10 SEO Website Design Tips To Rank Better On SERP

A great website always has an excellent web design, focused on good user experience and search engine friendliness. This can be achieved by following some good SEO techniques and practices. You have to keep in mind that you are designing the website for people but at the same time should be findable by search engines. There is no magic formula to get you ranked on the top SERP results. But, we have some SEO Website Design tips that you can follow to set you on the path of growth.

Why Should You Choose an SEO Friendly Web Design?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is not just a SERP ranking tactic. It is the most reliable online strategy that can drive traffic to a website. Let us look at some interesting SEO statistics:

• According to research, 53 percent of trackable website traffic comes from organic search(through search engines).
• Around 70 percent of the organic traffic goes to first-page results.
• On the flip side, around 90 percent of web pages get no organic traffic.

So it is evident that you should choose an SEO-friendly web design whether you are a small business or an international business.

How To Design An SEO Friendly Website?

Here are some SEO website design tips that can help you design a more user-friendly and search engine-friendly website that drives more traffic, conversion, and growth.

Keep Your URL Short And Simple

Your URL is your online address. Every page of your website has a different URL to find it. Your URL structure is important for search engines and people alike.

A URL like ‘https://techpullers.com/website-dev.php’ is simple and easy to remember while one like

https://businessnow.com/1mUnUSV9EOFQ6Yzji_WYsRGS4Fp5CtLUmySOV9NZwBOc is difficult for people to use. It is the same for search engines. Search engines prefer short and simple URLs. So, make sure that you work on your URLs.

Create A Simple Website Architecture

Your site architecture decides how your website is organized. It also decides how easy it is for a user to navigate through your website. Do not create a messy and tangled maze on your website. If you use a simple site structure, it would be easier for users to find what they are looking for. You can provide sitemaps to let search engines know how to crawl your site.

Focus on Page Loading Speed

Your website should have a fast loading time because users do not have time or patience or need to wait for your page to load. They will leave the site and move on to the next website. Websites with high loading times will lead to higher bounce rates. This will affect SEO factors indirectly. Fast-loading web pages play an important role in user experience. It is recommended to always keep the website light and fast. With the Google Mobile First Update, faster websites rank better in mobile search results.

To improve the website speed, you can consider the following steps:

• Use a fast hosting service provider
• Optimize the images and videos on the site
• Delete unused plugins in WordPress
• Avoid using 3rd party integration plugins that are not necessary.
• You can use lazy loading but make sure that you don’t lazy load important content.

Put Mobile-Friendly Design First

Smartphones and mother mobile devices are the go-to options for most people to browse. The number of users who use mobiles for search is rising every day. With the Mobile-First update, Google has made it clear that it is going to prioritize websites that are best for mobile devices.

• You can choose a responsive web design to make your website work well on any device that the user prefers.
• Always think about the mobile view when designing. Be careful with the placement and size of buttons.
• Use large fonts and mobile-friendly templates .
• Avoid heavy images and CSS that take a lot of time to load.

Optimize With Keywords

Keyword research is one of the first things that you have to do when you are designing a website. You need to understand what your users are searching for to find relevant content. You have to ensure that your website will be ranked for the right keywords. Two ways you can use keywords right in your website is

Use Long Tailed Keywords

Do not design websites with short-tail keywords only because of the search volume. The high-volume keywords have extremely high competition that decreases the chances of the ranking. Gather the long tail information and transactional queries related to the business and you rank quickly for those keywords.

For example, if you are an Interior Designer in India, then concentrate on the keywords like “Best Interior Designers in India”, “Top Interior Designers in India” etc for quick results.

Include Semantic Keywords

To increase keyword density and frequency, focus on specific keywords, called semantic keywords. These are keywords that are related to the intent behind the user’s search and are relevant to the topic.

For example, for an Interior Designer in India, you can use keywords like home décor, interior designing, architects, interior designing industry, homes, rooms, commercial interior design, office interior design, etc. to target a wider audience.

Use Descriptive Titles and Header Tags

The title of the page is the foremost element to consider for On-Page Optimization. Make sure that you keep your title and headings descriptive so that it is easier for people to understand what the content is about. Optimize the title with suitable keywords in proper heading tags. The correct use of tags provides search engines with information on the structure of the HTML document and enriches Google to index the page faster.

