How Good Web Design Can Improve Your Google Rankings
Updated: Friday, 4 October 2019
Design is a vital part of how your business appears to the public. A well-designed website can convey your brand identity and encourage a user to buy or use your service. But did you know that the design of your website plays a role in how well you rank on Google? And what’s more, did you know that a beautifully designed website without the appropriate optimisation may not rank as well as a visually poor site? Continue reading to find out more about the best practices in combining web design and SEO.
There’s more to great digital design than just aesthetic appeal or a beautiful graphics – and in fact, we are of the opinion that in order to convert browsers into buyers, and maybes into must-haves – we think you need both. There are certain boxes which must be ticked in order to rank well on Google and to appeal to your users. We’re going to tell you exactly what you need to do to make sure your website is one of your best-selling tools.
Make sure your website is responsive
Google released an update a couple of years ago which ranked websites that were mobile optimised ahead of sites that did not have that optimisation in place. If your website is still not mobile responsive, you may be penalised by Google for this. Optimisation means that your website pages will appear in the right size and style depending on the device that the user is viewing your site on. This is changed through your website’s CSS (cascading stylesheets) and can often be updated quickly and easily using something like WordPress and a template.
Make the user experience a pleasure
When a new user lands on your website it is your responsibility to make their ‘experience’ seamless in that they should be able to find exactly what they are looking for quickly and easily. This comes through clean and compelling copywriting but also relies on the navigation your website has in place.
When you have a clear and simple navigation, search engines find it simple to rank your business for that topic. Make sure your category pages and your menus align so that when people land on your page they get to exactly what they are searching for.
It is also helpful if you use a folder structure that makes it straightforward to see what the page is going to refer to. If you stock white t-shirts, make sure your category page has the words ‘white t-shirts’ in it, and ensure your URL has the phrase ‘/white-t-shirts/’ in it as well.
Make your visual content ‘crawlable’
When you design a website, some of the visual content – things like call to action buttons and banners – are indexed as an image. This means that when Google’s bots are crawling the web looking for content to index, they won’t index any of the text on your images, and you miss out on this opportunity.
Try making sure that your text is displayed in web fonts, CSS and HTML which makes your content searchable. And also use names that describe your images and that are SEO optimised. We love working with Resurge Digital in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley for SEO and all things digital marketing strategy. They are a team of no-nonsense marketers who understand how to do all the work on the back end to get you where you want to be: in front of your audience.
Make sure your page loads quickly
Again, a critical part of the user experience is making sure that the performance of your web page does not impact on the user’s enjoyment of your information. If your page takes a while to load, or is even anything short of instant, your users will become frustrated because they are used to instant information appearing at the click of a button. You can ensure your page loads quickly by compressing image files, and by ensuring that your content is cached for faster browsing.
All of your web design work contributes to a better position on Google’s rankings, which is great news for your business. If you would like to know more about how to improve the ranking of your website through design, please call us on 07 2140 7311.
