Website design plays a critical role in SEO performance because the website provides a platform for taking your business online. Therefore, the website design must have all the elements that support good SEO so that it gets opportunities for ranking well in search results, which is the only way to succeed in online business. The technical features of web design must be of the best standard that follows the best practices of the industry so that it facilitates easy crawling by the search bots that ensures better indexing. How smoothly and how well the search bots can crawl the website depends on the chosen design elements, which in turn influences the quality of indexing by search engines as well as the visibility of websites. When search engines index websites quickly, it improves the chances of pushing up the search rank.
Reasons for poor web design
Despite marketers being aware of the importance of web design in search engine optimization, which is key to successful online business, it is not always possible for them to avoid the pitfalls of poor web design. It is not the web designer and developers alone to blame for the problem of poor web design, but marketers, too, are responsible for it. Poor web design results from the inability of web designers and developers as well as marketers to play their roles correctly by making unwanted compromises. As a result, the business performance suffers too.
In this article, we will explore how web developers can keep away from the pitfalls of poor web design by following the best practices of the industry.
Navigation must fulfill the SEO needs
Not only users but search engine spiders too are very fond of websites that allow smooth and intuitive navigation. The ease of navigation leads to improved user experience, which is vital for SEO and improves online business prospects. When navigation is smooth and intuitive, it facilitates the crawling of the search bots that can access every nook and cranny of websites that lead to improved indexing by ensuring that no useful content remains uncovered. Only when indexing is proper that search engines can quickly pick up the site during searches due to its improved visibility. Poor navigation creates hurdles for search bots during crawling, which eventually results in poor indexing and affects the ranking prospects negatively.
Users welcome smooth navigation as it encourages them to spend a longer time on websites to discover it more intently, and the increased engagement reduces bounce rates and sends positive signals to search engines. Beware of using JavaScript and Flash navigation because although it improves navigation, its compatibility with search engines is doubtful.
Restricted use of graphic intensive design
Graphic design is at the heart of website design because it provides the foundation for incorporating the functional elements of design and even make it work in harmony with other design elements. Designers must maintain the right balance between the functional elements and graphic design to ensure that there is no conflict between these. The graphical design elements contribute to the aesthetics of websites and overdoing it can force designers to compromise with the functionalities that can harm SEO and create hurdles in achieving the SEO goals. Too many graphic elements in the design can become roadblocks, and you must never insert too much text into the graphics because it will remain un-indexed as search engine spiders do not crawl it.
HTML coding
Optimization heavily influences search rankings but is not the only factor because the HTML codes in web designing also have an important role to play, and designers must write it efficiently and use clean codes only. It means that you must optimize the HTML codes too to improve the ranking prospects. The relation between the content and the lines of code must be clearly defined as it can push up the ranking. By using CSS for page styling, it is possible to reduce the text formatting for the HTML code. Avoid using too many hyperlinks, heading and alt, Meta tags, and too much use of italicized and bold text because all these elements are detrimental for search rankings.
Size of website
Experts of web design advise clients to be careful with the size of the site and not to create websites that run into several pages unless it is entirely unavoidable. Optimizing the size of the website means having the most reasonable number of pages - neither too many nor just a few. The amount of content determines the size of the site that must have as many pages necessary to fit the content conveniently. The website must have enough pages to accommodate the complete content without truncating it, which is also very important for SEO performance. Incomplete or partial content affects search rankings, and no marketer should dare to take chances with it. Skillful web designers know the tricks of maintaining the optimal size of the website without any compromises.
Speedy website
To maintain proper website speed, designers take to optimizing the design elements by using few and optimized images that can otherwise slow down websites considerably. Images occupy huge space and take more time to load, but optimization helps to squeeze pictures so that it occupies less space and loads faster. Fast opening and quick loading websites attract users much more, and slow websites frustrate them so much that they do not hesitate to quit the site if it does not load with 2 or 3 seconds. The increased bounce rate pushes down rankings and ruins the SEO prospects.
Since speedy websites are now a ranking factor for Google, it gives no scope to web designers and developers to think otherwise. By using Google Insights, you can know the current speed of your website and identify the areas that improve for more speed. Once you identify the bottlenecks that reduce website speed, you can work towards removing it and make the site speedier.
Designing user-friendly websites that are also attractive for search engines should help to comply with the design standards that are part of the best practices of the industry.