5 Web Design Rules for Better SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of helping a website be found. Kevin Costner’s character, Ray Kinsella, famously was told in the movie Field of Dreams, "if you build it, they will come". However, in SEO if you build it you must then cultivate inbound pathways to attract the desired search traffic.

If you build it, they will come …with SEO

From a web design perspective, onsite structural work will help gradually improve the ranking signals Google and other search engines use to determine how to rank a site for relevant searches. Internet OMG preaches relentless improvement; this is certainly a fundamental truth with SEO as a site never truly achieves SEO nirvana. Rather it needs to relentlessly workshop, modify, and fortify to demonstrate to the search engines' algorithms that it is alive and kicking.

As such, here are 5 important web design concepts necessary for giving a website a fighting chance in SEO:

1. Site Fundamentals

There are several core elements that set the stage for a well-optimized website design. This includes having a domain that makes sense and relates to what you do, good site speed, text-based content (not images, flash, or video), internal link structure that the search engine can crawl including XML sitemaps, proper use of heading tags (H1, H2), and a sensible URL naming structure for internal pages.

2. Focused Content

Content quality is more effective than quantity. A well written and structured page is more effective at optimizing toward a targeted keyword phrase than an onslaught of articles. Having said that, it is useful to craft some articles and have each contain an internal link back to the primary page that is the focus page for the targeted keyword phrase. Include links on blog posts to a feature page on the site related to that post, thus creating a network of internal links on the site to boost that feature page’s authority. 

3. Transition from Rules Based Content

Web designers harness template rules to automatically assemble meta title and description tags for all pages. As such, inevitably some pages will have duplicate page titles. It is good practice for a business owner to take their new site and concoct unique metadata to replace the original placeholder information. Every page should have its own set of meta content tags to help search engines get a better individualized grasp of each page.

4. Commitment to Change

SEO is a long-term strategy. Sometimes a client will ask their web developer to be sure to have their site “SEO’d” during its design and development. They presume it will come out of the gate SEO-ready, whereas in actuality a new website will not immediately witness quick placement in search simply due to proper structure. It will be many months before a noticeable rise in search rankings happens because it takes time to foster the authority and relevance necessary to compete in search results. During that time a website owner/admin needs to learn and refine the site in conjunction with signals obtained from the search engines’ algorithms early placements. 

5. Battleground

Competitors are active in enhancing their tactics too. Some of them will be making hefty investments for intelligently optimized content and formulating placements on authoritative publishers. An investment in well-written content and custom design elements can help create a more competitive site. Furthermore, one of the SEO signals is overall site traffic and on-site visit durations. SEO has a symbiotic relationship with other digital marketing strategies including social media marketing that recruits repeat visitors. This traffic can produce more backlinks and some of them will generate subsequent repeat visits as direct (type-in) visits.