The term “web design” often brings out thoughts revolving around themes, colors, shapes, sizes, and so on. This makes it easy to assume that web design is only about how your website looks. The truth, though, is that it’s so much more than that. Web design, while it plays a role in attracting customers, has another aspect that many people forget: search engine optimization (SEO).
There is a special relationship between SEO and web design, meaning that what you do to one affects the other. In fact, SEO has become one of the most integral parts of web design, and a bad organic search strategy can take a great toll on your site.
Your website could be three years old or brand new, but knowing how SEO and website are connected will help you increase the effectiveness of both. Here are three examples of how the two work together:
1. Website graphics
Website graphics with little-to-no regard for SEO can be incredibly damaging. In other words, even the aesthetics of your site are related to search engine optimization. While that 4K resolution image may look beautiful, it is going to take up a lot of space and will likely cause your site to load slower, which could be a severe blow to your SEO.
Other design elements that could hurt your SEO are features like Adobe Flash. Search engines like Google no longer look through them, meaning any content you put there will be missed out.
2. Loading speed and ranking
There are many websites out there that—although great in their own respect—suffer in rankings solely because of loading speed. There are many reasons a website may load slower, such as high-resolution graphics in the example mentioned above. Poor web design choices can make a major impact on a site’s SEO.
In the process of designing your site, be sure to ensure your website loads quickly and efficiently for SEO’s sake. Failure to do so will put your site behind your competitors and cause you to lose out on all the potential customers. When it comes to designing a website that converts, you want to ensure that it loads as quickly and smoothly as possible.
3. On-page SEO
While there are three parts to SEO, the one that brings you to work directly on the site itself would be the aptly-named “on-page SEO.”
Planning out a smart web design revolves around planning to rank on the SERPs. For example, when you strategize your website’s navigation design, you should be contributing to on-site SEO.
Conclusion
As you can see, web design and SEO are interconnected in more ways than one. For this reason, when you go about designing your website, always keep SEO in mind. Anything poorly executed design-wise could very much hurt your organic rankings.
If you aren’t a web designer or developer, it can be tough to know what site elements contribute to or take away from SEO. For that reason, we always recommend that you work with professionals. With their help, you will not only be able to enjoy a great looking website, but also one that is highly ranked.
Are you looking for a web design agency in New Jersey? Reach out to us on our website! We’re happy to help.