13 Things Every Web Designer Needs to Know About SEO
Web designing and SEO are synonymous to each other in today’s web-smart world. Beauty alone cannot win the race of ranking higher in the SERPs. Modern web designers need to learn, that with the right kind of SEO they can do wonders for their website.
Here are 13 things every web designer needs to know about SEO:
1. Smart and Responsive Design
The key to designing an SEO-friendly website is that it should be attractive yet responsive. If your website looks good and harmonizes well with numerous devices, it is an absolute winner. With the advent of Google’s mobile-friendly algorithm and the rate of smartphone usage going up, it really is useless to design a website that doesn’t respond.
2. Clear URL Organization
A clear and logical URL formation is essential for an SEO-friendly website. Search engines dislike ambiguous URLs. For instance, if someone is looking for a fashion designer in Los Angeles, they would definitely prefer to click: www.domain.com/fashion-design–los-angeles
On the other hand, if your URL is unclear like www.domain.com/post/id96538292, Google will not rate it as valuable.
3. Speed Matters
Modern day searching is all about fast pace. If your website doesn’t load quickly, you are not only going to lose customers, you are also going to lose valuable traffic. Slow speed definitely affects your viewership, which in return harms the rankings. So, make sure your web page loads rapidly or be ready to say goodbye to your customers.
4. Partial Use of JavaScript
With the help of JavaScript, you can make a really trendy website, but it is should be used partially. Too much use of a JavaScript can have a negative impact instead of procuring positive one. The search engines prefer the limited use of JavaScript.
Web designing with seo is essentially about images and colors. Big, striking images impress almost everyone. Although, those images can enhance the appearance of a web page considerably, but optimizing them is a must. Without compromising the quality, you need to compress the images to a suitable size. Heavy images can affect your website’s overall speed. Last but not least, add alt tags to the images and describe them wherever possible.
6. Give Clear Instructions to Customers
When users visit your website, it is imperative to give them clear instructions so that it is easy for them to find what they are looking for without any hassle. Make sure that your subscription offer, shopping cart, or any other service is obvious to them. It may not affect your visibility, but it impacts your sales value.
7. Code Cleaning
The code is something due to which a lot of amazing things happen on a website. However, there are two tips that every good designer should keep in mind.
1. Don’t stuff your web page. If there is too much matter on a site, it becomes impossible to comprehend what is going.
2. It is the sign of a good developer that he/she can minimize the code and still work wonders with a web page.
It becomes too complicated for the search engines if there is too much code on a web page. On the surface, everything may appear to be in a proper order, but your bloated code may cause the search engine crawlers to detect some things going haywire. Due to this, crawlers may face difficulty in recognizing your page easily.
8. Limited Use of Flash
Limit your use of flash. Most of the devices and search engines do not respond to flash in a friendly manner. It would be advisable to avoid it completely if possible in the design of an SEO friendly website. However, if you are using flash then there is no need to use flash for the complete website. Secondly, no need to employ flash for navigation. The last tip is that do not apply flash to your text.
9. Make Navigation Easy For Everyone
Easy navigation on your website for both the users and the search engines is essential. Your menus need to be helpful and functional. You must link your pages together properly. If your users can’t figure out your navigation method, they will close your page and move on to another website.
10. Make Use of CSS Image Sprites
Making use of CSS image sprites is also very effective in reducing the stress on the server. An image sprite is basically a collection of images merged together into one large one. Compared to several images in small size, one big image is easier and quicker to download.
11. Printer Friendly
Having a printer-friendly website is very import. It gives the visitors, the freedom to print pages of their choice for reviewing or reading at their leisure. Make sure that the text is not difficult to read, no blank pages are printed, or there is no room for appalling nuisances which keep popping up. Using CSS, each page of your web page can be printed with minimum debris. Along with all these points, make sure the content is completely readable.
12. In harmony with Various Resolutions
Another factor that plays a key role is that your website should have the flexibility to be scaled down. Your website should harmonize extremely well with multiple resolutions and screen sizes. It’s not just cell phones that have numerous screen sizes and resolutions (iPad, smart phone, etc.) Desktop screens also boast of a variety of screen sizes and resolutions from 19? to 24+”You’re your site is responsive, it would definitely work well with all the variations.
13. HTML5 and CSS3 (Validated)
HTML 5 and CSS3 work well together and can help in making the site sleek, clean and fast. HTML5 is flexible enough to be scaled down as per the need of new media. HTML5 has advanced functions compared to the old HTML. CSS3 speeds up page download and giving your site a new, interactive feel. Validation is one of the most imperative elements of good code development, although a site can function without it as well. However, a web designer should be doing clean enough code that the HTML will validate properly. Validation is necessary for CSS too. Overall, validation should be measured as an essential component of good code development.
These are SEO tips for web designers which will help them to rank higher in search engines.