Your website should be carefully designed with two audiences in mind: Google (or alternative search engines) and the internet user. Yet, with each update, that gap closes – as Google is highly dedicated to providing the best user experience possible.
Thus, a gripping design with cool features may not be fully appreciated by the search engine – but it will tell them that the users liked your content. Still, it’s the technical SEO work, that will make the most difference for your rank.
Furthermore, efforts to raise your rank is a seriously time-consuming task. That’s why people hire experts like Web Designer Cape Cod To handle it for them. When you are working with people that do SEO everyday the result can be outstanding.
Here are some of the things you should know before making that move.
How Are Design and Rank Related
Many people wonder; how do you rank first on Google? In truth, the answer could take hours to explain. Still, suffice it to say that your website design combined with business listings, content writing and social media marketing will yield the greatest results. Note that the proper website optimization is what makes your other efforts much more effective.
Not to mention, the design will have even more importance if you’d prefer to rank organically, as opposed to paid advertising. Paid advertising is convenient for things like promotion or brand recognition. But, over 90% of the clicks go to organic results. So, investing in a quality website is worth it.
When you’re planning out your new website design, make sure you know how to speak the search engines’ language. Meaning: what are bots looking at when they crawl your website? Also, how does it use that information to determine how well the site is doing?
How to Know How Your Website is Doing
One good place to start in your website redesign services is to see how well your current website fares. Try running a fetch and render in Google search console. This will cause a bot to crawl your website then show you what it saw and how it got there.
This can help you determine some important factors that you can build into the website design. In this regard, some points to keep in mind are:
· Speed
· Mobile Compatibility
· Security
· Relevance
· Site Architecture
· User Experience
Remember, a vast majority of internet searches start on Google, and they’d like to keep it that way. So, their ranking algorithm is designed to deliver exactly what users are looking for. Still, you need to give the search engine a little help.
How to Make a Website Search Engine Friendly
There are around 200 different ranking factors that you can optimize for. This will make search engines understand and even favor your webpage. Some ideas that immediately come to mind are:
Sitemap: Google uses this as a cheat sheet to quickly navigate through your site architecture. It will also judge how easily a user can navigate the site. The very presence of a sitemap can help your ranking.
Speed: Since the speed update in July 2018, slow-loading websites will lose points. This is likely a response to the fact that users expect a website to load in 3 seconds or less. Now, people are using minimal motion graphics and simplistic designs to keep the website light and quick.
Google Integrations: Naturally, activating Google Search Console and Google Maps in your website would make your website more favorable. It increases crawlability and helps with fast indexing.
Security: If a website does not have an SSL certificate, Google will alert visitors that it is not safe and shouldn’t be trusted. Similarly, an agreement terms and privacy page also show that you have a trusted business.
How to Make a Website User Friendly
Wondering: “how do I get my website up the Google rankings? The answer is in gaining honest, user appreciation. Even if Google can’t comprehend something, it will know if users like it or not. Here are some key points:
Contact Us Page: 64% of people want to see a company’s contact information on the Homepage. Furthermore, 44% of those visitors will leave if they can’t find the information. Don’t underestimate the power of easy access.
Mobile Compatibility: This is hugely important now, as many users believe that companies who don’t have mobile websites, simply don’t care. In fact, over 40% of users will leave the webpage.
Location: Pointing out your location when necessary is important for your rank, because Google does take location into account. After all, a business in Massachusetts is irrelevant to someone looking for service in the Texas area, for example.
While there are many other ways to please your users, remember that too many bells and whistles can seriously slow down the webpage. It may also be an overwhelming experience, so choose your features wisely. Instead, turn a little more focus to your keyword implementation.
Keywords Usage
One could write a whole book on keyword usage, but we’ll try and get to the point.
Keywords help search engines understand the context of the web page and help users find you. So, keywords need to be placed within relevant content, otherwise the value of your webpage will drop. In turn, so will your ranking as more and more users bounce from the website.
Try the idea of topic clustering. A landing page is used for a seed keyword which will then link to other pages that address the topic in detail. This can help you rank higher for specific keywords, as Google will see that your site has a lot of information about it.
If you’re still wondering how to get to the top of Google search rankings, then do some serious research before committing. Each website is different and sometimes a redesign can devastate previous SEO efforts. Hence, get help from leading web design boston specialist for sound advice.