Your website is the centerpiece of your digital marketing strategy. It is your digital ID and virtual storefront. It helps people find you in the digital landscape.
This is where many businesses get it wrong: optimizing the website only after it has been designed and launched. SEO should be built into their website – not added in later. We often get calls from business owners who have an existing website and are only calling in after noticing that the site is either losing a considerable amount of traffic or has stopped ranking for keywords it used to rank for. The mistake is thinking that SEO is some band-aid that can remedy a website’s digital marketing loopholes, when in fact, it isn’t.
What Constitutes an SEO-Friendly Website?
Building an SEO-friendly site requires a careful and structured approach to accurately represent your business, your company image, and your products or services.
At a fundamental level, an SEO-friendly site is one that can be easily detected, explored, and crawled by a search engine. Every single page of your website must have these characteristics to ensure your online visibility. When it comes to SEO, your website must work with the search engine algorithm, not against it.
An SEO-friendly site must:
- be user-friendly with solid UX and UI
- use SEO-friendly features (which means less Ajax and JavaScript, among other elements)
- be mobile-friendly
- have an optimal loading speed
Common SEO Mistakes Web Designers Commit
Not all web designers are well-versed in integrating SEO-friendly elements into web design, and some use design practices and elements that are not SEO-friendly.
One of the most common mistakes we often see is the use of headings. Designers often use headings from an aesthetic point of view. In SEO, however, there should be only one H1 per page; the rest of the content can be broken down into H2, H3s, H4s, and so on as needed.
Flash elements used to be very popular, but they don’t work for your website’s UI/UX and for search engines. If you must use Flash, the designer must limit its use to small design elements. More importantly, Flash elements should not shroud keyword-rich content. Otherwise, search engines will not be able to read your page. Better yet, start using HTML 5 to replace areas that would previously have been designed in Flash.
One of the trickiest things to execute in web design, yet also one of the most important elements in SEO, is your website’s design structure. An SEO-friendly way to approach website navigation is by observing best practices, such as using descriptive labels, minimizing drop-down menus, and limiting menu options.
SEO-Friendly Web Design in Minnesota
Create a compelling and attractive virtual storefront with web design services from Sievers Creative. We are an established web design company in Minnesota dedicated to delivering websites that are packed with solid features designed to boost your online visibility.
Our goal is not just to build your website, but ultimately, to make it effective in building a solid online presence that will convert visitors into customers and drive business growth.
Work with us on your next project. Get in touch with us today.
