Web design and SEO are two facets of digital marketing that go hand in hand. In order for great web design to shine, it has to be properly optimized to rank highly on search engines. On the other hand, great web design is often a major key to ensuring that a website experiences SEO success.
While designing a website, there is a number of considerations to be made so that it aligns with the SEO standards laid out by Google and other major search engines. In this post from the Geek Powered Studios blog, we’ll discuss how to best design a website for SEO success.
How Do Web Design & SEO Work Together?
Fundamentally, a website designed with SEO in mind is one that is easily crawlable by the major search engines. This means that when a search engine crawler arrives at your website, the bot can explore and understand the content of your website and how the different pages work together without any hindrance or issues.
Removing the possibility of any issues with the search engine crawlers once they arrive at the website is the first step to designing a website for SEO success, and that starts with how information is structured on your website.
Structuring A Site For SEO
Proper website structuring allows for a smooth crawling process from the search engines, but it also plays a crucial role in the user experience of your website. Organizing the different pages of your website in a way that makes sense to the user is a great way to improve not only SEO performance but how users interact with the website as well. This hierarchy of pages and information is known as the “information architecture” of the website.
Developing A Site Hierarchy
When designing a brand new website, you have full control over how the different pages of the website will be laid out and work together. Starting fresh on a brand new website allows you to design this website in a way that has what’s needed for SEO success in terms of information architecture baked into the build. Depending on the size of your business, the hierarchy of your website should be laid out something like this:
Laying out information in such a way can be thought of like this:
- Home page - What your business is about (Example: Fencing business in Austin, TX)
- Service Pages - Specific aspect of your business offerings (Example: Fence Installation services in Austin, TX)
- Additional Info pages - More information about the specific offerings of your business. (Example: Aluminum fence installation services in Austin, TX)
Creating a diagram similar to the one above is a great way to organize all of the information of your website in a way that makes sense for not only search engine crawlers, but users of the website as well. This diagram will also help you get a visualization of what the URL structure of your website should be, which also plays a part in how search engines read the website and in turn, award rankings.
The Importance Of URL Structure
Search engines gain further context on your website through the URLs within. Using naming conventions that make sense to both humans and search engine crawlers is key when designing a website with SEO in mind. Continuing with the Austin, TX fencing company example, a proper URL Structure would look something like this:
AustinFenceFellas.com
-AustinFenceFellas.com/fence-installation/
--AustinFenceFellas.com/fence-installation/aluminum/
--AustinFenceFellas.com/fence-installation/wood/
--AustinFenceFellas.com/fence-installation/vinyl/
Website hierarchy, as well as the accompanying URL structure, work together to dictate one of the most important features of any modern website: navigation.
Navigation: The “Sign Post” Of A Website
With the correct information architecture and URL structure, the navigation of a website falls into place naturally. Website navigation at its core should provide supplemental information about the main idea of the website, getting more granular with each depth level. Great website navigation should not require much thought from the user — it should just make sense. Search engine crawlers and human users alike will utilize the navigation of your website to find the answers they’re looking for.
For crawlers, these internal pages found within the navigation provide the answer to a search query. While for users, the navigation allows them to get their real questions answered, like “does this business offer this specific service or product?” or “does this business offer service in my area?”. These are two different sides of the same coin that work together to generate traffic, and in turn, leads, purchases, or other revenue sources for the business on the other end of the website.
Trust The Geeks For SEO and Web Design
This blog post is just scratching the surface of how SEO and web design work together. There are many nuances and technicalities that should be considered when designing a website that is best left to a team of professionals like Geek Powered Studios.
At Geek Powered Studios, we provide web design and SEO in Austin, TX, and anywhere else that a business needs help improving its online presence. We utilize the most relevant SEO standards in each web design project we take on.
Our team of web designers and SEO experts work closely on each new website build to ensure that everything is in place for SEO success as soon a new website launches. To learn more about our Austin web design and SEO services, reach out to us today online or over the phone. Start growing your business with the Geeks today.
