5 Ways Your Web Design Impacts Your SEO

By Brian Lewis
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17 Jan, 2018
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It is easy for web developers to conclude that the parts of their sites they can see and interact with don’t have quite as much to do with search engine optimization as the data in their articles, pages, and lists do. After all, according to the conventional wisdom, search engines only look at keywords and keyphrases.

Those same developers, and even a few site owners and webmasters might be surprised to learn there is a lot more to search engines than keywords and keyphrases. While it is true the data on your site matters for SEO purposes, where that information appears and how it relates to the rest of your site is equally important and in some cases more important.

So where should you start looking if you’re interested in what parts of your design might be positively or negatively affecting your SEO efforts?

Title

For most web pages, the information in the title is of primary importance when it comes to how search engines present the data in the search results. The appearance and makeup of a search engine results page or SERP should be a priority for developers. The reasons are obvious when the behavior and perception of those searching for your site are taken into account. It is much easier for the average user to determine what something is than what it means, especially when the average search engine user’s attention span is often only a few seconds.

Access

Getting a new visitor to your website can require considerable effort. Keeping them around long enough for your website to have any effect on your relationship with that potential new customer or reader requires your site to provide them with whatever they are looking for as fast as possible.

For example, if you are running a restaurant site, your menu should be prominently placed so any guest can find it. If it is not placed well, new visitors may leave quickly, which will signal search engines that your site might not belong in the highest search results. The same goes for important information like location, directions, hours, any special offers and so forth.

Simplicity

Anything that causes a user to hesitate or be unable to find the “next step,” so to speak, is likely to cause problems for search optimization. The reason is the same as the access issue. Users need to be able to find important information easily. The route, however, from here to there also has to be clear and unambiguous. This is one of the many reasons sites often have a line of links across the top edge of every page that function very much like an application menu.

This is vital for any site that isn’t a simple brochure. If a user goes “exploring” on your e-commerce site, for example, the last thing you want is for them to end up lost and unable to get back to the homepage. A good exploration experience increases time-on-site, which will make your site more competitive in search.

Responsive Design

The fastest way to get someone to leave a website today is to show them a huge page filled with words in a tiny font size. This is exactly what your guests see if you haven’t optimized your pages for mobile devices. For the significant portion of your current and future user base that browses the web on their phones or tablets, this is all but a guaranteed deal-breaker. Although it won’t damage your SEO efforts on desktops, it will negatively affect your mobile SERP placements.

Content Management

Most search engines expect all but the simplest sites to have some form of content management system or CMS running on their server. A CMS is usually the combination of a database and a set of middleware that allows sites to completely separate the presentation of their pages from the data in them. This was one of the original goals of cascading style sheets, or CSS, which is one reason CMS architectures rely heavily on style sheets for consistency. Using a CMS gives search engines conventional points of reference and allows your site to be indexed faster and more efficiently, which leads to better results.

Search optimization is practically guaranteed to be a continuous need for almost every website. If you are considering building or updating your site, it is vital that you think about the effects your design decisions will have in addition to the information you present.

Resources
https://digitalfireflymarketing.com/our-blog/impact-web-design-seo/
https://searchengineland.com/seo-website-design-everything-need-know-272899
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/top-10-mistakes-web-design/
https://www.stlseoco.com/
https://www.w3schools.com/html/html_responsive.asp