Can search engine optimization be a part of web design process?

Search engine optimization and web design are interrelated notions that complement one another. In other words, website design affects a website’s ability to rank high on Google for relevant search terms. To combine web design and optimization can be a problem for agencies with separate isolated teams where web designers and marketers work separately or in a case when where marketing is only brought onto a project after a site has already been launched. A website which is designed without implementing optimization techniques and keeping in mind user’s experience can cause problems in website rankings and raise website bounce rate.

In this article, I will tell you about search engine optimization techniques we implement for our clients who just establish new web sources or redesign the old ones. Our optimization design strategies should be involved on a website design and redesign stages. It is advisable to implement them from the very beginning.

Web design & seo tips for beginners

The following methods will help you to ensure your design is helpful, traffic generating and make you visible among your market niche rivals.  

• Usability factors

The primary goal of search engine optimization is to provide average users with perfect search experience. Users should receive the best possible results while searching through your site pages content. If they will find what they need and even more (for that purpose you may implement side menu, links to the related articles and so on), they will most likely save your web page in bookmarks and come back to your site on the case. As a stable marketing theorem states - “more users equal more advertisers, and consequently, more advertisers mean more profits.

On a practical level, it means that you need to provide your website visitors with a great experience as it directly affects your site rankings. It is unreasonable to make optimization efforts and invest in advertising if users that will click on your page will realize that it is frustrating and confusing to use. That is why it is crucial to consider your design usability factors, creating user-friendly and straightforward navigation which enables users to find what they want in one or two clicks.

• Make your content visible for website visitors

Your content should be visible for both users and search bots. That is why your design should be created in such a way to contribute to content discoverability. Despite your website visitors, search crawlers are limited by to discovering content through links. If there is a lack of direct links to your content or they are irrelevant and broken, your content won’t be determined by search bots, and your site most likely won’t be shown on the first or second search engine page.

Your website design primary goal is to create a site architecture that is intuitive for users. However, from SEO perspective your goal is to create a structure that allows search bots crawl your content. These two purposes can be reached simultaneously. To obtain a good SEO result, you need to prioritize your most significant content in your site architecture and include in it your top services or products, which should also map directly to your priority keyword themes. That is why it is reasonable to implement separate subcategories and service pages.