Nearly 70% of all online experiences begin with a search engine. Most users (75%) never look beyond the first page, though. Meanwhile, 51% of all website traffic comes from an organic search.
Optimizing your website for search engine optimization (SEO) can help you reach these search engine users. Then, you can start increasing traffic and improving your bottom line.
You'll need to update your website design for SEO first. Here are a few tips that can help you design a website to boost your rankings!
On-Page Optimization
An SEO-friendly website is easier for search engine crawlers to review. These crawlers, or bots, can then better understand your site structure and content.
Here are a few on-page factors to consider as you design your website for SEO.
Unique Content
Google will check your website for fresh, unique content. It also determines if your content aligns with the user's search intent before determining your website rankings.
If you want to boost your rankings, start by gathering audience and keyword research. Determine what questions your customers ask while online. Then, create unique, branded content that appeals to their needs.
Creating unique content throughout the year will help you appear for a range of search queries.
The more often consumers see your brand and content, the more likely brand awareness and recognition will grow. Then, consumers will have an easier time remembering your brand.
Make sure you're not plagiarizing as you begin creating your blog content. Otherwise, search engines might flag your site. Your search engine rankings might drop as a result.
As you begin creating website content, make sure to diversify your content marketing strategy, too. For example, you can create:
- Blogs/articles
- Webinars
- eBooks
- Polls
- Quizzes
- Videos
- Lists
Interactive content like polls and quizzes can encourage more engagement, which could make your brand more memorable. Visitors will also linger on your site, increasing your dwell times. Improving your dwell times could improve your website rankings.
Creating fresh content will help you drive relevant traffic to your website. Make sure you're creating content with your target audience in mind.
Focus on long-tail keywords, which feature four or more words. These keywords are more precise, allowing you to understand the user's needs.
Appealing to their needs and interests can help you generate more traffic. As people click on a link to your site, your clickthrough rate will rise, too. Improving these metrics can help you rise on search engine result pages (SERPs).
Unique Title and Descriptions
Your SEO titles and meta descriptions will appear on SERPs as results. Writing compelling, engaging titles and descriptions can boost your clickthrough rate. Then, you can start increasing traffic to your site.
When writing your titles and descriptions, make sure they feature the post's target keyword. Otherwise, you won't rank for that keyword.
Make sure your target keyword appears in an H1 header. Then, use smaller headers (H2, H3, etc.) within your content to organize your thoughts. Using subheaders can help improve readability and indexing.
Content Structure
When writing your blog posts, make sure to consider your content structure. Proper content structure will help bots crawl and index the page.
For example, your target keyword should appear in the:
- Page title
- URL
- An H1 header
- Opening and closing paragraphs
- Body text
- Image alt text
- Image file name
Consider adding an author bio to your blog posts, too. Author bios can boost the writer's credibility.
Image Optimization
Don't forget to optimize the images you add to your posts as well.
First, make sure your images are condensed. Otherwise, they could slow your site down.
Optimize your image file names and alt text with your target keyword to help search engine crawlers understand the context, too. Optimizing images can also help you appear for image searches.
Internal Linking
As you create blog content, make sure to add internal links to your posts. Internal links send readers to other pages on your site.
Internal linking can help search engine crawlers understand relevant, associated pages. Creating a stronger internal architecture can improve your website rankings.
Load Times
Your web design can impact your web page load times. Run your site through Google's PageSpeed Insights. Determine what's causing your load times to lag.
For example, you might need to condense your images. You can also:
- Minify CSS, HTML, and Javascript
- Reduce redirects
- Remove render-blocking JavaScript
- Leverage browser caching
- Use a content distribution network
- Improve server response times
A one-second delay in mobile load times could impact mobile conversions by up to 20%. After all, 75% of smartphone users turn to search to address immediate needs. If your site lags, they'll leave.
As they leave, your bounce rate will rise, hurting your website rankings.
If you're struggling to improve your load times, work with a web design and development agency this year.
Mobile Optimization
Run your site through Google's Mobile-Friendly Test to make sure it's mobile-ready, too.
Mobile devices account for nearly 70% of all website traffic. As a result, Google enabled mobile-first indexing in 2016. It will check the mobile version of your site first to determine your website rankings.
As you design a website for your business, make sure it's mobile-ready and responsive. If you neglect mobile users, they'll leave, increasing your bounce rate.
User Experience
A positive user experience (UX) indicates your site is easy to use. Improving your site's UX can increase dwell times and conversions.
Run your site through Google's Core Web Vitals. Otherwise, make sure to:
- Use an SSL certificate (HTTPS)
- Use safe browsing
- Minimize intrusive interstitials
- Ensure your site is mobile-friendly
- Improve page load times
- Remove unnecessary, large page elements
- Opt for responsive images
- Set up lazy loading
- Remove unnecessary third-party scripts
- Reduce JavaScript execution time
- Minimize main thread work
You can work with an experienced web design and development team to make these improvements to your site.
Rank Up: Create Your SEO Friendly Website Today
Learning how to create an SEO friendly website can help boost your website rankings. Higher rankings will help you generate more website traffic and leads. Get started with these simple tips.
Otherwise, consider working with an experienced design and development team. They can improve your site, improving your bottom line in the process.
Eager to get started? Contact us today to learn more.
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FAQs
Pricing varies according to the number of pages, integrations, and timeline of a project. Currently, our minimum engagement is $3000.
An initial strategy call to discuss your goals and needs is crucial to getting you a bid!
We will give you an accurate bid for your project in a no-pressure call!
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You will never receive a website that you do not absolutely love.
In order to make sure we are on track with your business' needs, we hold several revisions during the design and development process.
A typical website from the day it is greenlit until it is completed takes 2-4 weeks. We will work closely with you throughout each step of development to make sure you are happy with the end result. If you would like us to accelerate this process, we can do so without sacrificing quality service.
We're happy to be your content strategist or copywriter at an additional charge. We can help you for the entire site, just a few pages - we’re flexible!
Definitely! Webflow is a popular tool among professionals in the web design industry. It's known for its user-friendly drag-and-drop interface and powerful design tools that let you create custom, responsive websites without needing to know how to code.
It's used by everyone from top design studios to startups and enterprise-level companies.
Basically, if you want to create a stunning website but don't want to mess with code, Webflow is the way to go!
*We strongly encourage to enroll on our web care plan to ensure you are completely covered.*
We will walk through training on how to use your site as we approach launch. We wait until your site is almost complete so that you can learn to use the CMS and make updates on the backend of your actual website!
We’ll also record this training so you can see it in the future.