With over 1 billion websites on the Internet, it can be extremely difficult for businesses and customers to connect. Your website might have great visuals and navigation, but if you don’t appear in the first search engine results, you risk sinking into oblivion and losing potential clients. The good news is that there is a solution just around the corner, and it’s called search engine optimization, or SEO. In this article, we will discuss why SEO is so important for web design and what you can do today to get more visitors tomorrow.

What is SEO in web design?

SEO in web design is the process of developing websites that are optimized for both users and search engines. It goes far beyond keyword optimization. SEO-friendly web design ensures simple navigation, quick loading speed, mobile accessibility, and proper site structure. SEO-friendly websites are always visible and properly ranked because it is easy for bots to crawl and index their pages.

There are a considerable number of optimization tools that help businesses grow. For example, NinjaReports.com can improve your SEO and assist you in tracking your progress, so you can be sure your strategy is working.

Why is SEO important for web design?

A good-looking website means nothing if people don’t know where to find it. That is why it’s so important to combine both web design & SEO in your practice. Below, we want to enumerate some of the benefits you will get from website search engine optimization.

Improved organic traffic

Organic traffic is obtained when visitors come to your website from the search results. Visitors enter their requests in Google or other search engines and open the website without being lured by attractive ads. Just think about it: about 40% of users press the first link in the list, and 19% – the second one. If the website ranks tenth or lower, the chances of users visiting it don’t exceed 2.5%.

Getting organic traffic is your primary goal as it has the highest click-through rates and proves to be the best long-term strategy for website owners. By using SEO instruments for your well-crafted website, you increase the chances of ranking higher and turning visitors into customers.

Better user experience (UX)

Another reason why SEO is so important for web design is that it improves user experience. A good UX requires creating relevant and worthwhile websites with proper usability and functionality. Google has a specific list of criteria to evaluate UX metrics which includes Core Web Vitals, bounce rate, mobile-friendliness, and dwell time. Google strives to rank only the best websites, so the value your site provides for users should be your priority.

Attracted target audience

There is nothing more converting than the traffic that comes from people who have a specific request. They might not order your services or goods straight away, but they will already know whom to return to. Keeping the target audience in mind is crucial for your website’s success. To achieve a constant flow of visitors, you can implement such practices as social insights, competitor research, and SERP analysis.

Things you need to work on for SEO web design

Google uses over 200 criteria to rank websites, and some of them concern user experience. In this article, we want to focus on three of them: mobile usability, readability, and navigation.

Mobile-friendliness

Over 60% of web traffic comes from mobile devices, which means that sites need to be optimized for all operating systems and screens. For a better user experience and higher search engine rankings, Google uses the page’s mobile version to index and rank it (mobile-first indexing). The best way to improve mobile friendliness is with a responsive design that makes it easy for users to access the website at any time and place. There is no need to spend time and money creating a separate website.

Source: White Chalk Road

Readability

Another way to boost SEO web design is to make the information visible and clear. While designers tend to focus more on the visual aspects of the site, the textual content also matters. That is why the goal of your team should be to choose the right fonts and sizes to make the information easy to digest. Don’t forget to work on the content as well. Make sure that your content is of proper length and well-structured. This can either put your website on top of the search results or cause it to drown amidst thousands of similar pages on the Internet.

Website navigation

Proper navigation has become one of the basic elements of web design. If visitors discover what they need in a matter of several clicks, the chances that they will stay on the website for longer increase.

Users feel less stressed, anxious, and irritated when the pages are simple and convenient. The main instruments to improve website navigation are:

• Search windows
• Clickable elements
• Internal linking
• Breadcrumbs
• Visible navigation bar

Most of these elements simplify website navigation not only for users but for crawlers as well because they understand the connections between pages and can go through them faster.

Source: Bosch

Summary

The number of people searching for information or merchants on the Internet is constantly growing. Billions of digital consumers get services and products from the comfort of their own homes, so strengthening your online presence has become a vital necessity.

In this article, we explained how SEO is able to improve organic traffic and user experience and attract the much-needed target audience. Mobile optimization, readability, and smooth website navigation are only some of the things you can improve to make your pages SEO-friendly. Good luck!