Web Designers and Developer Need to Know SEO – Top 9 Reasons

Web designers strongly oppose search engine optimization services. Not something new. Web designers love to elevate brand on a screen with an aesthetic design and communicate the idea to others.

Mark this, when web designers try to pass on the message to other humans, it must access the cruel eye of a robot, as it does not understand aesthetics. But again, web designers have given up the path to please this so-called robot called SEO.

We came across an article in WebDesign Ledger, which shares the top 9 best practices to make the web designers know what is SEO and how it can help them to keep their creation (websites) in track. We made a short summary and our own assessment to stop the designers from ignoring SEO.

SEO - What Is It?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a strategy to develop and improve your website so that it gets a pretty search engine rank. We know that the habit of the 75% of the searchers is to scroll the first page and look for the desirable contents. Therefore, preferably everyone battles to arrive on the first page.

Why SEO Is Important For Website Designers And Developers?

SEO is important since it is important to your clients. Being a digital marketing agency, we have made out team of designers feel the pulse of SEO. We shared the research study t hat says, over 571 websites are created every second and thus your website has high probability of being lost forever in the abyss known “Beyond Page 1 of Google.”

1. Site Structure

If you want to appear easily on the major search engine pages for more number of visitors against the associated keywords, nothing but a logical layout can make the website easy to crawl. Say no to those radical, rebel and isolated pages, connect to something functional.

2. Navigation

Use shallow architecture as it is better to access any page and refers back to the site structure. Even it is good for the maintenance of site architecture. Though Googlebot can now process JavaScript, it does not mean that you will go mad over it, since the crawlers are having a limit.

3. Meta Description

You may be familiar with the term, but not with its functionality. Well, meta description is a little snippet on the search page that provides an overview of the pages. These descriptions are less than 160 characters. Meta description is your perfect opportunity to entice visitors to click your link and make your keyword noticeable. Just write description only for the important pages, and do not duplicate your meta descriptions for multiple pages.

4. Content

Gone are the days of over-stuffing and invisible text, robots are now smarter. Now, content rules the digital kingdom. Search engines reward longer posts, if you have a blog take time to design a quality blog post and bring value to your site. If you are more a designer and not a writer, then hire someone to do the contents.

5. Optimized Images

When you do not spend time to name your image, you lose a lot value in SEO. It is great to rename the image with the theme specifying the content; it explains the image clearly and maximizes your keywords.

6. Optimized URL

Make sure you are optimizing URLs with hyphenated keywords. For example, if the blog post is on Google algorithm updates, then URL must be www.yoursite.com/google-algorithm-update. Keep the target keywords in mind and use that in the title of your blog post. Avoid joining words, underscores instead use hyphens.

7. Absolute URLs

Absolute linking cuts down confusion and reduces server response time, use this when you relative linking. Simple practice yet powerful and they are of two types –

• Absolute, ex. <a href=”www.yoursite.com”>
• Relative, ex. <a href=”/home.html”>

8. Site Speed

Well, 40% of visitors abandon a website that takes 3 seconds to load. You like to impress your visitor with a cool and responsive website designs, but slow speed might negatively affect your SEO. Since 2010, Google admitted that loading speed is one of the top ways they determine page ranking. Well, keeping aside what search engine robots classify as fast and slow, but designers – it is important to optimize your backend with a logical site structure.

9. Rich Snippets

Snippets also show up in SERPs and provide additional details on particular results. For example while looking for Samsung Front Load Washer, you will find that some sites provide ratings, amount of reviewers, price, and indicate if the item is in stock. This in turn increases your organic search traffic and provides value to the person searching for the keyword.

So see, SEO is equally important as your designs, how would people look into your designs if the website does not appear in the popular search engine results pages.

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