Discover 7 essential SEO tips you should keep in mind when designing your website to enhance visibility, increase traffic, and improve your rankings in search results.
Danni Jessen
So, you have come up with the idea for the coolest website with the slickest design – but have you considered SEO?
You might know that it involves writing relevant keywords in the page’s title and headings. That’s a good start – and it is important to remember. But SEO is much more than that.
This guide is written for those designing a website for a client. If you are designing a website for yourself, I recommend reading on anyway – if you want to rank well on Google.
As a web designer, you may think that if the client wants their website optimised for search engines but does not know SEO themselves, they should hire an SEO consultant. That makes sense, but remember: The website is the very foundation for all future SEO work. As a web designer, you influence whether the SEO consultant will have an easy or difficult job optimising the site.
If you are designing the website for yourself, you are also doing yourself a favour by considering SEO from the outset. That way, you will not have to spend time making adjustments later.
Let’s start with one of the most fundamental points that should be on your SEO to-do list when it comes to website design:
You might say keyword analysis, but remember, I am a web designer?
Yes, I am aware of that. But see it as an investment in long-term client satisfaction. In the short term, the client may be happy as long as the design looks great and professional. But in the long term, it is traffic to the site that your client depends on. That is why it is crucially important that the site is given the best possible chance to achieve strong rankings in search results.
Fair enough, but how do you actually conduct a keyword analysis?
First of all, if your client already has an SEO consultant, let that person conduct the analysis together with the client. It is much easier for an SEO consultant to carry out a thorough analysis than for you, whose main expertise is web design.
However, clients often do not have an SEO consultant involved at this stage, as it is usually a consideration that comes later – once the website is live. But you have the opportunity, already in the design phase, to factor in the relevant keywords.
A keyword analysis can be broken down into the following steps:
What are the client’s main products and services (the low-hanging fruit)?
What does the client want to prioritise?
Brainstorm. No keyword is too creative at this stage, as long as it is relevant for the client.
Explaining this in detail could fill an entire blog post. Until we publish such a guide, I recommend checking out YouTube, where you will find plenty of video tutorials on how to use Google’s Keyword Planner for your keyword analysis.
When selecting keywords, consider these factors, which affect a keyword’s potential for your client:
Once you have selected the keywords your website should be optimised for, it is helpful to visualise the structure using a fishbone template like the one below:
As you can see, I have planned for keywords to be defined at both the homepage and category levels. For example, under “Category 1”, there are four subcategories, and the URLs should be optimised for their respective keywords. Do the same for “Category 2”, “Category 3”, etc.
Now that you and your client have agreed on which search queries to target, you are ready to create the individual pages in your website’s menu structure. When defining URLs, make sure to include the relevant keyword in a user-friendly way. This helps both your visitors and search engines to understand what the page is about.
Be concise and precise! Several studies have shown that the best rankings in Google tend to go to pages with the shortest URLs. One reason for this is Google’s focus on user experience. After all, Google depends on satisfied users. And it is much easier for a user to digest a short, precise URL than a long, complicated one.
Here is an example of a short and user-friendly URL:
As a web designer, you will probably feel more at home in this section than you did when it came to keyword analysis and URLs. Usability is a key part of good website design. Here is the explanation – from an SEO perspective.
Google monitors your site’s bounce rate and session duration. The bounce rate shows how many visitors interact with only one page before leaving your site. If your page loads slowly, is difficult to navigate, or otherwise discourages users from engaging with your content, your bounce rate will increase. Google will definitely notice this. After all, Google’s business depends on satisfied users – and what is a clearer sign of dissatisfaction than a user leaving immediately after landing on your page? The same goes for session duration. Google measures how long visitors stay on your website.
You can monitor both bounce rate and session duration in Google Analytics.
Do not use images larger than what will actually be displayed on your website. This keeps both Google and your users happy, as the load time will be shorter than if you upload unnecessarily large images.
As a rule of thumb, use JPG instead of PNG. PNG files are larger and should only be used if the benefit of higher image quality outweighs the negative impact on load time.
Once you have saved your image in the correct format and size, it is a good idea to run it through a compression tool such as Kraken.io.
You can read much more about this in my colleague’s post on image SEO optimisation.
More than half of all searches today are made from mobile devices. That is why Google is rolling out Mobile First. This means Google will primarily assess the mobile version of your site. This assessment will impact how well your site ranks in search results – both on mobile and on desktop. So it is more important than ever to design a website that offers a great user experience on mobile.
Today, there are mobiles and tablets in all manner of screen sizes, all used to search for information on Google. Therefore, it is crucial that your website’s interface is flexible and can adjust and scale to any screen size. A responsive design is an absolute must.
You might also consider implementing AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) on parts of your site. AMP pages load directly in search results, which can offer huge benefits. It means users can access your content much faster after clicking. AMP pages are marked with a small lightning symbol in search results, and as users learn that this symbol means faster load times, more will click these results. This increases your CTR (Click Through Rate), which is also important for Google’s assessment of your site – and therefore for your rankings.
With the right CTAs placed in the right positions, you can significantly increase your conversion rate. For example, place your contact form, newsletter sign-up form and similar elements where they are clearly visible to users. This might be a sleeknote slide-in that appears when a user has read half the content on a landing page, or an exit-intent popup that appears when the user is about to leave the page.
If you have an online shop, also consider the colour of your “Buy” and “Go to basket” buttons. It is vital that users never have to search for the button you want them to click. Always ensure that the colour of these buttons stands out clearly from the rest of your website content, so they are easy to spot.
Think about “white space” too. The more empty space you have around your call-to-action button, the more prominent it will appear.
It is not enough to simply bold your headings. They need to be tagged with <h1></h1>, <h2></h2>, and so on.
For best SEO results, make sure you have only one H1 heading on each landing page of your website. You can use as many H2 headings as you like – as long as they are relevant to the content.
The H1 should include the keyword you want that page to be found for in search results. This should be one of the keywords you identified in your keyword analysis.
When writing your website’s titles, it is equally important to include the chosen keyword. Google reads from left to right, so the further to the left you place your keyword in the title, the more value Google will assign to it. In other words, Google assumes your page is mostly about what you have written furthest to the left. Priority number one, however, is that your title is attractive and relevant to your target audience when your page appears in their search results. After all, the most important thing is that users click on the result – and that it is the right users clicking.
Remember to install SSL on your website. In my colleague’s blog post What is an SSL certificate? you can read more about its SEO impact.
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