• Use the <h1> tag for the main topic of the page. 
• Indicate content hierarchy and delineate blocks of similar content by making good use of <h2> through <h6> tags. 
• Use the business name in the title for branding.
• Always remember to avoid over-optimization and use of multiple <h1> tags on a single page which prevents your topic from getting diluted.

For example, suppose you have to write the title for the above client, then you can give “Best Interior Designers in India – XYZ Interior Designers” as the optimized title in the <h1> tag. A title like this can explain what you do, has a relevant and long-tail keyword that serves the user and search engines.

Optimize The Content on Page

Content is the single most important thing on the page. Content is the spine of a website and it is what the search engines feed on. It is the most important component in SEO ranking and also the most important SEO website design tip. Your content must be simple, relevant, meaningful, engaging, and also includes the target keywords for the page.

Keep the content unique. Do not copy or duplicate content. Even if you are writing a service page for the same service in different locations, you have to write separate content for each page.

Content is not just about text. You can include images, infographics, videos, and even gifs. But, make sure that images and videos are optimized.

Include content that best serves the user’s purpose. Research shows that most users spend 10-30 seconds on the website. So in a short span, we have to generate user interest to stay on the website. If your website provides all the information the user wants this will help with a better user experience. If a user spends more time on the website, there is a higher chance of conversion.

Maintain fresh content on your website. You can include blogs or news to keep your pages relevant and fresh. You can also integrate YouTube videos.

Provide correct details on your web page; details like your address, location, and contact details should be correct and updated.

Make Your Website Easy To Index

Making your website easier for search engine crawlers to crawl and the index increases your chance to get better ranks on SERP. For this, you can do the following:

Google bots cannot understand the content on video and images. For this, you can add Alt tags for images and transcripts for video content. This increases the accessibility of your websites. Ensure that all of the images in your website have ALT attributes with the selected keywords as the text content. Search engines will read alt attributes and other text content on-page and use them when determining the relevancy of the page to the searcher queries. It is also used in ranking image-based search engines like Google Images. Apart from an SEO point of view, image alt attributes help users who cannot see images.

Add descriptive headings which explain what the content is about.

Avoid hidden content on page as this can create problems with indexing and can be treated as spammy.

Use‘noindex’ tags and ‘canonical’ tags correctly. Noindex tags specify pages that are not to be crawled and indexed. It is best to keep all the pages on your website indexable. Canonical tags specify which page should be ranked when you have different pages with the same content. For example, product pages on Ecommerce websites may have products with the same specifications but different color options.

Custom Meta Descriptions. The Meta description is the content visible to users in search results and is a short description that provides details about the webpage. Hence, use unique Metadata. Don’t use the same pattern for all pages; instead, use a custom pattern and keywords based on the subject. Every page should have its own set of Meta descriptions. It is just one of the things that help search engines get a better grasp of how the structure of the website is constructed.

Use Links Wisely

Links are how search engine bots discover new web pages. Users can find other relevant pages through links. Following a proper internal linking structure and inbound link-building strategy can make it easier for crawlers to find and index your web pages and also increase your page authority.

Use internal links correctly. Make sure that you have used the correct anchor texts and linked the pages correctly.

Make sure that you provide High-Quality Backlinks Only. Do not generate low-quality links to increase the ranking. Your site may be penalized due to low-quality links if you use such link-building strategies. You can use Guest Blog, Press Release, Resource sharing, etc. to create quality backlinks. Also, use ‘no follow’ tags to avoid spammy websites from linking to your website.

Provide Excellent User Experience

This is the first and foremost element to consider in web design. Make sure that you provide what your users are expecting and more. Ultimately, user experience decides how much time users spend on your website.

• Make your website fast loading and easily navigable.
• Use correct tags and headers.
• Give relevant and easily consumable and engaging content.
• Highlight important details.
• Use a design that captures the attention of the user but does not annoy them.
• Try to make your website interactive.
• Choose fonts and colors that are easier to read.

Conclusion

When creating your website make sure that you optimize in design and prioritize user experience. Search engines advise creating content for users and consider search engine bots as one of the users. You can make it easier for search engine spiders to crawl the website. With these 10 SEO website design tips, you can make sure to keep your website simple, responsive, relevant, accessible, light, and accessible.