When it comes to relevance and visibility of content, every person who is looking to build a good online presence for their company knows the importance of good SEO practices. That being said, a lot of them fail to realize the importance of SEO practices when it comes to the design aspect.
There are some key concepts of SEO which experts are not exactly able to communicate with their designers well enough. That can leave a lot of problems because even if a website looks visually appealing, it might lack the crucial oversight of good SEO practices. That can affect the rankings significantly.
Here is a list of things that designers need to know about SEO in 2018 so that they can bridge the gap between excellent design and good SEO practices.
Mobile First
First things first, Google has made it quite clear for everyone out there that there is a need for optimizing websites for mobile phone usage with responsive design. The number of people using the internet through their mobile devices is more than those using it through their computers and that change in demographic needs to be catered to. Website designers need to make sure that the design of a website should not just be visually good for desktop computers, it can be equally well done but it will be more effective if it is optimized for mobile phone usage as a priority.
Organic Visibility
SEO experts are of the opinion that the website pages should be designed in a way that they are more accessible to search engines. This means the content organization for the website layout has to be on point.
A sense of organization on a website will make it easier for search bots to go through the webpage and find relevance in the content for the users. One of the most important aspects of content organization in a website’s layout is the use of H tags or the headings.
If the web designer creates a layout that follows a hierarchy of headings from H1 to H2 to H3 and so on, it will be deemed as something more relevant in comparison to a more haphazard layout.
Emphasis on User Intent
SEO practices are constantly evolving in order to better accommodate the users and make their experience of browsing the internet easier. This means that the user intent has come to the forefront to replace keywords. SEO focuses more on what the user is intending to search for rather than the specific keywords from the search query. Having a layout that keeps the user intent in mind will help drive more relevant users to the website and boost engagement.
Final Thoughts
While a lot of people might make the assumption that web design and SEO are two completely separate aspects to a company’s online presence, the fact of the matter is that both take equal precedence. If the SEO practices are not being followed, the visibility of a website will be significantly reduced. On the other hand, bad web design will make the user bounce from the web page even if it follows good SEO practices otherwise. These two aspects work hand in hand and web designers need to keep that in mind when creating the layouts for websites.
