design, a minimalist look is the most appealing one in the eyes of the visitors. So, limit yourself to no more than three different colors for your website.
Think about the images as well. While they should be appropriate for your content and of a high-quality, they shouldn’t be too large, as that might have a negative impact on your website’s loading times. In ideal circumstances, their resolution should not exceed 72dpi. All images should have an alt tag included. This is a short description of the image, which will be displayed in case the image doesn’t load. When writing alt tags, be sure to include the keyword there as well from time to time.
Paying attention to your website’s appearance in terms of SEO will give you a helpful edge when compared to website owners who have not thought about this aspect of their site’s graphic design, so don’t overlook this important SEO factor.
Use just a few colors to paint your website’s appearance.
If you want to have good SEO, your website design should be as elegant as possible. For starters, eliminate all duplicate content. Visitors dislike duplicate content, as it makes the website appear less professional, and the same goes for search engine companies.
Proceed with removing all broken links. Redirection requests occur due to broken links, and they are always bad for SEO. You can use a very handy tool called Screaming Frog SEO Spider to find broken links. And while we are talking about links, you should also consider their structure, because this is another thing that may help (or diminish) your search engine ranking. An intuitive URL structure implies a link that is easy to understand, without too many deep directories.
As we said, JavaScript and CSS in HTML code usually make websites less elegantly designed. Minifying any CSS files you may be using will lead to a reduced code line count, improving your website’s loading times. Still, you should keep JavaScript and CSS use to a minimum.When it comes to the syntax you should use, we recommend PHP, which is dynamic and very customizable. It works well with different frameworks and databases and is the best choice for both small and large websites.
Of course, even with these web design tricks to boost your SEO, good content creation is still the most important part of any website. Good content attracts visitors, and in the end, this is what matters the most when it comes both to SEO, and your website’s well-being in general. True success comes as a combination of high-quality content and under-the-hood web design, so take your time in order to polish both of these aspects as much as you can.
My name is Mukesh Jakhar and I am a Web Application Developer and Software Developer, currently living in Jaipur, India. I have a Master of Computer Application in Computer Science from JNU Jaipur University. I loves to write on technology and programming topics. Apart from this, I love to travel and enjoy the beauty of nature.