Recently, SEO in website design has become a thing on which entrepreneurs spend tons of money to keep and improve the position of their online resources. Here is why.

Operating a business online, you always focus on the number of leads you can capture. And there is the point — there are 3.9 billion web users globally. [1] How much are you able to cut for yourself from this big apple pie?

The competition gets insanely high, and everyone wants to stand out to grab the last client. Web space looks like a grocery market where you are the seller of the same fruits and vegetables but trying to convince people to buy from you. Well, in times of high-end websites, attractive adds and sizzling promos it is hard to center the customer around your business.

Thus, SEO is essential on every stage when developing and improving your web presence as it can help to overcome competitors even in this tight fight for the customer. And here I will point out to you the essentials of SEO in website design so you could set up everything efficiently right from the outset and achieve your goals in digital marketing.

Core aspects

First of all, you need to consider some factors that ensure your website meets the fundamental requirements of up-to-date search engine optimization. Here I’m talking about a clear domain name, a reliable hosting provider and a suitable content management system. These three pillars become your basis for the onward implementation of SEO web design essentials.

The domain should be explicit and has to make sense both for users when surfing the web and search engines when crawling your site. Before picking the one, define the audience you want to target, your primary location and the main purpose of your business. Also, bear in mind that feeding your web address with very best keywords is not always a good idea. Nevertheless, it may be helpful for local projects. The main thing is to act wisely.

The web host is also vital just because it may slow down your site if it is of doubtful quality. Various issues with website hosting may interfere with your efforts to boost a web page with SEO.

And the last core aspect is the CMS you are going to use for your web project. The thing is that it has to contain settings for SEO or at least be adjustable for changes. It should be easy for any search engine to understand the system your site uses as a foundation.

Responsivity

I decided to put mobile-friendliness above all SEO web design pieces just because in 2019 it is not a thing to follow; it is a must for all web pages to rank! Many business owners now lose hot leads just because their sites still look old-school and are lack of responsive design. And instead of improving this part, they spend plenty of money on other stuff that actually will never help because of a non-adaptive site layout.

Responsiveness means your web page is easy-accessible through several devices which makes it convenient in use and allows visitors easily make a target action there. The excellent user experience on your site is highly-appreciated by Google as it aims to deliver only the handiest resources for web surfers. Thus, when getting started implementing SEO in website design, consider site’s responsivity as #1 thing in your to-do list.

High speed

The website’s speed is one more vital thing which can cost you an arm and a leg if neglected. In case your site takes too long to load, you not only annoy and lose customers but also drive search engines crazy because of a poor-optimized media content. Overloaded web pages full of large images and videos are everlasting in browsing. And it is especially critical for eCommerce websites.

Therefore, make sure your site has an accurate time of page load as it will surely give you the priority among competitors who still follow the motto “the more — the better.”

Seamless navigation

Have you ever experienced the errors of navigation apps while traveling? Well, if your site wrongly navigates users, it seems just the same. Moreover, poor navigation on the website churns customers. They are confused because they have no idea of where to go and where to click to get out asap. It also complicates the estimated buying cycle making clients leave without the target action.

If you do not want this to happen, imagine you are a new client who wants to explore products or services on your website. Try to learn the site from every angle and make sure everything is clear, and it is pretty easy to find the required information. To keep SEO in website design, implement logical internal linking from page to page so every user could understand the next step.

Once more, remember your feelings when you were lost in someplace and try to do your best to save visitors from going through it on your website.

UX-friendliness

Everything that relates to UX/UI stands for better users’ engagement with the site’s appearance. Say you visit the web page which has a mixture of fonts that don’t match and boasts a color scheme that distracts at a glance. What do you expect from this website? Of course, nothing. You are no longer want to buy or learn something there. That’s how a bad UX works.

Your primary mission is to provide only the best user experience on your site by enhancing it with the one, original style that will look coherent with all its visual elements. Doing this way, you turn a web page into a compelling thing that only evokes the desire to learn more about its filling. And, finally, if users stay on your site instead of bouncing it, it is a signal for Google that the page is useful and far more people need to see it.

Structured URLs

The URL helps search engine to understand the filling of your page. Thus, it is savvy to create a unique slug for each page of your site. Also, consider avoiding senseless links with numbers only as it influences your site’s ranking.

If you want to succeed with SEO in website design, keep it all organized. All the links should look like a folder on your desktop with some subfolders inside. Everything has to be structured to be reliable and useful for search engine crawling.

Consistent metadata

The metadata is necessary just because, as a properly-structured link, it gives a signal to the search engine about the type of content presented on your web page. So, make sure each page of your website has the original title and description. If it is missing, duplicated or incomplete, it prevents your site from ranking.

According to the latest updates from Moz [2], the most accurate title tag length is 60 characters. Meanwhile, a meta description is good if it has 160 characters. Your primary mission here is to provide brief info about the page and naturally implement specific keywords both to the title and description.

Additionally, one more point about the metadata is heading tags (H1, H2, H3) that ensure the hierarchy on your page. Remember that each page, whether it is a blog post, About page or any other, should contain only one H1 tag. Keeping a good page structure with heading tags, you make it more user-friendly and help search engines scan it efficiently.

Relevant keywords

When designing an SEO-friendly website, you need to select the most suitable keyword phrases and harmoniously implement them to website pages. Nevertheless, be sensible as spamming your pages with keywords will not help you to hit the mark. On the contrary, your site may be considered as a fraud and get banned in Google.

Weed out related keywords that have a high monthly search volume and low competition level at the same time. In this way, it will be much easier for you to appear in SERPs beneficially. Also, keep the rule — use only one appropriate keyword for a specific page and add it to your title, meta description, and H1 tag. If you use similar keywords for several pages, your website may experience keyword cannibalization [3] which is undoubtedly not good for organic traffic growth. These hints will help you to achieve the right SEO in website design and so to make your site not only visible but useful for search engines.

Optimized images

Believe it or not, but if you neglect to optimize the images on your website, you lose a significant number of potential clients. When somebody researches through the pictures, the one may come to your site if the selected image has a proper name.

The paramount step of image optimization is creating a relevant file name that corresponds to the one’s topic. Next, provide ALT text for people who cannot see the image and add OpenGraph to make it easy-shareable on social media. Finally, compress the size of the file and provide the copy in a decent size. Additionally, combine all the pictures to your sitemap to boost their informational value.

In summary

So, how do you like it all? Following these things in 2019, you increase your chances of having a well-performing website that drives a steady flow of potential clients right to you without expenses on paid advertising. Hopefully, SEO in website design will not be complicated for you anymore. Thus, apply it to your website and enjoy multiple benefits!

References

1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-internet-users-worldwide/

2. https://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag

3. https://yoast.com/keyword-cannibalization/